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Vern Bennom Grimsley (December 22, 1940-January 1, 2011) was a campus preacher[1] in the San Francisco Bay Area, most famous for his intellectual engagement with students at University of California, Berkeley of the emerging, unfolding modern scientific worldview, and how one finds faith in a living God in that intellectual development, from which he recorded most (but not all) of his daily religious radio broadcasts. His theology was Christian theistic unitarian (small 'u'). He emphasized the centrality of personal religious experience, though in a nontrinitarian theology. Sometime in the 1970s{cn)), he discovered the Urantia Book and began preaching about Urantia, and his Urantia popularity grew considerably, despite its distinct contrasts from the theological framework of his previous message.[2] He retired in 2004 because of personal illness but continued to write and speak, completing a book of his sermons in 2010. Vern Bennom Grimsley died only a few months later on January 1, 2011[3][4], at the age of 71, in the town of Oakhurst, California, where he and his wife Nancy had lived for 25 years, and from which he ran the Spiritual Renaissance® Institute, which he founded.
Biography
Vern Grimsley was born December 22, 1940, in Garden City, Kansas, to parents who were Congregationalists with strong religious interests. In his youth, Vern also functioned as the interim preacher at his local church for a few months while the church found and hired the official minister. He would write and deliver the sermons but not be involved in the other official church activities.
In 1955, his parents sent him to a private preparatory boarding school in Culver, Indiana for three years.[5] In 1958, as an alumnus of Culver Military Academy, Vern later returned to Kansas to become one of the youngest radio newscasters and DJs in the nation while still finishing high school. His station - KNCO (AM) (830 AM) in Grass Valley, California - reached several states, including Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Oklahoma. Vern won the Kansas State Chamber of Commerce speaking and essay contest, meriting a trip to Washington, D.C. where fellow Kansan Dwight D Eisenhower personally congratulated Vern in the Oval Office. While studying (for three years - 1955–1958) in Culver, he came into contact with Rev. Dr. Meredith Justin Sprunger, who was pastor of the Grace United Church of Christ.[6] Sprunger was not hesitant to introduce The Urantia Papers to anyone who might exhibit a slight interest, and had introduced some of his parishioners to the Papers. One of those parishioners told Grimsley of the Papers, who then sought out Sprunger to learn more.
In 1963, he was graduated from the University of Kansas with the bachelor's degree; he had been involved with the Phi Beta Kappa Society and the Sigma Chi Fraternity during his years there, where he shared with his fraternity brothers his interest in The Urantia Book.[7] In 1964, almost immediately after his college graduation, he began the Spiritual Renaissance Broadcast[8] over KFAX in San Francisco. By the late 1970s, his Worldwide Broadcasting Network was reaching all 50 states, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and China and the Pacific Rim nations.
In 1981, Grimsley received the Prince of Peace Award "For extraordinary and continuous contribution in bringing hope, peace and the gospel of Christ to Jerusalem and all the peoples of the Middle East" from the Otis Star of Hope Foundation.[citation needed] Vern spoke to civic audiences from coast to coast, and lectured for the American Management Association. His On Campus broadcasts were aired on American Forces Radio Network, and Radio Free Europe ran his special on Youth and Religion behind the Iron Curtain in several languages. Vern was interviewed three times by George McManus for his Peabody Award-winning series on the CBS Network titled Man and his Religion.[citation needed] At the height of his broadcast career, annual worldwide listenership to Vern's Spiritual Renaissance and On Campus programs was estimated at over 284 million per year.[9][citation needed]
Retirement
In 2004 following an illness, Vern retired, and he and his wife, Nancy, lived more flexibly in Oakhurst in the California mountains. Vern continued to write and broadcast, and his book, Fragments of Philosophy, was completed in 2010. Mr. Grimsley enjoyed playing the guitar and performed at many Oakhurst events. Mr. Grimsley served as chairman for the Eastern Madera County Emergency Preparedness Committee, and was nominated as Oakhurst's Volunteer of the Year.[citation needed]
Vern Bennom Grimsley died Jan. 1, 2011, at the age of 71.[10] A memorial service was held at 1 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6 at Palm Memorial Sierra Chapel in Oakhurst, California, and burial was at Oakhill Cemetery, also in Oakhurst. He was survived by wife Nancy Smithe Grimsley of Oakhurst, California; his sister Mona Marie Grimsley (Mona Marie Hett, Mona Marie Hubert) of Topeka, Kansas; his niece Monica Marie Hubert Miller of Oakhurst, California; and three children Veronica, Cameron, and Vanessa.
Criticisms
Other than personal and organizational controversies, criticisms of Grimsley's thematic messages are found throughout the history of Christendom, and his udnerlying thematic messages have already emerged throughout those two millennia. Grimsley was originally operating from within what became the United Church of Christ denomination, a highly visible denomination that at intermittent times was deemed nearly as liberal as the Unitarian Universalist Association = but not quite. It may be curious to have the appearance of "religious reformers" operating from within a "historic denomination" where many thought only "religious dropping out" would occur. The sudden interest in Urantia may have put that public expectation of "religious reform" or "a prophet" in jeopardy. But the inherent juxtaposition of "religiosu reality" and "dead letter" of text may have seemed like someone very earnest who was publicly and privately seeking for "religious space" where others pressed more for "defintion" than what Karl Jaspers and perhaps also Patrick Masterson called a "cipher of transcendence".[13]
We think that, although he was a popular 'street preacher' in the SF Bay Area around the time of the Jesus Movement, he was NOT mentioning Urantia in the early 1970s, so somehow his 'discovery' was life changing to him (he was interested in the 'category of reality' for religious experiences and thought that Bible as a record of religious revelatory experiences pointed toward that category.