A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  Not all of Graham’s efforts were mechanical. To help create an awareness that he could communicate with young people, and also to associate himself with a venerable academic and evangelistic tradition that harked back to Jonathan Edwards and Timothy Dwight, Graham made a four-day visit to Yale in February. No sweeping revival occurred, but the thirty-eight-year-old product of a backwater Bible institute and a midwestern Christian college left his mark. He spoke to overflow crowds in venerable Woolsey Hall and spent many additional hours talking with small groups and counseling individual students. The Yale Daily News described him as “looking like a combination Norse god and prep school headmaster,” characterized his preaching as “embarrassingly overdramatic and clearly underintellectual,” chided him for his “banal insights,” and commented on “the irrelevance of his message to the special problem of the Yale undergraduate.” Still, even his detractors acknowledged his genuineness and a Daily News editor admitted that “the ultimate effect of [Graham’s] appearance here was incontrovertibly tonic.” According to the newspaper, at least half the audience at each address stood when he offered the invitation, and “for at least one week in more years than you can count, this University has become a hotbed of violent and concerned religious controversy.” Back in Manhattan, as opening night drew closer, Lane Adams, a former nightclub singer who came to BGEA through Leighton Ford, whom he met while studying at Columbia Theological Seminary, sought to win support in another distinctive community by organizing an outreach program aimed at actors and other entertainers along the Great White Way. Commenting on Graham’s leadership style, Adams recalled that Graham gave him but the barest instructions as to the nature of his task. “Billy has the talent of a master artist,” he observed. “He brought me in, showed me the canvas, which already had a beautiful frame around it, grabbed a palette and paintbrush, daubed a few things on it, and said, ‘Now you get the picture of what I want you to do. You figure out the rest of it.’ Since I had never done it before, all I could do was fumble along, and it worked out pretty well.”

  In spite of all the efforts to generate success, anxiety kept Billy gnawing at his fingernails. Fundamentalist charges that he had “sold out to the Modernists” continued to trouble him, despite his determination to proceed without their support. At the same time, not all of the liberal churchmen to whom he had allegedly sold out showered him with pieces of silver. Union Theological Seminary’s Reinhold Niebuhr repeatedly attacked him in the pages of Christian Century and Christianity and Crisis. Niebuhr warned that simplistic revivalism would accentuate the antireligious prejudices of enlightened people, that Graham’s sermons produced an artificial crisis that prompted shallow and essentially meaningless conversions, and that individualistic pietism would divert attention and resources from pressing social problems such as racial prejudice. In an article for Life, he acknowledged that Graham was “obviously sincere” but questioned the promise of “a new life, not through painful religious experience, but merely by signing a decision card.” It simply would not do, wrote the theologian whose own keen insights into the ambiguity and inevitable sinfulness of all human beings (whether once- or twice-born) were perhaps unmatched in this century, to pretend that by walking down the aisle, repeating a “sinner’s prayer,” and checking a box on a quadruplicate form, one could suddenly be freed of past sins and given a new nature that was miraculously oriented in a totally new direction. He marveled that Graham could declare without blinking that “every human problem can be solved and every hunger satisfied and every potential can be fulfilled when a man encounters Jesus Christ and comes in vital relation to God in him.” A message of that sort, Niebuhr said, “is not very convincing to anyone—Christian or not—who is aware of the continual possibilities of good and evil in every advance of civilization, every discipline of culture, and every religious convention.” The success of evangelism, he asserted, has always rested on oversimplification of difficult issues, but Graham, whom Niebuhr regarded as “better than any evangelist of his kind in American history,” had imbued evangelism with “even less complicated answers than it had ever before provided.” In Niebuhr’s eyes, theologically and socially responsible Protestant churches compromised their dignity and integrity by endorsing such a simple message in the hope, probably vain, that they might add a few members to their church rolls.

  Graham responded with disarming humility, telling the Saturday Evening Post, “When Dr. Niebuhr makes his criticisms about me, I study them, for I have respect for them. I think he has helped me to apply Christianity to the social problems we face and has helped me to comprehend what those problems are.” He added, however, that “I disagree with Dr. Niebuhr in one respect. I don’t think you can change the world with all its lusts and hatred and greed, until you change men’s hearts. Men must love God before they can truly love their neighbors. The theologians don’t seem to understand that fact.” The evangelist acknowledged Niebuhr’s superior intellect—“I have read nearly everything Mr. Niebuhr has written,” he told one reporter, “and I feel inadequate before his brilliant mind and learning. Occasionally I get a glimmer of what he is talking about”—but he was not tempted to adopt his adversary’s tolerance of ambiguity. “If I tried to preach as he writes,” he explained, “people would be so bewildered they would walk out.” Neither did he shrink from confronting Niebuhr directly. Perhaps remembering his conquest of his critics in London, Graham tried to arrange a personal conversation, but Niebuhr refused to meet with him, even after George Champion prevailed on the chairman of Union Seminary’s board of trustees to urge the theologian to grant Graham the courtesy of at least a perfunctory encounter. Graham was disappointed, but not surprised. “I knew he wouldn’t see me,” he told Champion, “because he’s a Socialist.” Catholics also took critical aim at Graham’s crusade, but with a blend of warmth and wariness that reflected a fascinating ambivalence toward him. Graham shared in a general Evangelical antipathy toward Catholicism, but Catholics benefited from his uncommon spirit of openness and conciliation toward those with whom he disagreed. Team members might speak of Catholics who had been “won to Christ,” clearly implying they had moved from a lost to a saved state, but Billy himself had never engaged in the Catholic bashing to which many Fundamentalists were prone, and Catholics seemed to appreciate this. Still, some priests feared he might rustle sheep from their flocks. Jesuit scholar Gustave Weigel, while commending the evangelist for eschewing hucksterish excesses and demagogic attacks on Catholics, lamented the thinness of intellectual content in his sermons: “He lacks the scholarship of the Catholic Church. . . . He can no doubt tell us what the Bible says, but can he really tell us what the Bible means?” His simple invitation to trust and obey “can be exhilarating; it can be transforming; but it is an uncritical, nonintellectual way of answering the questions of man’s ultimate concern.” Weigel acknowledged, however, that the fundamentals Graham emphasized were clearly essential to vital Christianity, and he declared that he hoped and prayed “that God will lead him to the one true Church.” Other Catholics were less generous. Specifically linking its directive to Graham’s crusade, the archdiocese ordered parish priests to preach a series of nine sermons on basic Catholic doctrines, emphasizing that Christianity involved not simply seeking peace with God or joining the church of one’s choice but adherence to the doctrinal truths contained in the historic creeds and interpreted by the magisterium of the church. Even more pointedly, the Reverend John E. Kelly, representing the National Catholic Welfare Council, expressly forbade Catholics to attend the crusade services at the Garden, to listen to Graham on radio or television, or to read his books or sermons, charging that Graham was “a danger to the faith” who promulgated false and heretical doctrines in such an enticing manner that total abstinence was the only safe course. Even so, Kelly admitted that Graham was “a man of prayer, humble, dedicated,” and one for whom all Catholics should pray. Moreover, he asserted, “Catholic projects for evangelizing the unchurched would be much more effect
ive if they were administered with even half the efficiency of the Graham team.”

  These deprecations had their effect. Graham later told one reporter that about a month before the crusade began, his heart had grown cold: “I didn’t have the passion and love I should have had for the souls in New York. I don’t know why. Maybe some of the criticism centered around the campaign got into my heart unawares and brought on the coldness.” The loss of the soul winner’s ardor was only temporary. Stephen Olford, on hand to assist with counseling and follow-up, remembered a visit to Graham’s suite on the top floor of the New Yorker Hotel a few days before the crusade opened. “We walked on to the balcony, looking out over the city, and were standing there discussing the crusade, speculating about who would come and how the Lord would work. While we were talking, suddenly I was aware of this big, tall, broad-shouldered man heaving and breaking down with convulsive weeping. It was almost embarrassing. Billy was crying over the city, like our Lord weeping over Jerusalem.”

  Graham realized, of course, that an observer standing on the same parapet months later might perceive little change. In the first of one hundred front-page columns he wrote for the Herald Tribune, he raised the possibility that the crusade “might have tremendous impact on the entire world . . . and could change the course of history by putting a new moral fiber into our society.” He conceded, however, that “when these meetings are over, it may be possible that outwardly New York will seem unchanged. Times Square will still be crowded with tens of thousands seeking peace and happiness that seem so elusive. Probably outwardly, most of the same problems will still exist. But this we know by past experience: Many people will have their decisions for Christ and will be transformed by the power of God. These few, we pray, may begin a spiritual chain reaction in the pulsing life of this great metropolis which will inevitably make its impact upon the future. . . . We sincerely believe that thousands of individuals will be very wonderfully changed inwardly in their relationship with God, a change which certainly will make itself felt in better human relationships.”

  The crusade opened on May 15 to a crowd of 18,000 that if not quite a full house, was duly noted as the largest-ever opening-night attendance at an American crusade. With occasional exceptions, newspapers gave Graham generous coverage. In a singular nod to Evangelical Christianity, the New York Times devoted two full pages to the first service, including a verbatim transcript of his sermon. The front page of the tabloid Journal-American blared, “BILLY GRAHAM PLANS FOR BIG NY CRUSADE,” in garish red headlines. A World-Telegram and Sun reporter gushed that Graham “is part Dick Nixon and part Jack Kennedy, with overtones of the young executive behind a Madison Avenue desk.” The Telegraph assigned him to sales rather than to management but was equally complimentary: “He is like an excellent salesman: he describes the goods in plain terms, lets you see them and decide on them. He avoids the old, ranting ways and the pulpit thumping. He is a skilled and wise and practiced salesman of a commodity he truly believes should be in every home. The shrill ways of the medicine pitch, the arch and subtle ways of the stock and bond pitch, the snarled pitch of the Broadway showman never are heard or seen. He is plausibility to the final degree.” Other papers, particularly the Herald Tribune, also provided saturation coverage, even to the point of announcing what his sermon topics would be in upcoming services, and Life magazine put him on its cover.

  The inaugural crowd was no fluke. On evenings when the arena would not contain the crowd, Graham conducted impromptu services on Forty-ninth Street for the overflow. The crusade was originally scheduled to run six weeks, but Graham had taken an option on the Garden for a full five months. Within two weeks, when he saw the sustained level of attendance, he decided to extend at least three weeks into July. On June 12 attendance passed the half-million mark, and the campaign seemed to be gaining rather than losing momentum. More than in any previous campaign, television played a major role in focusing widespread attention on Graham. Besides numerous appearances on local stations, Walter Cronkite interviewed him on CBS, John Cameron Swayze visited with him on ABC, and he talked with Steve Allen, Dave Garroway, and Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenberg on NBC. He also appeared as a guest on Meet the Press. In addition, the team produced a program that aired each night on WPIX-TV at 11:30 P.M., providing news and human-interest stories from the crusade and inviting viewers to call counselors for help with spiritual or other problems. This marked Graham’s first attempt at a telephone ministry, and it proved so successful that by the third week of services, additional phone lines had to be installed to handle calls that came in until one-thirty or two o’clock in the morning.

  The real media breakthrough, however, occurred when Graham decided to air his Saturday-evening services live, over the ABC television net work. As soon as it became clear that Billy could fill the Garden regularly, Charles Crutchfield, an old friend who owned a television station in Charlotte, urged him to put the crusade on TV. A few days later, apparently at Crutchfield’s suggestion, Leonard Goldenson, instrumental in getting the televised version of the Hour of Decision on ABC, visited Billy at his hotel and proposed that ABC air the crusade once a week. “I thought it would be tremendous,” Graham recalled, “because nobody else was on nationwide television at that time. But I was scared about the money because ABC had to sell us the time. So I called Mr. Howard Pew and asked him if he would back us if we went in the hole.” Pew balked at first but finally pledged $100,000, enough to underwrite the first two programs, with the expectation that viewer contributions would cover expenses for further programs. As a measure of their confidence, Walter Bennett and Fred Dienert contracted with ABC for four weeks.

  The first broadcast, on June 1, posted an 8.1 Trendex rating (against Jackie Gleason’s 12.5 and Perry Como’s 20.0), which translated into approximately 6.4 million viewers, enough to fill the Garden to capacity every day for an entire year, and more than enough to convince Billy Graham that he had finally found the most effective way to use this powerful new medium. The cameras bothered him, his gestures proved too sweeping for the small screen, and technical problems marred the initial telecast. One TV critic wrote that “this is not a good TV program. It is too much sermon, not enough color, not enough music, and misses the climax. [Graham] uses his hands as if they were a windmill, so that the person in the living room loses the Gospel message and becomes just a watcher of the hands.” Variety was more charitable: “As a one-man evangelism show, it was a revelation and a close insight into why audiences respond to this religious phenomenon. As a showman, Graham’s hour performance had all the click elements that translated, say, into the pop music area, make a Lawrence Welk tick. . . . Few performers, whether on TV, stage or film, have the dynamic qualities of Graham or are as sure of themselves, or can ‘treat’ a script with such positive aggressiveness. There’s no unctuous quality, no sanctimonious persuasion. The voice is strong, never borders on hysteria. . . .” The same reporter also had a positive reaction to Graham’s gestures. “He’s a man of perpetual motion,” he conceded, but “the constant gesturing is never accidental, for the vast sweep of both his hands and arms propels and holds the visual attention. This, in addition to the voice that never falters, never gropes for a word or a phrase and is as assured as his beliefs, holds his audiences with almost mesmeric power.”