Charles Templeton

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Charles Bradley Templeton (October 7, 1915 - June 7, 2001) was successively a Canadian cartoonist, evangelist, politician, newspaper editor, broadcaster and author.

At the age of 17 during the Great Depression, Chuck Templeton (as he was then known) got his first job as a sports cartoonist for the Toronto Globe and Mail. This would be the first of many careers. In 1936 Templeton had a religious experience and conversion and became an evangelist, eventually becoming a close friend of Billy Graham. The two cofounded Youth for Christ International and often toured together. At his peak Templeton hosted a weekly religious television show on CBS, Look Up and Live in the early 1950s.

In 1941, Templeton founded Avenue Road Church of the Nazarene, in Toronto, where he served as senior pastor despite his lack of formal theological training. Avenue Road Church of the Nazarene eventually became affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination. At one time the United Church of Canada heartily endorsed Templeton's evangelism but came to feel a degree of discomfort with mass evangelistic crusades as its own evangelical Protestantism began to settle into a theologically and socially more liberal stream. In 1948 he attended Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1957, after a long struggle with doubt, Templeton declared himself an agnostic. His public pronouncement of his loss of faith caused a deep backlash from the evangelical community.

Returning to Canada, Charles Templeton became a broadcaster hosting public affairs programming on CBC Television. In the 1960s he was hired as editorial page editor of the Toronto Star and then made a leap into politics running for the leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party in 1964 placing second to Andrew Thompson. During the campaign Templeton ran in a Toronto by-election in an attempt to strengthen his campaign for leader by winning a seat in the Ontario legislature but he was defeated by NDP candidate Jim Renwick.

Following his unsuccessful political career, Templeton tried his hand as an advertising executive before returning to journalism first as editor of Maclean's Magazine and then as a newscaster for CTV News.

When Thompson was forced to vacate the Liberal leadership in 1967, Templeton was offered the position by senior members of the party but declined.

Templeton began a long time collaboration with Pierre Berton co-hosting a daily radio show in which the two would debate the issues of the day. Dialogue would be on the air for 18 years starting on CFRB in 1966 and then moving to CKEY in 1970 where Templeton was also hired as the morning newscaster.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Templeton was best known as an author of both fiction and non-fiction. His The Kidnapping of the President was made into a feature film; Act of God, The Third Temptation and The Queen's Secret were among his other bestselling novels.

He also wrote Jesus: A Bible in Modern English (1973) which is a selection of sayings by Jesus, in 1995 he published A Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith which put forth his arguments for agnosticism. Templeton was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in the latter part of the decade and died of it in 2001.

Charles Templeton is the father of Ty Templeton, a well known comic book artist and Brad Templeton, founder of ClariNet Communications.

Source: Templeton, Charles. Charles Templeton: An Anecdotal Memoir. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1983.

[edit] External links

• Charles Templeton: An Anecdotal Memoir
• Obituaries