William Bell Riley was a turn of the twentieth-century Protestant fundamentalist who presided over a fundamentalist empire in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. You can learn more about him from Bill Trollinger’s excellent biography, God’s Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism.
While I was checking my Facebook feed today I ran across this post from Penn State graduate student Paul Matzko:
Imagine a fundamentalist praying this prayer about a war today:
“We cannot ask Thee that our soldiers…may be victorious, for we do not believe that this is Thy will; but we do ask that their lives may be preserved and that they may return to their homes and friends.”
(from William Bell Riley’s opening prayer at an anti-Spanish-American War rally.)
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Yep. Riley was a lot more complex than present day tendency fundamentalism viewed through the lens of the New Christian Right allows. If I recall correctly, he participated in an anti-war rally and was friendly with Hubert Humphrey, who crusaded against corruption in MN