By Mallory Mattingly
Twin brothers David and Jason Benham recently talked about their father, Phillip “Flip” Benham’s, faith and impact as a pro-life pastor.
“Well, our dad was a pastor, raised us in Dallas, Texas, and he taught us that if your theology is not your biography, then your theology is worthless,” David said on evangelist Nick Vujicic’s podcast. “And so, our dad was all about living out your faith wherever you are. You are in full-time ministry whether you’re standing on stage as a preacher, whether you’re overseas as a missionary or whether you’re in a boardroom as a chairman of the board. Whatever it is, you’re in your ministry.”
But Philip wasn’t always a staunch pro-life advocate.
“It was actually a couple of months before we were delivered that they [found out they] were having identical twins,” Jason said. “And at the time, it was 1975, he wanted to get an abortion because he did not want to have twin boys. So my mom was like, ‘Nope, that’s not going to happen.’ And so our dad was a saloon owner. He owned the Mad Hatter Saloon in Kissimmee, Florida. When David and I were born, he was passed out on the waiting room floor in the hospital from an all-night poker party.”
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Philip’s wife, Faye, planned on leaving him unless he went to church with her.
“He went to church and listened to a sermon by a man named Dave Clarity — an old Free Methodist pastor, dead and gone now — that preached the fire of the gospel just like what you do, Nick,” David recounted. “My dad said he felt such conviction that he walked the three-mile journey back home while my mom drove. It was in the summer in Kissimmee, Florida; he said he was sweating through his shirt and everything, but he just cried the whole way. He knew that God was doing something, and he got radically saved. Then he surrendered to becoming a pastor.”
Phillip spent the next six months in the bar, stocking the shelves while preaching the gospel to anyone who would listen to him. After that, he went to Bible school in Kentucky, later moving the family to Dallas when David and Jason were 4.
“That’s where we were raised as preacher’s kids. Like I said, dad taught us about turning your theology — which is your thoughts about God — into biography, which is the way that you live your life,” Jason said.
Their dad truly practiced what he preached.
“To show us what this looked like — he moved his church office out of our home and next door to the busiest abortion clinic in Dallas,” David recalled. “He didn’t realize it at the time, but one of the workers there was Norma McCorvy. She was the ‘Jane Roe’ in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. Over a period of about two years, because of the witness of my dad and several other people in his pro-life office and in the church office, she got radically saved. Dad baptized her. It was on the cover of Time magazine. So, we got a chance to see theology to biography lived out.”
Philip founded the Operation Save America organization, which “unashamedly takes up the cause of preborn children in the name of Jesus Christ.”
The brothers, former pro baseball players, also boldly pursue their faith. After finding business success, they secured an HGTV show, but it was canceled in 2014 because of their “commitment to biblical values.”
“If our faith cost us a reality show, then so be it,” they said at the time.
It looks like the Benhams live out their father’s instruction to let their theology be their biography.
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