The Rev EV Hill

The Rev EV Hill, who has died aged 69 from pneumonia, was in the grand US tradition of mesmerising black preachers, but with one exception: Hill was a right-winger who once described the American Civil Liberties Union as "satanic".

After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, President Bush Sr visited the city. One requirement was to visit a black church, and he took grateful refuge at Hill's Mt Zion Missionary Baptist Church, where the pastor was to spend more than 41 years. Hill's denomination became one of the largest African-American congregations in the US, and he also co-chaired the Baptist World Alliance.

Hill was born in a log cabin, and grew up in poverty in Texas when blacks were lucky to graduate from high school. Yet with his mother's help, he entered university near Houston with a four-year scholarship.

At 21, he became a pastor in Houston and joined the late Martin Luther King in forming his Southern Baptist Leadership Conference, the organising force for King's civil rights movement. King later nominated Hill as the SBLC's president, and Hill joined the struggle for government programmes to bring housing and development to poor, especially rural, blacks. He launched the Lord's Kitchen project for the hungry, and his church built homes for the elderly, created a community bank and gave out clothing.

Friends said he maintained his compassion, but by the time Hill arrived in LA in the early 1960s he rejected community politics and the Democratic party. He supported the successful 1973 LA mayoral campaign of Sam Yorty, who was accused of racist attitudes in his treatment of his opponent Tom Bradley, a black LA policeman who won the office later.

In the 1980s, Hill supported, and preached to, the Promise Keepers, a largely white evangelical men's movement which advocated unreserved male dominance in the home. The founder of Promise Keepers hoped that Hill's backing would encourage blacks to join, but they declined to do so.

Hill also supported white evangelists such as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, and was a supporter of the Rev Jerry Falwell, the rightwing abortion foe and campaigner against all things liberal. He even embraced "creationism" - the conservative alternative to Darwin.

Another quirk was his opposition to the term "black" to describe Americans of African descent. He called the word "theologically, philosophically and ophthalmologically unacceptable" and appealed to his fellow blacks to substitute the old term "Negro" while railing against "radical militant Negroes" and their influence.

Hill is survived by his second wife La Dean, whom he married in 1992, a son, a daughter and a stepson. His first wife died in 1987.

· Edward Victor Hill, clergyman, born November 11 1933; died February 24 2003

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