Kirby James Hensley (July 23, 1911 – March 19, 1999) was the president and founder of the

Universal Life Church The Universal Life Church (ULC) is a non-denominational religious organization founded in 1962 by Kirby J. Hensley,James R. Lewis, The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects, and New Religions' (2001), p. 769-70.U.S. Department of the Army, ''Religious R ...

(ULC.)

Biography

The second of seven children, Hensley was born on July 23, 1911, in the mountains of Low Gap, Yancey County,

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and ...

. For more than 65 years he studied and preached

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throughout the

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. Illiterate his entire life, he hired others to read the

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for him and later listened to recordings of the Bible on tape. Hensley was ordained in a branch of the Baptist Church, but after several years he left the denomination and attended the

Pentecostal church Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement

es 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

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. Hensley later divorced Nora and moved back to North Carolina, where he met his second wife,

Lida Lida ( be, Лі́да ; russian: Ли́да ; lt, Lyda; lv, Ļida; pl, Lida ; yi, לידע, Lyde) is a city 168 km (104 mi) west of Minsk in western Belarus in Grodno Region. Etymology The name ''Lida'' arises from its Lithuan ...

. 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. He ran for

President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

as the Universal Party's candidate in 1964 and 1968, with Roscoe MacKenna as his running mate. Hensley remained president of the church until his death on March 19, 1999. He compiled many sermons and once appeared on '' 60 Minutes''.

References

Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Hensley, Kirby J. 1911 births 1999 deaths Universal Life Church People from Yancey County, North Carolina 20th-century Baptist ministers from the United States Baptists from North Carolina