Vonette Z. Bright

Founded Campus Crusade for Christ with her husband and built it into a global evangelical organization. She and her husband, William R. Bright, founded in 1951 the organization at the University of California, Los Angeles. They also established Athletes in Action, Women Today International, the Josh McDowell Ministry and FamilyLife; produced a biographical film about Jesus; and lobbied Congress successfully to designate the first Thursday in May a National Day of Prayer. Mr. Bright also co-founded Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal arm of the religious right, which has argued hundreds of pro bono cases across the country against same-sex marriage, government mandates that employers provide insurance coverage for contraception, and efforts to ban prayer before municipal board meetings. Cru is the American ministry of the international Campus Crusade for Christ, which says it has a staff of 25,000 and 300,000 volunteers in about 175 countries. Cru itself says it oversees more than 2,000 interdenominational Christian evangelical groups on high school and college campuses as well as ministries serving sports teams and military installations. The organization said it changed its name in the United States because of the negative associations of the word “crusade,” especially to Muslims, and because its mission had grown beyond college campuses. William Bright died in 2003. Mrs. Bright is survived by their sons, Zachary and Bradley; four grandchildren; a brother, Roy Zachary; and a sister, Deanne Rice. Mrs. Bright received a bachelor’s degree in home economics from Texas Woman’s University and a master’s in education from the University of Southern California. She wrote about a dozen books.