A Prophet with Honor
Page 32
CT’s first board of trustees illustrated once again that a small number of men, most with close ties to Billy Graham, were at the center of the major developments in Evangelical Christianity during the 1950s. In addition to Graham and Howard Pew, the founding board included Nelson Bell, Jerry Beavan, John Bolten, Walter Bennett, Maxey Jarman, Howard Butt, and National Association of Evangelicals president Paul Rees. The first president was Harold Ockenga. Graham tried to persuade Wilbur Smith to leave Fuller to serve as the magazine’s first editor. When Smith declined after a period of longing indecision, the job went to Carl Henry. Interestingly, though he admired Henry’s administrative ability and intellect, Graham had reservations about his suitability for the post. His primary fear was that Henry, a man not inclined to undervalue his own positions, might show insufficient tolerance toward both Fundamentalists and liberals. He asked Lindsell, “Would Carl be ready to take a certain amount of criticism from typical Fundamentalist leaders? Would he be ready to come out in the middle, recognizing that even among American Baptists and U.S.A. Presbyterians there are good elements, God-fearing people, and devout ministers?” Along the same line, Graham feared that Henry’s writings had made him “too well known as a Fundamentalist,” so that his name on the mast head might generate a negative response among liberals, no matter how irenic the magazine’s tone. To offset that problem, Billy even raised the possibility of having Henry edit the magazine under an assumed name for a year or two until readers grew accustomed to its approach. Graham also wondered whether Henry would be able to produce the type of journalism the magazine needed. “The journalism that I envision for this magazine,” he told a friend, “must be intellectual but popular. . . . To put my thought at this point rather bluntly, Carl’s writing has a tendency to be rather heavy. I have read most of his writings, and though I am a minister of average intelligence, it has been very difficult for me to follow.”
Graham was not the only one with reservations. Henry himself wondered if he was right for the job. On the one hand, he felt the middle of the road might be a dangerous place to stand. Though he agreed that a charitable spirit would be necessary, he insisted on theological integrity. “Liberalism and Evangelicalism,” he said, “do not have equal rights and dignity in the true church.” On the other hand, despite his staunch anticommunism and Republican confidence in the superiority of capitalism to other economic systems, he believed that “capitalism is not beyond Christian criticism” and thought it a mistake to assume that “American capitalism [is] the ideal economic form of the Kingdom of God.” If Howard Pew’s underwriting of the magazine meant such sentiments must be stifled, then perhaps Graham should seek another editor. This insistence on independence worried Graham, and he asked if Henry would consider soft-pedaling his differences with liberals for two years, stressing instead the beliefs and practices Evangelicals held in common with the so-called mainline denominations. Henry would not. “The truth,” he snapped, “is still the indispensable human factor in Christian apologetics; truth without love will be usually ignored, but love without the truth is not even real love.” If they wanted to come back to him after two years of shading their true colors, he might be interested, but he could not agree to hide his light under a bushel, even on a temporary basis. Because Henry was not only the best man available but objectively a quite good choice, Graham and the board finally offered him the editorship, which he accepted. Nelson Bell gave up his surgical practice to become the magazine’s full-time executive editor, and Marcellus Kik, a Reformed Church minister who had helped Bell lay the groundwork for the magazine, became associate editor.
Not everything went smoothly. Pew’s experience with the National Council of Churches and other ventures he had supported had made him wary of relinquishing control. He decided, and got Ockenga to agree, that the editors should submit all articles to the board for approval before publication. Henry bridled immediately, telling Bell that were such a measure implemented, he would have no choice but to resign. In a notable, if reluctant, show of courage, both Bell and Graham sided with Henry, even though they realized doing so might undermine the entire venture. Bell informed the board that “none of us is willing to have Christianity Today bought by any interests. . . . If this position entails a loss of certain financial support, we will seek it elsewhere.” Graham then called Pew, whose support he desperately wanted to retain, to tell him his efforts to assert control over CT would destroy the magazine. A board has the right to fire an editor, he argued, but “if it hires him, it should trust and support him.” Pew never admitted his impulse was wrong, but he did drop his demands.
The fortnightly journal made its first appearance in mid-October 1956. Paul Harvey mentioned it on his national radio program, Newsweek made it the lead article in its religion section, and AP religion writer George Cornell gave it generous coverage. The Christian Century did not acknowledge its existence for four months. The inaugural forty-page issue demonstrated its founders’ aspirations to bridge the gap between serious theological discussion and practical preaching. Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer discussed the “Changing Climate of European Theology.” This was followed by Billy Graham’s ringing affirmation of the role of “Biblical Authority in Evangelism,” Carl Henry’s reflections on “The Fragility of Freedom in the West,” a mélange of other articles, editorials, news, and book reviews, a bit of strained humor under the heading, “Eutychus and His Kin” (named for a man who fell asleep while listening to the Apostle Paul preach), and nearly ten pages of advertising—an encouraging sign for a new publication. The masthead listed forty-nine contributing editors and seventy-three correspondents, a virtual roll call of Evangelical elites. A few days after the first issue went out, Graham sent Henry a six-page critique in which he judged it “not strikingly good, considering the terrific roster of editors and correspondents.” He reported that several people had indicated his own article contained “a bit too much spinning dust and purple prose” and several misleading and ineffective illustrations. As for Henry’s contribution, Graham said his informants had thought it was “too verbose” and gave the impression of “obscurity reaching for profundity.” Noting that these and most other criticisms had been voiced by others—“Personally, I was delighted with the magazine . . . for the first issue, I thought it was great”—and urging “beloved Carl” not to become discouraged, Graham said, “I felt that you would like to know the hard, cold facts, because it will help us in the future.”
Like most new magazines, CT got off to a shaky start. No one on the too-small staff had any previous experience in advertising or circulation, and it showed. Eager for revenue, they ran an early series of ads for Vita Safe and Supra Vite, nostrums designed to bring “fun and excitement” back into marriages whose female members were complaining about their husband’s “age.” Medically dubious and therefore particularly embarrassing to Dr. Bell, these ads were dropped as soon as the term of the contract expired. Both staff and board were naive about circulation. Graham, for example, felt confident he could generate 25,000 subscriptions by an appeal to his mailing list; he received 3,622 positive responses. With counsel from U.S. News & World Report editor David Lawrence, who admired the evangelist and gave his crusades extensive coverage, the staff trimmed expectations to match probability, exchanged lists with other conservative publications, and made good use of its institutional friends, as when it arranged to have Fuller Seminary’s mailing operation address thousands of envelopes to send to prospective subscribers. All these measures helped. By the time the ninth issue appeared in February 1957, the paid subscription list stood at 35,000, equal to that of the Christian Century, and Christianity Today assumed an apparently permanent position as the nation’s most widely read serious religious publication.
Financial and personnel problems notwithstanding, most of those associated with the new magazine delighted in its early success. Graham’s decision to send it to all the nation’s Protestant ministers had instantly given it an audience no other serio
us religious journal could match, and that audience was beginning to respond positively. Positive response meant a great deal to Billy Graham and his friends at CT. They looked backed yearningly to a time a hundred years earlier when Evangelical and Christian and American had been virtual synonyms. They also looked back (and around) at a time when Evangelical and Fundamentalist had come to mean “obscurantist” and “marginal.” Now, some dared hope they might look forward to a time, perhaps not far away, when Evangelicals would once again move to and stand at the center of the culture, defining and shaping its ethos. They understood that their little magazine was only part of the effort and that it was far from perfect, but they clearly saw it as a key weapon in their struggle to regain respectability. Look magazine declared that “among the so-called think magazines, Christianity Today is most stimulating.” The World Council of Churches invited Carl Henry to attend a conference at Oberlin College, Catholic scholar Gustave Weigel asked him to address a group of three hundred priests at the Jesuit seminary in Woodstock, Maryland, and the secular press began to refer to him as “the thinking man’s Billy Graham,” a sobriquet that caused some embarrassment within the Evangelical network but signaled awareness that Graham and CT were closely related elements of the same movement. An excellent news department drew such attention to the magazine that it soon became one of the nation’s most frequently quoted religious publications. Perhaps most important of all to the folk at CT, their magazine was giving the Christian Century, the loudest voice of liberal ecumenical Protestantism, more than a run for its money.
When the New Evangelical founders and shapers of Christianity Today declared their intention to fashion a new umbrella under which Christians of many denominations could unite, they found themselves arrayed against a formidable foe: the old Fundamentalists. Their differences, often hardly comprehensible to those who stood outside both camps but nevertheless real and significant, had been papered over to some extent by their mutual admiration for Billy Graham. It was therefore fitting, or at least historically symmetrical, that when they finally separated into distinct and often warring camps, Billy Graham stood at the center of the fray.
Evangelicals differed little from Fundamentalists on matters of doctrine. What distinguished them was their strategy regarding what to do with that doctrine. They saw their task as twofold: First, they felt it imperative to proclaim the gospel to as wide an audience as ability, opportunity, resources, and technology allowed; second, they sought to regain a hearing and respectability for orthodox belief within mainline denominations. Fundamentalists paid lip service to evangelism, but proclaiming their faith was never as important to them as protecting it and themselves from error. Their strategy of protection involved meticulous attention to the jots and tittles of Christian teaching and obsessive concern with contamination by those who were not pure. They believed in the Great Commission—“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15)—but felt it should be interpreted in light of the Apostle Paul’s equally binding directive, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? . . . Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate” (II Corinthians 6:14–17) [Emphasis added]. Any attempt to preach the gospel, they insisted, would be undermined and ultimately turned into a victory for Satan if it involved fellowship with those whose minds had been clouded by Modernism, whose hearts had been cooled by compromise. Some thought it sufficient merely to separate themselves from unbelievers and liberals and ecumenists; a more extreme group thought purity also required separation from those who chose not to separate.
Billy Graham found it difficult to repudiate people who appeared to be sincere, professed to believe in at least some of the same things he believed, and treated him with courtesy and kindness. He doubtless intended to keep himself and his crusades free from Modernist contamination, but success weakened his resolve. As non-Evangelicals watched the streams of people who responded to his invitation, they wanted to channel at least a trickle of them into their own churches. As they saw it was possible to cooperate with his crusades without having him attack their beliefs from the pulpit, they began to join in the invitations, and when he agreed to come to their cities, to volunteer for committees. At first Graham was uneasy with non-Evangelical support but soon convinced himself that as long as no one tried to tell him what he could or could not preach, there could be no real harm in accepting the assistance and encouragement of people whose beliefs differed from his own at some points. After all, a key part of New Evangelical strategy was to gain a hearing for Evangelical doctrine in mainline denominations; might not his crusades be the perfect instrument of that strategy? Increasingly, and particularly after extensive cooperation with liberal state churches in England, Scotland, and on the continent, Graham came to accept, then to welcome, then virtually to require, the cooperation of all but the most flagrantly Modernist Protestant groups, such as Unitarians, or such bodies as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose teachings excluded them from both Evangelical and mainline circles and who seldom showed any interest in taking part in his crusades.
The strictest of the separatists opposed Billy Graham from the beginning. Carl McIntire, who had never cooperated long with any person or organization he could not control, disliked the evangelist because of his close ties with the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which McIntire regarded as little better than the National Council of Churches. He also resented Graham’s friendship with Harold Ockenga, his chief rival within conservative circles. Others shared McIntire’s distrust of the New Evangelicals but were so proud of Graham’s accomplishments that they supported him as long as their convictions would allow. Bob Jones had been forced to renounce his prediction that Billy Graham would never amount to anything, and their relationship had been cordial while Graham was with YFC and at Northwestern. But when Jones withdrew from the NAE over what he regarded as excessive ecumenism, he soon fixed his gimlet eye on Graham, accusing him of peddling a “discount type of religion” and “sacrificing the cause of evangelism on the altar of temporary convenience.” Genuine doctrinal convictions doubtless played a role in Dr. Bob’s criticisms of Billy Graham, but the old tyrant’s legendary ego may well have been the decisive factor in creating an irreparable breach between the two men. For years Jones had repeatedly boasted that he had preached to more people than any person in history except Billy Sunday, that he was the highest-paid evangelist in America, and that “his boys”—students trained at Bob Jones College—had a corner on effective evangelism. Then, rather suddenly and wearing neither his mantle nor his blessing, Billy Graham had eclipsed him. “And the more well-known Billy got,” one observer said, “the more Dr. Bob turned against him.”
Some of the most thoroughgoing and sustained criticism of Graham’s ministry came from a third prominent Fundamentalist, John R. Rice, a man who stood by his side long after others had written him off as an apostle of the Antichrist. In 1934, the same year Billy Graham hit the sawdust trail in Mordecai Ham’s tent, Rice founded the Sword of the Lord, a militant journal whose masthead identified it as “An Independent Christian Weekly, Standing for the Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, the Deity of Christ, His Blood Atonement, Salvation by Faith, New Testament Soul Winning and the Premillennial Return of Christ. Opposes Modernism, Worldliness and Formalism.” By mid-century it was the most popular and influential journal in the Fundamentalist orbit. Rice was fully as willing as McIntire and Jones to draw a circle and shut others out, but even as the Sword slashed at the ties that bind true Christians to dupes and pretenders, he supported Billy Graham and gave his campaigns extensive coverage, fiercely proud that conservative Christianity once again had a world-famous evangelist in its ranks.
Graham appreciated Rice’s goodwill and encouragement but did not make his admirer’s job an easy one. When the National Council of Churches published the new Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bibl
e in 1952, Carl McIntire led a vitriolic Fundamentalist attack against it, charging that it was part of an ecumenical, possibly Communist, plot to undermine sound doctrine. Fundamentalists ferreted out numerous alleged inaccuracies in the RSV, but none so egregious as its translation of Isaiah 7:14, cited in Matthew 1:23 as a prophecy foretelling the birth of Jesus. In the King James Version, the verse read, “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” The RSV correctly translated the Hebrew phrase to read, “a young woman shall conceive.” Even though the new translation retained virgin in Matthew’s quotation and clearly depicted Mary as a virgin in the gospel accounts, many Fundamentalists viewed the translation as a Modernist assault on one of the cardinal affirmations of their faith. Acceptance or rejection of the RSV soon became a litmus test in Fundamentalist circles. Most professors at Fuller Seminary held positive views toward the new book, a fact that reportedly cost Charles Fuller thousands of supporters. In this climate Graham might easily have chosen to stand apart from the fray, since he had more to lose than to gain, but he did not. Instead, asserting that he favored making the Bible easier to read and understand, he issued a statement endorsing the new version and encouraging his supporters to give it a try.