William Bell Riley

William Bell Riley also W. B. Riley (March 22, 1861 - December 5, 1947) was a Minnesota fundamentalist minister who founded the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School (1902-1966) later known as the Northwestern Schools. The school is said to have been an anti-Jewish training ground where Riley would often preach on the veracity of The Protocols. Dr. William Riley was a firm believer in an international Jewish-Bolshevik-Darwinist conspiracy.

In an October 1936 sermon he explained how he first became suspicious of the Jews. Riley began to realize the Jews were his most outspoken opponents when he proposed Bible readings in the schools and they were the loudest hecklers in his antievolutionist crusades. His final revelation about the Jews came when he saw their allegiance to communism when they dominated the Communist parades and marches in Minneapolis. He defended the Silver Shirts in a sermon and later pamphlet titled "Why Shiver at the Sight of a Shirt?"

Riley’s own publication was The Pilot. He published several articles of Elizabeth Dilling who was the author of The Red Network and The Octopus.

One writer said, “When Riley died in December 1947 he died an uncontrite anti-Semite of the first order.” Upon Riley’s death Billy Graham became the president of Northwestern Schools.

Works

• The Philosophies of Father Coughlin (1935)

Biography

• The Dynamic of a Dream: The Life Story of Dr. William B. Riley, by Marie Acomb Riley (1935)
• God's Empire: William Bell Riley and Midwestern Fundamentalism, by William Vance Trollinger, (1990)

See also

• Gerald B. Winrod
• List of promoters of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion