Charles Templeton

Charles Bradley Templeton^[1][2] (October 7, 1915 – June 7, 2001) was a Canadian broadcaster, journalist, and novelist who was previously a Christian evangelist. Known in the 1940s and 1950s as a leading preacher, he became an agnostic and later embraced atheism after struggling with doubt. Afterwards, having become an atheist, he worked at various times in journalism, radio and writing.

Charles Templeton was born on October 7, 1915, in Toronto, Canada, to Irish immigrants William Loftus Templeton (1889-1972) and Elizabeth Marion Poyntz (1890-1956). After living in Regina, Saskatchewan for more than a decade his family returned to Toronto when he was 12 and he attended high school at Parkdale Collegiate Institute.^[1] Templeton's father left Toronto and his family in 1929, onstensibly in search of work, when Charles was 14, and he rarely saw him afterwards. His mother made ends meet during the Depression by taking in boarders to support Charles, his three sisters and younger brother.^[3]

In 1932,^[1] at age 17, Charles Templeton was hired to create Chuck Templeton's Sportraits, a daily sports cartoon, for The Toronto Globe (now The Globe and Mail),^[4] leaving high school to pursue the job. His work became syndicated and earned him a comfortable living. He converted to Christianity while working as a cartoonist, and in 1936, left his job to become a preacher.^[1]

After he quit his first job, Templeton became a mass evangelist. From 1936 to 1938, he toured the United States, preaching in 44 states^[1] and gaining international recognition as a leading evangelist.^[1][5][2] In 1941, Templeton started the Nazarene Avenue Road Church where he served as its preacher, renting a building that once housed a Presbyterian church.^[1][6] In 1955, he became the Presbyterian Church in the United States's secretary of evangelism.^[1]

Eager to deepen his understanding about Christianity, Templeton attended Princeton Theological Seminary in the 1940s.^[7][5] He later received an honorary doctorate from Lafayette College.^[1]

He hosted the religious television show Look Up and Live on CBS.^[1][2]

Templeton began to struggle with doubts about his religion eventually becoming an agnostic.^[1] This caused a wide backlash from Christian communities.^[2]

Templeton was a close friend of fellow evangelist Billy Graham, and the two shared billing as they co-founded (along with Torrey Johnson) Youth for Christ International.^[1][2] After Templeton became an agnostic, and later an atheist, they remained friends, but became more distant.^[1]

Templeton's friendship with Graham and their debate over Templeton's skepticism, is dramatized in the 2008 movie Billy: The Early Years.^[8]

Templeton quit evangelism in 1957 and transitioned into a media career. In 1957, he became an interviewer, alongside Pierre Berton, for the CBC Television show Close-Up in and also appeared on CBC Radio public affairs programmes such as Assignment. He left in 1959 when he was hired as executive managing editor of the Toronto Star, a position he held until 1964, when he entered politics.^[1][9][10]

In 1958, Templeton also worked for syndication service All-Canada Radio, producing ten one-minute news commentaries a week.^[11]

From 1959 to 1962 he hosted the historical quiz show Live a Borrowed Life.^[12] In 1963, he was an interviewer on the Question Mark, a CBC public affairs show exploring spirituality.^[13]

He collaborated with Berton again on the radio show Dialogue from 1966 to 1970 on CFRB, and from 1970 to 1983 on CKEY, where Templeton also served as the morning news reader.^{[14][1][7][2]}

In 1965, Templeton was appointed president of the advertising company Technamation Canada, working there until CTV hired him as director of public affairs in 1967. In 1969, he briefly served as editor of Maclean's magazine for seven months.^[1][7][5][2]

He won two ACTRA Awards for broadcasting^[1][7] and in 1992, he was awarded the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal.^[7]

In the late 1950s, Templeton wrote two plays that were performed on CBC Television and were also sold for broadcast on the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Company.^[9] Templeton's first novel, The Kidnapping of the President (1974), became a bestseller and was adapted into a 1980 film.^[5] He wrote several other novels.^[1][7] In Farewell to God (1995 or 1996), he described his conversion to agnosticism and explained his reasons for doing so.^[1][5] Templeton also won the B'nai B'rith book award.^[7]

He came second in the 1964 Ontario Liberal Party leadership election,^[1][5][2] and was Ontario Liberal Party vice-president in 1964 and 1965.^[7] Templeton, who didn't have a seat in the Ontario legislature, tried to improve his prospects of winning the party leadership by running in the Riverdale by-election scheduled for September 10 - a week before the convention. Running two election campaigns simultaneously proved challenging and Templeton came in third in Riverdale, a result which hurt him in the leadership vote.

Templeton made his own unsuccessful designs of a child-resistant medicine cap, a cigarette filter and a pipeline.^[1] However, his design for a teddy bear that could stay warm for many hours was widely manufactured.^[2]

While he was an evangelist, Templeton married fellow evangelist and singer Constance Oroczy in 1939. In 1957, they got divorced. In 1959, he married singer Sylvia Murphy, whom he met while acting alongside her in a television play A Face to Remember; they got divorced in 1976.^[2] Templeton and Murphy had two children, including internet entrepreneur Brad Templeton, cartoonist Ty Templeton, and Templeton became stepfather to Murphy's two children from an earlier marriage, lawyer Michael Templeton, and broadcaster and producer Deborah Burgess.^[1][16]

In 1980, he married author Madeleine Helen Stevens Leger, and they remained married until his death.^[1]

On June 7, 2001, Charles Templeton died from Alzheimer's disease.^[7][5][2]

• The Kidnapping of the President, McClelland & Stewart (Canada) / Simon & Schuster (US) (1974) - adapted into a movie in 1980
• Act of God, McClelland & Stewart (Canada) / Little, Brown (US) (1977)
• The Third Temptation, McClelland & Stewart (1980)
• The Queen's Secret, McClelland & Stewart (1986)
• World of One, McClelland & Stewart (1988)

• Evangelism for Tomorrow, Harper & Brothers (1955)
• Life Looks Up, Harper & Brothers (1957)
• Jesus (also titled Jesus: A Bible in Modern English), Simon & Schuster (1973)
• Charles Templeton: An Anecdotal Memoir, McClelland & Stewart (1983)
• Succeeding: Mastering the Art of Getting Ahead, Stoddart (1989)
• The Winning Edge (later edition of Succeeding), Stoddart (1990)
• End Back Attacks, written with Charles Godfrey, M.D., Key Porter Books (1992)
• Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith, McClelland & Stewart (1996)

• Photo archive curated by Brad Templeton
• Anecdotal Memoir (1982) by Charles Templeton, online version