A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  With the tabernacle project aborted, Beavan scrapped the brochure and gave it no more thought. Back in Minneapolis, however, George Wilson saw an uncorrected copy and used some of its text, including the reference to socialism, in a 1954 calendar sent to BGEA supporters to keep them aware of the year’s major activities. As soon as someone aware of the brochure’s history saw the first copies off the press, the offending word was changed to secularism, but at least one of the uncorrected versions found its way to England. The MP’s apprehensions had been correct. In a stinging attack in the London Daily Herald, columnist Hannen Swaffer quoted the calendar and asked just which “evils” Graham was laying at the feet of socialism: “The abolition of the Poor Law? The National Health Service . . . ? Town planning? Family allowances? Improved educational facilities?” Charging that the calendar’s assertion was a “foul lie,” he demanded that Graham “apologize . . . or stay away!” Labor MP Geoffrey de Freitas sounded the same note and announced plans to challenge Graham’s admission to England on the grounds that he was “interfering in British politics under the guise of religion.” The Central Council of the Socialist Christian League also characterized the statements as an attack on “the British Labor government which was in power from 1945 to 1951.”

  When the United States docked briefly at Le Havre, France, a crew of reporters came on board to question him about his alleged attitude toward socialism. Off Southampton, a tug pulled alongside the liner, and several dozen reporters and photographers boarded to launch another assault. Graham’s response was immediate and abject. First by cablegram and then by telephone, he assured the editor of the Daily Herald that it had all been “a horrible mistake,” that the calendar had been prepared by a New York advertising firm, and that the key word should have read secularism instead of socialism. Further, he insisted that he had “never attacked Socialism,” that he wished to apologize to all who may have been offended, and that his visit had no political implications whatever. Back in Minneapolis, George Wilson took full blame for not having caught the mistake, but none was more willing to fall on his pen than Jerry Beavan, who insisted that Graham had neither written nor approved the calendar’s text. He further observed that even the original use of the word socialism contained no veiled reference to the Labor party, because when spelled with a lowercase s, the word “means in America theater-going, social life, materialism, and so on.”

  Such explanations, dismissed by a Labor MP as “fatuous,” and acknowledged by some of Graham’s staunchest supporters to be less than fully convincing, were at best disingenuous. Just three months earlier, Graham had described Karl Marx as “a subtle, clever, degenerate materialist” who, “having filled his intellectual craw with all the filth of Europe’s gutters, and garbling perverted German philosophies and half truths,” had “spewed this filthy, corrupt, ungodly, unholy doctrine of world socialism over the gullible people of a degenerate Europe.” On various occasions, the evangelist had called for “a revolt against the tranquil attitude to[ward] communism, socialism, and dictatorship,” predicted that England would turn to Marxist socialism within five years, indicated he might go there to help halt this trend, and described Socialist leader Aneurin Bevan, the major architect of the highly regarded National Health Service, as “a dangerous man” involved in “Communist advance.” Even more pointedly, he had observed in 1949 that “the present government, Labor, is killing all initiative and free enterprise. The system has not solved one of Britain’s economic ills. Instead, it has created a thousand economic problems.” These views, neither uncommon nor unpopular in Eisenhower-era America, were sufficiently well reported to have gained the attention and approval of Kenneth De Courcey, the outspoken editor of London’s extremely conservative Intelligence Digest, which hailed Graham as “the most important single figure in the religious world today,” described him as “without doubt not very partial to Socialism,” and predicted that a major Evangelical awakening “would detach hundreds of thousands, if not millions, from the Socialist concept.” As a further show of his support, De Courcey arranged to reprint some of Graham’s sermons and inaugurated a new paper, the London Free Press, which was advertised as possessing “a strong editorial slant fully supporting the Billy Graham message.” In light of such evidence, Graham’s insistence that he bore no animus toward socialism seemed quite unconvincing. And yet he not only weathered the storm but soon turned most of his attackers into docile admirers. Within a few days, he visited the House of Commons as the guest of several Labor MPs, including Geoffrey de Freitas, who declared he had accepted Graham’s apology for the offensive calendar and was “impressed by [his] sincere Christianity.”

  Ironically, the calendar flap made Billy and his crusade front-page news. When he arrived at Waterloo Station, he was met by a crowd judged to be the largest to gather for any celebrity since Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks visited London in 1924. An eyewitness reported that “women screamed and fainted, babies and children were passed over the heads of the crowd, newspaper stands were overturned, and burly railway policemen were swept aside, and a harassed station official complained, if these are Christians, it’s time we let out the lions!” None of this calmed Graham’s deep-seated fear that he was facing certain and humiliating failure. On the evening of the opening service, March 1, as he and Ruth prepared to leave their modest quarters over a shoe shop near Oxford Circus, he received word that Senators Stuart Symington and Styles Bridges, who had promised to say a few words at the service, had backed out, ostensibly because of a conflicting dinner engagement. Ambassador Aldrich had already distanced himself from Graham as a result of the calendar flap, and Billy wondered if Symington and Bridges had been persuaded to abandon him as well. To make matters worse, a steady mixture of sleet and freezing rain might well discourage people from leaving home. When Jerry Beavan called to report on the status of last-minute preparations, he noted that several hundred journalists were present, but the crowd was still quite small. Given his state of mind, Graham found it easy to envision newspapers and television screens filled with pictures of an empty arena. Ruth, who was writing in her diary when the call came, penned the following observation: “Jerry just called. . . . Some of the [team] are getting discouraged. Bill looked sort of stunned when he told me, and I thought I heard him praying in the other room just now.” In fact, Beavan had not been concerned, but a team member who took his call had misunderstood his message, and Billy characteristically feared the worst. As he and Ruth rode to the arena in a chauffeured car furnished by the Ford Motor Company of England, they held hands and Billy stared into the drizzly darkness, mute with dread of humiliating failure. When they arrived at the warehouselike arena, he saw no one outside and steeled himself to face what he imagined would be a gang of mocking reporters, ready to slice him apart as he tried to communicate with scattered clumps of wet, dispirited Fundamentalists. Then he saw Willis Haymaker rushing toward them, obviously filled with excitement. “The building is packed,” he exclaimed, “and thousands are on the other side trying to get in. They’ve come in the last twenty minutes from everywhere. Listen to them sing!” Tears filled Billy’s eyes as he thanked God he had not been forsaken. When he entered the room that would serve as his office, he found Senators Symington and Bridges standing there smiling. They had broken loose from a cocktail party and would arrive late at their appointment—dinner with Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden. When at last it was time to mount the platform, Billy saw the jammed auditorium for himself. Filled with exhilaration, he could hardly wait to preach. He spoke too fast and his was voice too loud, but the invitation reaped a harvest of 178 souls, a standard proportion (1.5 percent) for Graham crusades, but eye-popping to the reticent British, and the most remarkable religious revival in modern British history was under way. On the second evening, snow and rain kept the crowd a bit below capacity, but on no more than two or three nights of the remaining twelve weeks did a single spot in the 12,000-seat arena go unfilled. On weekends extra services were schedu
led to accommodate overflow crowds. Each night coachloads of pilgrims traveled hundreds of miles to attend the services, and entire tube trains rang with a chorus that would become a standard in Graham crusades. “To God be the glory, Great things He hath done.”

  Harringay marked the introduction of a new technique that would become a vital and standard part of subsequent crusades. Stephen Olford, who led Billy into a “deeper walk” with the Holy Spirit during those memorable sessions at Pontypridd, had left itinerant evangelism to become pastor of London’s Duke Street Baptist Church. From his own experience he knew that most people who attended evangelistic services were already affiliated with a church, and he puzzled over ways to increase the proportion of the unchurched at such meetings and to make sure they did not simply drift back into the night after the services. His solution was biblical, elegantly simple, and remarkably effective. The Duke Street Church would furnish free transportation and arrange for reserved seating for any member who wished to attend the crusade. Bus and crusade tickets were free, but they came in batches of no less than two, and all church members who received a ticket for themselves were obliged to bring at least one unconverted person with them, preferably a friend, relative, or associate. “It was,” Olford recalled with considerable satisfaction, “entirely my vision, entirely my procedure.” He called it Operation Andrew, after the apostle whose primary recorded contribution to Jesus’ ministry was inviting his brother, Peter, to meet the Messiah (John 1:40–42). The scheme, Olford recalled, proved to be a smashing success: “We drove multitudes of people to Harringay. “Multitudes! And we trebled our membership at Duke Street. Actually trebled! I knew what it took, and we proved it could work.” Veteran team members dispute Olford’s claim to sole credit for Operation Andrew but freely acknowledge it was a British invention and quickly made it a regular part of crusade operations.

  As the crusade gathered momentum, the problem was not how to fill Harringay but how to reach other multitudes for whom regular attendance was simply not feasible. At the suggestion of an ABC engineer who came along to help with Hour of Decision broadcasts, and in keeping with Evangelical openness toward any innovation that promised to lengthen the reach or enhance the effectiveness of efforts to fulfill the Great Commission, to preach the gospel to all nations, the team experimented with landline relays that transmitted the service over telephone lines to loudspeakers set up in churches or rented halls. After a single installation at the Troccet Cinema in South London showed the technique would work, other lines were hired, and by May the crusade was going out to 430 churches and rented halls in 175 different cities and towns in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. In these services, team members or local church leaders led the singing and prayers and took an offering to pay the cost of the relay and hall rental. Then, when the time for the sermon came, the landline transmission began. In Liverpool the congregation looked at a six-foot-high portrait of Graham while they listened to his voice over the loudspeaker; in most locations they simply sat and listened. In virtually all cases, the clarity of the transmission—often noticeably better than the sound in Harringay—made it easy to concentrate on the sermon, and observers noticed that the level of attention and response at the invitation was at least as good and often better than at the live services. At the same time, because those who conducted the services were usually local churchmen and attendance seldom exceeded a few hundred, critics could hardly claim that response to the invitation was a product of an emotionally charged mass meeting manipulated by charismatic professionals.

  Popular acclaim helped Graham gain entry to more elite circles as well. Near the end of the crusade, he addressed almost two hundred British political and social elites who gathered at the posh Claridges hotel for a white-tie dinner ostensibly hosted by Lord Luke of Pavenham, a dedicated Evangelical Anglican, but actually paid for by Sid Richardson. At Cambridge and Oxford he drew capacity crowds, and then he addressed large gatherings at the University of London, Imperial College in Kensington, and at the London School of Economics (LSE). Graham approached the LSE appearance with trepidation. Though invited by the school’s Christian Union, he was well aware of its openly secular orientation and an outspoken leftist element. A few moments after he was introduced by a professor who noted he was the first minister ever to speak from that platform, a student crashed through an upper window and stood scratching himself like an ape, an obvious gibe at Fundamentalism’s rejection of evolution. Graham instantly made the connection and, when he finished laughing, quipped, “He reminds me of my ancestors.” The students roared appreciatively, and then he added, “Of course, all my ancestors came from Britain.” This brought the house down, and from then on he had them. Whether or not any of them changed their mind about his message, they listened in complete silence to his brief gospel presentation.

  Similar triumphs attended the rest of the crusade. Nearly every day, Graham addressed a new group or met with religious or political leaders. The pace exhausted him. He lost weight, and the circles around his eyes darkened even more, but the thrill and satisfaction of doing “some great thing for God” kept him moving from glory to glory. An open-air service in Trafalgar Square drew an estimated 12,000 people, the largest crowd to gather there since V-E day. More than 40,000 children assembled one Saturday morning at the dog track next to Harringay to hear Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (and Trigger, “the Gospel Horse”) entertain and give their testimony. A Good Friday rally in Hyde Park attracted another 40,000, and two services on the closing day, one at White City Stadium and the other at mammoth Wembley Stadium, drew, despite driving rain, overflow audiences totaling at least 185,000, the largest crowds ever assembled for a religious event in British history, and larger than any crowd at the 1948 Summer Olympics at Wembley. The lord mayor of London attended the Wembley service, in official capacity, as did the archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, who sat on the platform and pronounced the benediction. The archbishop’s coolness toward the crusade had been obvious since the outset, and this was the first service he bothered to attend. Even then, some felt his implicit endorsement was not all it might have been. Bishop A. W. Goodwin-Hudson, one of Graham’s champions in the Anglican hierarchy, recalled that the archbishop took out a piece of paper, fidgeted with it, and then read his benediction. “He must have done it a million times before. He did not declare himself. It was perfunctory. It could have been better.” The archbishop, however, may have been overwhelmed, not diffident. When the service ended, he turned to Grady Wilson and said with a bit of wistful wonder in his voice, “I don’t think we’ll ever see a sight like this again until we get to heaven.” The southern plumber’s son, never one to stand on ceremony and perhaps unaware that the customary form of direct address was “Your Grace,” threw a beefy arm around the prelate, gave him a good squeeze, and said, “That’s right, Brother Archbishop! That’s right!”

  His Grace was not the only clergyman to manifest a change of heart. Less than two weeks after the crusade started, the Church of England asked for a special series of training classes to equip its members to participate in the counseling and follow-up aspects of the crusade. The Reverend Frank Martin, writing in the Sunday Graphic, proclaimed after his first exposure to the evangelist’s preaching that “this Billy Graham line just won’t do! . . . Just pelting us with texts will never convert British sinners. The whole thing is (and I say it in all charity) too spiritually bouncy and immature.” Eleven weeks later, at the close of the crusade, Martin wrote, “Thank you, Billy. You’ve done us a power of good. Come again soon.” Donald Soper, president of the Methodist Conference and known for his ardent defense of various social-welfare causes, refused to budge from his charge that “there is not a single reputable theologian in the churches who agrees with what is promulgated at Harringay,” but his equally respected colleague, Leslie Weatherhead, then president-designate of the Methodist Conference, asked, “And what does fundamentalist theology matter compared with gathering in the people we have all missed and ge
tting them to the point of decision? Theology comes much later.” Once again, as had been the case throughout the history of evangelistic preaching, criticisms of substance and method had to move to the side to make room for the converts who were crowding the aisles.