Dennis James Kennedy (November 3, 1930 – September 5, 2007) was an American Presbyterian pastor, evangelist, Christian broadcaster, and author. He was the senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, from 1960 until his death in 2007. Kennedy also founded Evangelism Explosion International, Coral Ridge Ministries (now known as D. James Kennedy Ministries), the Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, the Knox Theological Seminary, radio station WAFG-FM, and the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, a socially conservative political group.
In 1974, he began Coral Ridge Ministries, which produced his weekly religious television program, The Coral Ridge Hour, carried on various networks and syndicated on numerous other stations with a peak audience of three million viewers in 200 countries. He also had a daily radio program, Truths That Transform, from 1984 on. During his lifetime, Coral Ridge Ministries grew to a US$37-million-a-year non-profit corporation.
In 2005, the National Religious Broadcasters association inducted Kennedy into its Hall of Fame.
Kennedy was born in Augusta, Georgia, and moved with his parents to Chicago, Illinois, during his childhood. His father was a glass salesman, and his parents were Methodists. Kennedy joined the Boy Scouts. He later moved with his family to Tampa, Florida, where in 1948 he graduated from Henry B. Plant High School and began studying music at the University of Tampa. After two years, he dropped out of college, began working as a dance instructor at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in Tampa, and later won a first prize in a nationwide dance contest. On August 25, 1956, he married Anne Lewis, whom he had met while giving her dance lessons at Arthur Murray. They had one daughter, Jennifer, born in 1962.
Kennedy became a Christian in 1953 after hearing a radio preacher present the Gospel, which Kennedy later said he had never heard up to that point. In December 1955, Kennedy decided to quit his Arthur Murray job to enter the ministry. He resumed his studies at the University of Tampa (graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in 1958) and began preaching at the small Bethel Presbyterian Church in nearby Clearwater, Florida. Kennedy entered Columbia Theological Seminary in 1956, receiving a Master of Divinity degree three years later. After his ordination in 1959, Kennedy became the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, where he remained until his death. In the 1970s, he earned a Master of Theology summa cum laude from the Chicago Graduate School of Theology, and in 1979 a doctorate in religious education from New York University. His doctoral dissertation was on the history of an evangelism program he founded. Kennedy said that he earned the Ph.D. degree "to dispel the idea there is an inconsistency between evangelism and education ... evangelical ministers [need] to be thoroughly educated and equipped to meet on equal terms anyone with whom they come in contact".
Initially ordained in 1959 by the Presbyterian Church in the United States, Kennedy later became an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America after he and his church left the PCUS in 1978. Adhering to traditional Calvinist theology, Kennedy's theological works include Why I Believe, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born, Skeptics Answered, and Truths That Transform. In 1971, he founded the Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale and in 1989, he founded Knox Theological Seminary.
Kennedy was a conservative evangelical minister and an outspoken advocate for the moral and social values championed by the Christian right. He wrote, with Jerry Newcombe, What if America Were a Christian Nation Again? and frequently preached messages that argued that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Kennedy started the Center for Christian Statesmanship, an evangelical ministry on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The Center closed in 2007 by Coral Ridge Ministries but quickly reopened under the auspices of Evangelism Explosion International, as the non-partisan Christian outreach to members of the United States Congress.
In 2005, the National Religious Broadcasters association inducted Kennedy into its Hall of Fame.
Founding of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church
Kennedy preached his first sermon at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale in June 1959. Beginning with 45 persons attending a typical Sunday service, it became the fastest-growing Presbyterian church in the U.S. in the 1960s and had 1,366 members by 1968. Evangelist Billy Graham spoke at the dedication of the new Coral Ridge Presbyterian church building in 1974, attended by 15,000 people. Kennedy expressed his entrepreneurial vision for outreach at the dedication, stating,
It is our prayer, that through this church, the Gospel of Jesus Christ might be radiated through television and radio, motion pictures and cassettes, books and clinics, and by ways yet undreamed of unto the entire world, that the command of Christ to go and proclaim the Gospel to every creature might be fulfilled in our generation.
Kennedy developed the Evangelism Explosion ("EE") method of evangelism in the 1960s, which emphasizes the training of church laypeople to share their faith by home visitation and every-day encounters in the community. A film, Like a Mighty Army, was produced in 1970 and starred actor Chris Robinson as Kennedy, portraying the Evangelism Explosion story at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.
In 1978, Kennedy began the weekly Coral Ridge Hour (now Truths That Transform) on national television, which at its peak had a weekly audience of three million viewers in 200 countries and was aired on more than 400 stations and four cable networks, including the Trinity Broadcasting Network, The Inspiration Network (INSP) and the NRB Network, as well as broadcast to more than 150 countries on the Armed Forces Network. Today, D. James Kennedy Ministries carries messages from Kennedy, along with news commentary and documentaries to a nationwide audience on NRBTV, Daystar, TCT, and FETV. By the 1980s, the church's membership had grown to almost 10,000 persons. As of 2009, at the time of the installation of its new pastor, the church had 2,200 members and weekly attendance averaged 1,800 persons.
On the evening of December 28, 2006, Kennedy experienced prolonged ventricular tachycardia at his Fort Lauderdale home, leading to cardiac arrest which deprived his brain of adequate oxygen for six to eight minutes. As a result, he sustained a loss of short-term memory and speech impairment. Despite several months of rehabilitation and convalescence, he was unable to resume preaching and his retirement was announced on August 26, 2007, at the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church by his daughter, Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy. Following the news of Kennedy's retirement, his church announced the development of the D. James Kennedy Legacy website in tribute to the life of the Christian evangelist.
Kennedy died in his sleep at home in the early morning hours of September 5, 2007, aged 76. The White House issued a statement the following day, saying that President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush were "deeply saddened" by Kennedy's death, calling him "a man of great vision, faith, and integrity ... Dr. Kennedy's message of love and hope inspired millions through the institutions he founded". Focus on the Family founder James Dobson called Kennedy "a passionate defender of biblical truth in a culture that increasingly forgot it" and "a giant in the battle to restore traditional values in our nation".
Shortly after Kennedy's heart attack, Coral Ridge Ministries reduced The Coral Ridge Hour syndication and shortened the program from an hour to 30 minutes. Kennedy's daughter, Jennifer, stated on the program in February 2008 that viewers' donations to the broadcast ministry had declined significantly in the wake of the founding pastor's death. (The show continues to air as Truths that Transform.) Coral Ridge Ministries closed its social action branch, The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, shortly after Kennedy's heart attack.