William Branham ... Shirtless!

Though William Branham was not so very hardcore fundamentalist in his personal life, he often used a stage persona that appealed to fundamentalist and sometimes extremist Christian groups. After Ern Baxter and Gordon Lindsay began to sever ties with Branham, these were the groups that continued to support Branham’s healing revivals. To be fair, William Branham did not say that he lived the life that his stage persona described, but leaders in the movement assumed that he did because, well, why would he publicly "talk the talk" when he did not "walk the walk" as the saying goes.

This became very odd as William Branham’s “Message” following turned into a “Message” cult of personality. Branham’s person became the focal point of the religion, and those who were unduly influenced into giving unnatural respect to his person became increasingly curious about his personal life. Yet even the photographs of his personal life did not match the rules and regulations of his fundamentalist peers.

One very strange example of this is Branham’s photographs of posing … shirtless. Many of the fundamentalist leaders strongly denounced people who showed a little flesh as if the skin God gave mankind was dirty or evil. Branham himself did not feel this way, wearing shorts in private and even mentioned mowing his lawn without a shirt on. The fundamentalists decided to solve this problem by cutting out a plaid shirt from another photo or magazine, placing it over Branham’s photograph, and taking a photo of the photo. It was photoshopping before Photoshop even existed.

You can learn this and more on william-branham.org

Editing Photographs:
https://william-branham.org/site/research/topics/editing_photographs