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Cru (Christian organization)

American Christian parachurch organization

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ578100
Source-derived summary

Cru (until 2011 known as Campus Crusade for Christ—informally "Campus Crusade" or simply "Crusade"—or CCC) is an interdenominational Christian parachurch organization. It was founded in 1951 at the University of California, Los Angeles, by Bill Bright and Vonette Zachary Bright as a Christian ministry focused on university students. Since then, Cru has expanded its focus to include a broad range of audiences. In 2020, the organization had 19,000 staff members in 190 countries.

Campus Crusade for Christ relocated its world headquarters from Arrowhead Springs, San Bernardino, California, to Orlando, Florida, in 1991. The president of the organization is David Robbins. In 2011, Campus Crusade for Christ changed its name in the United States to Cru. The name change was intended to avoid association with the word crusade, which can lead to offense, especially to Muslims. A spokesperson for Cru also noted that the organization's work is no longer limited to campuses.

Influenced by Henrietta Mears and evangelist Billy Graham, Bill Bright left his seminary studies to launch the organization, which rapidly expanded across U.S. campuses during the 1950s and 1960s.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cru (Christian organization)” is american Christian parachurch organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Christian, organization and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful synthesis for locating the documentary relationships between formal authority, participants and affected communities. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2011, 1951, 2020, 1991—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1951. For this dossier, Christian, organization and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american Christian parachurch organization” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q578100. VIAF identifies the subject as 131321617. The Library of Congress control number is n50076943. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 1951, 2020 and 1991.

Critical limits

Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cru (Christian organization)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cru (Christian organization) primary sources, Cru (Christian organization) archive and Christian research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cru (Christian organization)”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Cru (Christian organization)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.