Kirby J. Hensley

Kirby James Hensley (July 23, 1911 – March 19, 1999) was an American minister. He was the president and founder of the Universal Life Church.

Biography

The second of seven children, Hensley was born on July 23, 1911, in the mountains of Low Gap, Yancey County, North Carolina. For more than 65 years he studied and preached religion throughout the United States. He was functionally illiterate;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> he hired others to read the Bible for him and later listened to recordings of the Bible on tape.<ref>The Holy Bible for the 21st Century, U.L.C. Printing Dept.</ref> Hensley "studied and preached religion" in this manner for 65 years.<ref>President/Founder ulchq.com, Universal Life Church, Headquarters, December 16, 2023</ref>

Hensley received a doctoral degree (via mail) from institution by name of Hollywood University of Los Angeles, then an honorary doctorate in a domain of science from a school in Nebraska.<ref>Clergy: Mail-Order Ministers time.com, Time (magazine), December 16, 2023</ref>

He was ordained in a branch of the Baptist Church, but after several years he left the denomination and attended the Pentecostal churches in the area. He married his first wife Nora in a Pentecostal church ceremony; they had two daughters together. He also pastored in Oklahoma and California.

Hensley later divorced Nora and moved back to North Carolina, where he met his second wife, Lida. During their forty-six-year marriage, they had one daughter and two sons.

In the mid-1980s, Hensley called himself the King of Aqualandia and sold citizenship documents, as well as church ordinations, for $35.<ref>Inside the Universal Life Church, the internet's one true religion theweek.com, Aaron Sankin, April 3, 2015</ref> He ran for President of the United States as the Universal Party's candidate in 1964 and 1968, with Roscoe MacKenna as his running mate.

Hensley founded the Universal Life Church in 1962. He remained president of the church until his death on March 19, 1999. He compiled many sermons and once appeared on 60 Minutes (also available in printed version — final highlight on page 24, still with Morley Safer, who concludes: "I certainly liked him. He was a wonderful character.").<ref>Template:Cite book — Necessary clarification/"Con man": page 21 — "And the paper included a lot of advertisements that were, as Safer put it carefully, 'Kind of dubious—slightly, you know, con man—.' It was at this point that Kirby Hensley told Morley Safer he considered himself a con man. He preferred to believe that "it's what you do and how you treat your fellow man that count."</ref>

Sources

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