As a further sign he was veering to the left, Graham began to accept invitations to speak at liberal seminaries. At Colgate Rochester Divinity School, he attempted to bridge the differences between his own theology and that of the eminent neoorthodox theologian and social critic, Reinhold Niebuhr. When he spoke of “the central need for a personal experience of Jesus Christ,” he added, as if they were synonymous conceptions, “or what Niebuhr would call an encounter with the living God.” A Fundamentalist reporting on this event objected that “no one in his right mind would believe for a moment that what the neo-orthodox Niebuhr means by ‘an encounter with the living God’ and what Jesus Christ defined as being ‘born again’ are one and the same.” At New York’s Union Theological Seminary, Graham had the temerity to say kind words about “known liberals,” including his old friend Chuck Templeton, who was then serving as an evangelist for the National Council of Churches. His hobnobbing with Anglicans in Great Britain and with Church of Scotland pastors in Glasgow added fuel to the fire. To make matters worse, he had invited some prominent American ministers, including New York pastor John Sutherland Bonnell, whose stated views on heaven and hell, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the inerrancy of Scripture struck fundamentalists as suspiciously liberal, to sit on the platform with him during some of the services at Kelvin Hall. When Scottish reporters tried to pin down Graham’s location on the contemporary spectrum, he declared, in a statement that mightily offended his conservative critics, “I am neither a fundamentalist nor a modernist.” To make matters worse, he told another reporter, “The ecumenical movement has broadened my viewpoint and I recognize now that God has his people in all churches.”
Such statements drew a storm of protest from Carl McIntire and a host of minor-league detractors, but John R. Rice remained loyal for as long as he could. In the late spring of 1955, he came to Graham’s defense in two long articles, “Questions Answered About Billy Graham” and “Billy Graham at Union Seminary.” He admitted that some of the things Billy had done troubled him but insisted that “no one could possibly say that Billy Graham is a modernist or tending toward modernism.” Rice conceded that Graham sometimes drifted into treacherous waters and “unwisely had fellowship with modernists on some occasions” but affirmed that “I believe he is God’s anointed man, being used tremendously in great revivals, and that every Christian in the world ought to rejoice in these revivals.”
Rice’s defense helped maintain a fragile accord for a while. Carl McIntire continued to fire his loose cannon at anything that moved even slightly to the left, but Bob Jones, probably at Rice’s behest, refrained from criticizing the evangelist by name in his weekly column in the Sword, and men like Jack Wyrtzen fretted more in private than in public, continuing to hope that Graham’s flirtation with Modernists would pass and that he would return to the Fundamentalist fold a chastened and wiser man. But about the same time he took the first steps to found CT, Graham dashed those hopes and severed whatever threads of unity remained between the New Evangelicals and old Fundamentalists by accepting an invitation from the Protestant Council of the City of New York, an affiliate of the liberal National Council of Churches, to hold a crusade in Madison Square Garden during the late spring of 1957.
Graham had turned down invitations to come to New York in 1951 and 1954, both times because he felt the group offering the invitation was too heavily weighted with Fundamentalists and therefore did not represent the broad spectrum of the city’s Protestant churches. The Protestant Council represented 1,700 churches, 94 percent of all Protestant bodies in the metropolitan area. In fact, the council’s leadership was less than enthusiastic about a Billy Graham crusade, but the idea received strong support from some wealthy and influential constituents, including Chase Manhattan Bank chairman George Champion, a southern Evangelical layman who chaired the council’s Department of Evangelism, and Mrs. Cleveland Dodge, a wealthy laywoman whose family had backed Finney, Moody, and Sunday, as well as some of the city’s leading clergymen, including Norman Vincent Peale.
In April Rice argued that Modernist opposition to the crusade proved the evangelist was preaching the truth, but over the next seven months, except for two mildly negative articles by nonregular contributors, neither Graham’s name nor face appeared in the pages of the magazine that had featured him and his ministry on virtually a weekly basis. When Rice finally broke his silence in November, it was clear Graham had lost the last major Fundamentalist in his camp. The title of Rice’s editorial, “Which Way, Billy Graham?” suggested ambiguity, but he had made up his mind where Graham’s ministry was headed. Apparently, Graham had also made up his mind to worry no longer about pleasing the Fundamentalists. In an interview published in the June issue of Christian Life he said that “the fighting, feuding and controversies among God’s people . . . is a very poor example” and charged that a key reason true revival had not come to America was the “name-calling and mudslinging” so prevalent among Evangelicals. As for his coming to New York under the aegis of the Protestant Council, he asked, “What difference does it make who sponsors a meeting?” Paul had preached at Mars’ hill at the invitation of Greek philosophers, and George Whitefield had said that if invited, he would gladly preach to the pope.
Always eager to spot any sign of weakness, Fundamentalist wolves pounced on Graham’s exposed neck. Yes, they conceded, Paul had permitted Athenian philosophers to “sponsor” him, but he did not give the names of his converts to the priests of pagan temples. Graham’s appeal to peace and harmony, they hooted, was just the sort of thing to expect from a man who had gone soft on doctrine. Graham resisted lashing back but made little attempt to change his course. However much he wanted the support of Fundamentalists, for both strategic and emotional reasons, he realized he could do without them. Their numbers were relatively small, and their obstreperous exclusiveness would always keep them out of the cultural mainstream where he was determined to swim. He was ready to make the break. When John R. Rice asked him to indicate in writing that he still held to the Sword’s statement of faith, Graham not only declined but asked to be dropped from the magazine’s board. The break was final. In his editorial, which took the form of an open letter to Graham, Rice sadly conceded that the constellation of true believers had lost one of its brightest stars. “I understand that you are generally sound in doctrine,” he wrote, “but I know now that the Sword of the Lord does not speak for you when it defends fundamentalists, [because] you do not claim to be a fundamentalist.”
In an April 1957 article entitled “Billy Graham’s New York Crusade,” Rice announced he would trace the “breaking down of convictions” in the “new Evangelicalism” and the unfortunate changes in Billy Graham’s policies and evangelistic program. Over the next several months, almost every issue of the Sword of the Lord contained a long article or editorial detailing the danger Graham and his Modernist New York crusade posed to Bible-based Christianity. In a notable shift in tactics, Rice began to criticize not only Graham’s misguided behavior but also his motives. Billy had rejected the invitation of faithful Fundamentalists, he charged, because he wanted “the prestige, the financial backing, and worldly influence” of the liberal council. In an unusually explicit defense offered at a meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals, Graham called his critics “extremists,” and said flatly, “I would like to make myself clear. I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ if there are no strings attached to my message. I am sponsored by civic clubs, universities, ministerial associations, and councils of churches all over the world. I intend to continue.” As a consequence of this tolerance for impurity, Rice solemnly intoned, “Dr. Graham is one of the spokesmen, and perhaps the principal spark plug of a great drift away from strict Bible fundamentalism and strict defense of the faith.”
The Fundamentalists’ rage increased as plans for the New York crusade moved forward. As the committees took shape, it became clear that Graham did indeed plan to hold an ecumenic
al crusade. One critic charged that of the 140 people on the General Crusade Committee, at least 120 were “reputed to be modernists, liberals, infidels, or something other than fundamental.” When Carl McIntire heard Graham refer to such men as National Council of Churches leader Jesse Bader and noted preacher Ralph Sockman as “godly men,” it was “almost too hard to swallow! . . . They are not godly men.” Graham further manifested his ostensible lack of concern for sound doctrine not only by such statements as “the one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy, but love,” but also by his apparent willingness to send decision cards to Catholic and Jewish clergy. Given the choice, the follow-up committee would always send an inquirer’s card to a Protestant congregation, but if an inquirer specifically asked to be referred to a Catholic church or Jewish synagogue, that request would be honored. “After all,” he explained, “I have no quarrel with the Catholic Church. Christians are not limited to any church. The only question is: Are you committed to Christ?” This justification did not seem to apply to Jews, but Graham was quoted by several newspapers as having explicitly said that “we’ll send them to their own churches—Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. . . . The rest will be up to God.”
Not all of Graham’s Fundamentalist critics saw him as a willing tool of Satan, sent forth to do the work of the Antichrist. Some concluded that he wanted to be faithful to God’s commands, but his desire for acceptance and his lamentable tendency to see the best in others short-circuited his ability to recognize error and excise it from the body of Christ. One prominent Fundamentalist observed that “those who know Billy best say that it is his amiable personality that makes him believe that he can become a sort of pontiff—or bridge builder—between Bible-believing Christians and those attractive personalities who are the proponents of the non-redemptive gospel. [At a recent breakfast], he pleaded with us to recognize that many of the liberals were good men, loved the Lord, and perhaps could be won over to the conservative position—Billy spreads himself too thin; he tries not to offend anybody in any way—[B]y not making war on some things he has gone to the other extreme, and made peace, not with the doctrines of apostasy, but with those who preach the doctrines of apostasy. This, I believe, is deadly and will one day defeat the whole cause for which this man of God is laboring.”
This furor upset Graham, not only because it threatened the crusade but also because it pained him to lose the confidence and affection of men who had worked at his side. He decided, however, not to respond to their criticisms directly. Years earlier, when his sudden rise to national prominence had made him an inviting target for both religious and secular detractors, he had told his radio audience that “the devil starts many deliberate lies about God’s servants, and thousands of Christians grasp them, believe them, and pass them on in ugly gossip. . . . I make it a policy never to answer critics, but to go on in the center of God’s will, preaching the everlasting Gospel of Christ. Satan would like nothing better than to have us stop our ministry and start answering critics, tracking down wretched lies and malicious stories.” Fundamentalists whose orthodoxy “knows nothing of the spirit of God or the love for their own brethren” and the dissension they stir, he charged, are “a stench in the nostrils of God” and thwart revival in the church. “By God’s grace,” he pledged, “I shall continue to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and not stoop to mudslinging, name-calling, and petty little fights over nonessentials.” That approach had served him well on three continents, and he decided to stick with it. Stephen Olford, who had come from England to help with the crusade, remembered reading some of the letters the evangelist received from his Fundamentalist critics—“They were vitriolic, sarcastic, devastating.” But Billy decided to turn the other cheek. “Stephen,” he said, “I’ve prayed this through. All I’m going to do is write them little love notes—‘I’ll weigh what you say, but I love you.’”
Graham’s refusal to respond directly did not mean he was unwilling to have others fight in his stead. Nelson Bell wrote a long and widely circulated letter to Bob Jones offering point-by-point response to the charges Jones had made against his son-in-law. Carl Henry also wrote a series of articles in CT, charging Fundamentalism with “a harsh temperament, a spirit of lovelessness and strife contributed by much of its leadership in the recent past,” and declaring that “in this contemporary expression [it] stands discredited as a perversion of the biblical spirit.” He called on readers to repudiate this disposition and adopt the more open attitude represented by the New Evangelicalism. And Robert O. Ferm, who had joined BGEA as a researcher and all-purpose intellectual, wrote an entire book, Cooperative Evangelism, in which he contended that all the great evangelists—Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody, Sunday, and others, including Bob Jones and John R. Rice themselves in earlier years—had willingly cooperated with a wide range of churchmen in order to fulfill the Great Commission to preach the gospel to all humankind. “No major evangelist in history,” Ferm asserted, “has ever too closely analyzed the orthodoxy of his sponsors.”
The New York crusade did not cause the division between the old Fundamentalists and the New Evangelicals; that had been signaled by the nearly simultaneous founding of the National Association of Evangelicals and McIntire’s American Council of Christian Churches fifteen years earlier. But it did provide an event around which the two groups were forced to define themselves. Many outsiders would be unaware of what was happening within the ranks of this segment of conservative Christianity, and many would never fully recognize or understand their differences, but during the struggle that came to a head in 1957, the mask of Evangelical unity was lifted, and the terms Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism came to refer to two different movements.
14
God in the Garden
New York, the town Billy Sunday couldn’t shut down, was a town Billy Graham feared he might not wake up. “We face the city with fear and trembling,” he said. “I’m prepared to go to New York to be crucified by my critics, if necessary. When I leave New York, every engagement we have in the world might be canceled. It may mean that I’ll be crucified—but I’m going.” In part, this ominous assessment was hyperbole, of a piece with his more common anticipation that a given crusade might ignite a revival that would sweep across the land to inaugurate a new and greater awakening than America (or England or Europe or India) ever experienced. Billy Graham seldom, if ever, spoke of his crusades or other endeavors simply as members of a series, no one of which was likely to differ much from the others, but in this case both his hopes and fears were well grounded. New York was unique. Whether he succeeded or failed, everyone would know—and remember. If he drew mediocre crowds and could persuade only token numbers of them to come down the aisle at the invitation, the mocking publicity sure to follow might indeed consign him to the same fate Billy Sunday faced after leaving New York: playing out the rest of his ministry in the second-line cities of the South and Midwest. If he succeeded, if he came to this citadel of secularism and kept the Garden full and the aisles packed with inquirers, no one could ever again dismiss him as a short-term wonder. It was critically important that he succeed.
For nearly two years, Willis Haymaker, Charlie Riggs, Jerry Beavan, Leighton Ford, and other team members worked to develop a failure-proof crusade machine. Seldom, if ever, has a crusade been able to boast of more competent and influential leadership. The crusade committee, chaired by Roger Hull, vice-president of Mutual of New York, included in its number Chase Manhattan’s George Champion, Norman Vincent Peale, longtime Graham backers Russell Maguire and J. Howard Pew, corporate executives Walter Hoving, Eddie Rickenbacker, and Jeremiah Milbank, Reader’s Digest senior editor Stanley High, and media moguls Henry Luce, William Randolph Hearst, Jr., Herald Tribune editor Ogden Reid, and ABC president Robert Kintner. With this kind of clout at the top, and with solid encouragement from members of the Dodge, Phelps, Vanderbilt, Gould, and Whitney families, all of whom had supported Graham’s storied predecessors—the Phelpses, like the Dodges,
had joined the Tappan brothers in bringing Charles Finney to New York, and all five families backed Moody and Sunday—-finance chairman Howard Isham, vice-president and treasurer of U.S. Steel, found it relatively easy to raise a large portion of the projected $600,000 budget.
Once again, the team organized a massive worldwide prayer effort. By the time the crusade began, more than 10,000 prayer groups in at least seventy-five countries were meeting daily to beg God’s blessing on Billy Graham and the New York crusade. Illiterate African tribesmen sent a document signed with their thumbprints, promising to pray for the evangelist as he bore witness to the civilizing power of the gospel. In India clumps of Christians in five cities met regularly to pray through the night. In Formosa intercessors formed more than thirty groups, including one comprising Madame Chiang Kai-shek and several of her close friends. In Japan a band of convicts converted while awaiting execution prayed that Americans lost in sin might find the secret of abundant life in Madison Square Garden. The primary effort, of course, was in New York itself, where at least 150,000 people signed prayer-pledge cards. A daily radio program, Noontime Is Prayer Time, encouraged countless others to pray, and 75,000 plastic disks slipped over telephone dials in homes and offices reminded people to “Pray for the Billy Graham New York Crusade.” Other aspects of crusade preparation proceeded with the same bureaucratic thoroughness. The tragic and untimely death of Dawson Trotman, who drowned during the summer of 1956, was a blow to the counselor-training program, but Charlie Riggs, an unassuming Navigator veteran who had worked on Graham crusades since Harringay, stepped into the breach and proved no less effective at screening prospective counselors, gently recommending that they use deodorants and keep a roll of breath mints handy, reminding them to avoid discussing minor theological points that might offend or confuse an inquirer, and patiently teaching them how to help inquirers articulate their decisions and fill out inquirer cards properly. So well did Riggs perform that thirty years later he was still serving as overall director of counselor training for Graham’s crusades. To complement Riggs’s efforts, a retired air force colonel came in to overhaul the processing of decision cards and follow-up mail, and National Council of Churches executive Jesse Bader, who in 1951 advised Graham to pay himself a straight salary, headed up the postcrusade visitation program. And as always, Jerry Beavan mounted a media campaign that kept Graham’s name and face in the public’s eye and ear. Billy professed that “every time I see my name up in lights, it makes me sick at heart, for God said He will share His glory with no man. Pat me on the back and you will ruin my ministry.” Despite this alleged aversion to publicity, he permitted his organization to spend fifty times more than Billy Sunday laid out for the same purpose forty years earlier. In view of this extraordinary level of preparation, the Christian Century made the cynical but perceptive observation that “the Billy Graham campaign will spin along to its own kind of triumph because canny experienced engineers of human decision have laid the tracks, contracted for the passengers, and will now direct the traffic which arrives on schedule. . . . Anticipation has been adroitly created and built up by old hands at the business, and an audience gladly captive to its own sensations is straining for the grand entrance.” The “Graham procedure,” complained the Century, “does its mechanical best to ‘succeed’ whether or not the Holy Spirit is in attendance.”
A Prophet with Honor Page 33
