A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  The White House was not the only venue where Graham drew lavish attention during this period. For two six-month periods spanning the summers of 1964 and 1965, the Billy Graham Pavilion at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadow Park, New York, gave five million visitors a slick high-tech overview of his worldwide ministry and an opportunity to hear a well-polished, wide-screen, soul-winning sermon. Most Protestant denominations and parachurch organizations presented their case to fairgoers in the sprawling Protestant Pavilion. Graham could easily have obtained a section of that exhibit hall, but he dreamed of something grander and more distinctive. Soon after plans for the fair were announced, Robert Ferm and George Wilson met with the fair’s director, Robert Moses, to discuss a separate BGEA-sponsored pavilion. Moses not only agreed to allow Graham to have his own building but promised to assign him a prime spot not far from the main gate. Typically, Billy embraced the idea with great enthusiasm at first, then suffered severe second thoughts. While recuperating from pneumonia, he decided the pavilion was too grandiose and was about to back out when one of his board members counseled him never to make a major decision when he was ill. When asked for his opinion on the matter, Wheaton president V. Raymond Edman reminded him of the huge response D. L. Moody had stirred at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The opportunity to repeat and perhaps surpass an accomplishment of one of his heroes appealed to Graham. After George Wilson, who did not customarily spend money with much relish, declared that BGEA could afford to build the pavilion, Graham’s enthusiasm returned. When the fair opened in the spring of 1964, one of its most prominent and recognizable landmarks was the Billy Graham Pavilion, designed by famed architect Edward Durrell Stone and crowned by a 117-foot tower covered with 4,000 gold-anodized disks.

  Inside the pavilion, visitors found exhibits tracing Graham’s ministry from the first great crusade in the Canvas Cathedral to the triumphant tours of six continents and dozens of countries. The central focus of the structure was a 350-seat theater in which curious visitors—more than one million in all, from more than 125 countries—saw Billy Graham, twelve times a day for twelve months, larger than life on the sweeping Todd-AO screen, and using a translation system that enabled them to hear “each man in his own language,” as on the Day of Pentecost, listened to him deliver a comprehensive jeremiad that ended with the inevitable call to accept Jesus Christ as savior. Critics blasted the fair’s religious exhibits for sharing in the general atmosphere of “chaos and greed” they saw pervading the exposition. Graham offered a more upbeat assessment. The New York World’s Fair, at which nations from all over the world were sharing the brightest and most beautiful aspects of their respective cultures, was, he declared, “an indication that man is on the threshold of paradise.” As for the Billy Graham Pavilion in particular, an editorial in Decision magazine pronounced that “there is definitely a taste of heaven about the place.”

  The World’s Fair film, entitled Man in the Fifth Dimension, reflected the evolution Graham’s film ministry had undergone since the days of Mr. Texas and Oiltown, U.S.A. Amateurish as they were, those first films proved so popular with church audiences that Graham used them to launch a reasonably successful series of films. The real breakthrough, however, came with the production of The Restless Ones in 1963. The full-length black-and-white picture told the story of the Wintons, an upper-middle-class family that had begun to lose its moorings in a sea of Southern California secularity but had found new meaning and the ability to withstand the temptations of sex and alcohol after attending Billy Graham’s great crusade in the Los Angeles Coliseum. The film is far from subtle, and its attempts to capture the flavor of youthful wildness and early-sixties argot are often amusing. Still, to the young people most likely to see it, it apparently served as a strong warning against giving in to raging hormones. During the first four years after its release, it was seen by 4.5 million people and stimulated 346,000 known decisions. It also paid for itself. “On this one,” film-ministry evangelist Dave Barr explained, “we decided to charge admission for the first time. This was a whole new concept, and we tried it in several cities to see if it would work. If the churches were too critical or if it looked like we were going to get crucified, then we would back away from it.” The films would be shown in public auditoriums or commercial theaters on a “four-walled” basis in which the sponsoring committee rented the facility and were then free to offer the invitation, counsel inquirers, or do anything else they felt was appropriate. The first big showing was at the 5,000-seat Aerie Crown Theater in Chicago. Barr recalled that “the Aerie Crown had a ninety-foot screen, and when you stood alongside the screen, you could see everybody’s face in the light reflected off the screen, even though they didn’t know you were looking at them. We’d have hundreds of young people in the audience, and as soon as the lights went out, you could see them start hugging and kissing and playing around with each other. But when Billy came on, his finger must have looked forty-five feet long. And when he started to preach, those kids would just sit there spellbound. The story is good, but not super. But his message was just so powerful; I think it’s one of the best ever put on film. By the time he gave the invitation, the Holy Spirit had taken over. It was every bit as effective as when Billy is there in person.”

  Encouraged by the success of the Chicago showing, the Graham team decided to experiment further and met similar enthusiasm in other cities. At no cost to BGEA, dairies placed ads on the side of milk cartons and bottling companies run by Christians inserted fliers in six-packs of their soft drinks, so that by the time the film opened, a sellout had been guaranteed. In Albuquerque, a scheduled one-week run in a conventional movie theater stretched to three weeks. In San Antonio, the engagement lasted twelve weeks, and approximately one fourth of the audience responded to the invitation, a far higher percentage than Graham ever reaped in person.

  Despite the adolescent awkwardness that accompanied rapid growth, the new approach was a walloping success. Dave Barr credited the intrinsic impact of the medium itself. “Films are so real,” he observed. “Several years after The Restless Ones came out, a lady who had seen it in New Mexico wrote Billy to tell him she had seen Kim Darby [who played an unmarried pregnant girl in The Restless Ones] in another show on television. She said, ‘I’ve often wondered what happened to April and her baby. Thank God, she’s happily married and the baby is OK.’ Later, we had another film about two guys that ran a gas station in Denver. A man wrote in to say that if he could find the station, he would give them his business for the rest of his life. Then he added a P.S.: ‘Do you know if they give S & H Green Stamps?’ That’s precious, but it’s also frightening to realize what a powerful tool film can be. I wouldn’t have stayed with [the film ministry] for more than two years after Mr. Texas, no matter how much they paid me, if it hadn’t been for the soul-winning aspects, but a tool that can make that kind of impact on people’s minds can be used to win people to Christ. That’s why God has given us this medium.”

  While Graham’s celluloid self addressed millions of pilgrims from around the world, he gave his personal attention to a more modest aggregation situated at the Hub of the Universe. He had not been back to Boston for an extended campaign since his stunning victories in 1950, and many of the ministers and leading laymen who remembered that visit longed for his return and were primed to make the most of it. The 1964 crusade was typical in most respects. Instead of winding up in Boston Garden, Graham started there, filling it for each of ten nights, then addressing a throng of 75,000 at a closing rally on Boston Common. On the political and public relations front, the evangelist visited Ted Kennedy, hospitalized by severe injuries suffered in a plane crash, and drew praise from Governor Endicott Peabody, both for the contribution he was making to Boston’s spiritual and moral life and for the quality of his sound system, which Peabody wished the Garden would purchase for its own use. Graham also professed to see signs of a growing interest in matters spiritual, signs he had not seen fourteen years earlier, signs that
made him suspect Boston might be on the verge of a great religious awakening.

  Billy’s rosy vision was understandable. After a Saturday-evening service, he made an unscheduled but well-photographed visit to the Combat Zone, Boston’s raunchy red-light district, where he brought traffic to a standstill as squealing young girls flocked around him while patrons of the tattered melange of bars, cafes, and strip joints poured into the street to catch a glimpse of the man who condemned their way of life each night. One club owner approached him to say, “I’d be proud if you stepped inside.” When he entered the dark, smoky den of iniquity, the band stopped and the emcee, accustomed to welcoming “the very lovely and talented Miss Velva La-Voom,” invited him to say a few words to the assemblage. Perhaps remembering that awkward gathering at the air force base in Newfoundland, when he and Chuck Templeton found themselves facing a crowd of servicemen more interested in girls than the gospel, Graham observed that “this is a very unusual congregation.” But as on that occasion years before, he remembered his personal dictum, “This one thing I do,” and he did it. He told the boozy auditors that they needed to fill their souls with a spirit that did not come in bottles, and he urged them to attend church the next morning. Guilt is magic, and darkened rooms are full of it. Instead of tossing him out, as a Tampa barman had done twenty-five years earlier, they applauded heartily and banged their glasses on the bar, and as he picked his way past the crowded tables, shaking every hand he could reach and radiating compassionate goodwill for people whose pleasure he could scarcely comprehend, several hundred new sinful seekers greeted his reappearance on the street with a rousing cheer. Despite that gratifying response, not many of the Combat Zone’s denizens made it to the Garden. The crusade crowds, as usual, were heavily populated with sinners of a less spectacular sort. Reporters could not help noticing that on the whole, the legion of believers who packed the Garden each night were rather different from those who gathered to sip champagne while Arthur Fiedler conducted the Boston Pops or to bellow their outrage when Bruin tough guy Teddy Green went to the penalty box for high-sticking some fancy-skating Canadian. On the contrary, Graham’s crowds were sober, almost homespun, in appearance and demeanor. “You would think you were in Kansas or Indiana or some place else,” one journalist wrote. “It doesn’t seem quite like Boston.” But it was Boston, and those earnest people whose presence the journalist had previously failed to notice came in such numbers that in an echo of the 1950 campaign, Graham elected to go back to the Garden for an additional week after a few days off. The high point of the second stage, one that would have a lasting impact on Graham’s ministry, was a meeting with Boston’s fabled Roman Catholic prelate, Richard Cardinal Cushing.

  Cardinal Cushing had long looked on Graham with favor. During the 1950 campaign, he had written an editorial entitled “Bravo, Billy!” for the diocesan newspaper. Just before the 1964 crusade got under way, he sounded another approving note by announcing that the crusade would “surely be of great importance for many Christians in the Greater Boston area,” and assuring Graham that he and other Catholics would be praying for God’s blessing on him in the expectation that he would “lead many to the knowledge of Our Lord.” Because Cushing flew off to attend the Second Vatican Council in Rome immediately after making that statement, the two men did not meet during the crusade’s first phase, but Graham made a point of stressing his own “tremendous admiration” for the cardinal. As soon as Graham announced he was staying on, America’s favorite cardinal and the man some called “the Protestant Pope” began an amusing game of Muhammad and the Mountain. A diocesan spokesman later claimed that Graham initiated the request for a meeting, but Robert Ferm insisted he was present in the crusade office when the cardinal’s secretary called to ask if Billy would come to the chancery. Sensitive to issues of relative prestige and still not convinced Catholicism was a benign force, Ferm vetoed that suggestion but indicated the cardinal would be welcome to drop by Graham’s hotel. After a few minutes of consultation, the secretary called back to say that the cardinal would be happy to meet Billy on neutral ground and was offering to have their meeting presented live on local television. Ferm was skeptical. “How can you just have the television people schedule something like that?” he asked. The answer was simple: “The cardinal owns the TV station.”

  The forty-five-minute televised conversation surely rivaled any of Graham’s mutual-admiration sessions with Lyndon Johnson. The cardinal, dressed in street clothes rather than in the ornate robes of his office, generously declared that “I have never known of a religious crusade that was more effective” than Graham’s and assured the evangelist and his supporters that “although we Catholics do not join with them in body, yet in spirit and heart we unite with them in praying God’s blessing upon this Christian and Christlike experience in our community.” He urged Catholic young people to attend the crusade services with no fear of disloyalty to their church, assuring them that Graham’s message “is one of Christ crucified, and no Catholic can do anything but become a better Catholic from hearing him. . . . I’m one hundred percent for Dr. Graham. He is extraordinarily gifted. The hand of God must be upon him.” Then, in a mild rebuke to priests who might contrast Graham’s populist appeal with the majesty of the Roman liturgy, Cushing added that if the Catholic Church had half a dozen men of Graham’s caliber, he would stop worrying about its future in America. Never one to be outcomplimented, Graham professed to regard his new friend as “the leading ecumenist in America,” lavished further praise on Pope John XXIII and his successor, Paul VI, and heralded Vatican II as a major step in dissipating the clouds of resentment and mistrust that had separated Catholics and Protestants. As for himself, he announced that he felt “much closer to Roman Catholic traditions than to some of the more liberal Protestants.”

  While most observers either praised or paid little attention to the conversation, some in both camps showed discomfort at its amicable spirit. On reading newspaper accounts of Cushing’s endorsement of Graham, a leading Catholic official in New Hampshire insisted that the cardinal had been misquoted. In the Graham camp, Robert Ferm assured a troubled supporter that the evangelist had not really meant to imply that Catholics might be closer to the truth than some Protestants. But both men had meant what they said, leading Graham to observe that in contrast to the rancor and suspicion that attended the 1960 election, “this is sort of a new day.” The encounter thus stands as a significant marker on the course that Graham steadfastly chose to follow, a course that led him from the narrow confines of the strictest sort of sectarianism to the open ground upon which one is reluctant to deny anyone the right to be called, if not brother, at least neighbor.

  Graham opened 1965 with a quite modest crusade in Hawaii, where the average crowd was less than 6,600. He followed that with two weeks of preaching in Alabama, including a rally at the all-black Tuskegee Institute, an eight-day effort in Copenhagen, and ten-day campaigns in Denver and Houston. After more than fifteen years of independent ministry, Graham and his team could organize and execute a major crusade in their sleep, but a back-region episode at the Houston crusade revealed that Billy did not feel himself capable of flying on automatic pilot. That crusade, scheduled to be one of the first nonsporting events to be held in the brand-new Astrodome, had to be postponed several weeks when Graham underwent prostate surgery in late summer. During his recuperation period, he called several members of his board to Montreat and confided to them that he was considering backing out of the Houston meeting because he was not certain he would be able to preach. They assumed he was still feeling weak from the effects of his surgery and urged him to stick to the plan, to which he agreed. At a subsequent board meeting, however, he told Carloss Morris, a prominent Houston lawyer who had played a key role in organizing the crusade, that he was still not sure he could preach. Morris did not take him too seriously, assuming that the problem was physical and would clear up with a few more days of rest. But a night or two before the opening service, Graham ad
dressed a precrusade gathering on the University of Houston campus. The next day, during a golf game at the River Oaks Country Club, he told Morris that he could preach after all. “I’d been speaking about five minutes last night,” he reported, “and I felt the Holy Spirit take over, and it’s back. I can preach. We are going to have a great meeting in Houston.” Shaking his head at the memory, Morris finally understood what Graham had been trying to tell him: “Billy just didn’t know whether or not the Lord was going to have his hand on him again so he’d be able to preach. I was astonished, but he had really been in doubt up to that point.”