Graham visited Ireland in late May of 1972 in the hope that by meeting with both Protestant and Catholic religious and political leaders in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland and by judicious appearances on television, he might lay the groundwork for an eventual crusade or some venture that would help ease the tension between Catholics and Protestants, as his American crusades had promoted better relationships between blacks and whites. One strategy he considered, exemplifying his own deep conviction that people who got to know each other personally would find it extremely difficult to remain enemies, was to encourage religious leaders to establish hundreds of “dialogue groups,” consisting of five Catholics and five Protestants each, as a way of substituting webs of personal friendship for walls of blind prejudice. Significantly, his visit came a few days after he completed a large and successful integrated crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, where his Easter service eight years earlier had been an important first step toward reducing overt tensions in that city’s explosive racial situation. An exploratory foray by members of the London office of BGEA had met with warm assurances that a visit by Graham to Northern Ireland might well have a healing effect on the divided region, but tense conditions at the time of his arrival made it clear that a misstep could easily have serious negative consequences, including his assassination.
Graham landed in Belfast, the troubled capital of Northern Ireland, on a Saturday, with an appointment to preach on Sunday evening. Also in Belfast at the time was Arthur Blessit, a colorful and controversial street preacher who gained notoriety for his work with the “Jesus People” on Sunset Strip and was satisfying his continuing need for publicity by traveling about the world dragging a large cross on his shoulder, in the presumed manner of Jesus on the Via Dolorosa. Some doubted that self-promotion should be added to the catalog of spiritual gifts listed in the twelfth chapter of I Corinthians, but few questioned Blessit’s physical courage, which he had already demonstrated in Belfast by openly consorting with both Catholics and Protestants, a tactic hardly calculated to endear him to either group. Blessit, however, thrived on audacious behavior and delighted at the chance to invite Billy Graham to join him on a bipartisan Sunday-morning sortie. As they entered the most troubled district in the city, with no police or private security guards to protect them, Graham managed to contain whatever fear he may have felt for his personal safety, but he could not completely conquer his anxiety. In a touching display of both humility and self-knowledge, the most successful public soul winner in Christian history turned to his guide and said, “You’re going to have to teach me and consider me as a student of personal evangelism. I don’t consider myself to be a man that’s gifted of God just to deal with an individual.” Fortunately, Blessit felt quite comfortable taking the lead—and enjoying Graham’s vulnerability. As they approached the Peace Line, a barricade that divided a single road into Roman Catholic and Protestant lanes, and prepared to walk along it, Blessit informed his charge that he would be watched every step of the way. If the IRA deemed his presence unacceptable, they would announce their objection in an unambiguous manner—with a bullet in his back. Bolstered by faith that if he were assassinated he would proceed directly through heaven’s portals, but not overly anxious to surrender his earthly ministry just yet, Graham walked along the barricade with a feeling of anxious peace. At a point where they could see Protestant and Catholic worshipers going in and out of their respective houses of worship, where they professed to love God but learned to hate their neighbors, the two men knelt to pray, asking God to send a revival that might bring peace in its train.
Graham and Blessit spent two and a half hours walking in both the Catholic and Protestant sectors, passing out tracts and talking with individuals. At one point, in the Falls Road district, where anti-Protestant feelings ran highest, they dropped into a skabena, an unlicensed pub, situated in back of a hairdresser’s salon and known to be an IRA hangout. Encouraged by some of the men who recognized Graham, the two clergymen told a few jokes and did a bit of preaching, all to a good-natured response, including a reciprocal offering by a tipsy Irishman who boozily rumbled through “The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” Later, Graham spent several minutes standing in a bombed-out dwelling, consoling a bus conductor whose wife had been killed by a terrorist’s bomb that had ripped through their home a few hours earlier.
While Graham preached at Ravenhill Presbyterian Church on Sunday evening, a pulpit he had filled in 1946 on a Youth for Christ tour, the most prominent Protestant preacher in Northern Ireland, Ian Paisley, preached a countersermon in his own church, spilling out vitriolic condemnation of the evangelist and his compromising attitude toward Roman Catholics, and announcing that “the church which has Billy Graham in its pulpit will have the curse of the Almighty upon it.” The tirade, one of two Paisley delivered during Graham’s visit, was no surprise. The surprise had come two years earlier when the dogmatic separatist had written a book entitled Billy Graham and the Church of Rome: A Startling Exposure. Since Graham had seldom commented on Ireland, the book was not a criticism of his political views, but of his increasingly cozy relationship with Catholicism. It consisted mainly of quotations documenting his friendship with Catholic leaders such as Cardinal Cushing and denunciations of his ecumenical policies by such unyielding Fundamentalists as Bob Jones, whose university had presented Paisley with an honorary degree and had published the American edition of his book. Graham offered to meet with his antagonist while he was in Belfast, but Paisley declined the opportunity, explaining that he did not “have fellowship with those who deny the faith.”
A small, singular event momentarily stirred fears in Graham’s camp that his visit to the troubled city might be misconstrued as a piece of American meddling. On this same weekend, Richard Nixon was visiting the Soviet Union. As was his practice, Graham had urged him to visit some church in Moscow to demonstrate the importance Americans place on spiritual matters and the right to worship freely. Nixon, whose record on heeding Graham’s spiritual counsel was spotty, had followed his advice on this occasion and wanted to let him know it. Unaware of Billy’s whereabouts, he called the White House, which tracked Graham down and patched the call through to his hotel in Belfast, where the switchboard operator strongly resisted ringing his room, since he knew the evangelist had already retired. Then, in a two-minute conversation that bounced from Moscow to Washington and back to Belfast, the President of the United States happily reported to his itinerant pastor that he had attended the Moscow Baptist Church that morning. Just this once, Graham might have preferred a postcard. He and his associates understandably fretted that if word of the call leaked out, sensitive Irishmen would never believe its true purpose but would assume he was acting as an agent of American foreign policy. Inevitably, news of the communication did spread, but Graham’s account of the matter was accepted, and no problem ensued.
During the next two days, Graham met with hundreds of Northern Ireland’s political, religious, and social leaders—at a dinner for two hundred, a breakfast for one thousand, and numerous gatherings of much smaller groups. He also spoke at the Queen’s University in Belfast, on invitation from both Roman Catholic and Protestant chaplains, and appeared several times on Ulster TV and the BBC. In each case, theologians, journalists, and secular intellectuals criticized the shallowness of his understanding of the situation in Ireland and dismissed his assertion that most of the problems bedeviling the Emerald Isle could be swept into the sea by a good revival. On those same occasions, however, many others professed to be deeply impressed by his humility (“He put it over with so much love,” one student commented), his sincere desire to help bring peace to their nation, and his straightforward presentation of the faith that gave meaning to his own life.
Ultimately, example proved more important than utterances. In every meeting, Graham insisted that both Catholics and Protestants be present in proportions as equal as feasible, a requirement that brought together people who had never met or, if they knew each other at
all, had certainly never sat down to eat or talk or pray with one another. In an encouraging coincidence—“He’ll get the credit for it,” an Irish MP wryly noted—the official IRA announced it was suspending military action in a truce it hoped might lead to lasting peace. The more violent Provisional IRA did not immediately consent to the truce, but radical Catholics seeking independence from England were not the only disturbers of the peace. Whether followers of Ian Paisley or not, many Protestants rejected Graham’s efforts to build bridges of friendship across an abyss of prejudice and hatred. Despite his uncommon ability to feel hope when others could not, the peace-seeking evangelist acknowledged a discouraging hardness of heart among his Protestant brethren that he recognized might be a formidable hindrance to lasting peace.
Paradoxically, Graham received a much warmer reception in the Catholic-dominated Republic of Ireland, where he was hosted by the Irish branch of International Christian Leadership. As in Ulster, he met publicly and privately with hundreds of Protestant and Catholic leaders; the Irish Times said of one large breakfast meeting that “the guest list was startling for the brains and wealth and influence it represented.” In a clandestine encounter complete with police disapproval, back-alley connections, switched vehicles, and secret routes, the Dublin leader of the IRA received Graham for a long conversation in which he explained his organization’s view of the conflict with England and the Protestant Unionists in Ireland. Afterward, Graham refused to divulge details of their conversation but observed that he had “the distinct feeling that the issues involved were not religious but political,” apparently overlooking the fact that these powerful forces in human life could seldom be neatly separated. In another temporary triumph of hope over history, he predicted confidently that a complete cease-fire in Northern Ireland was in the offing. In fact, the Provisional IRA in Ulster did join the previously announced truce three weeks later, but soon resorted to the bombs and bullets they seemed unable to abandon; by midsummer, England dispatched new troops to quell fresh outbreaks of violence.
If it did not bring peace to Ireland, Graham’s visit was nevertheless a sincere and salutary step toward increased understanding among separated people. In contrast to the coolness of spirit he felt in Belfast, particularly from Protestants, he reported that he had seldom experienced such kindness and genuine religious fervor as he had in Dublin. Repeatedly, priests and nuns offered fervent expressions of gratitude for his visit and his ministry and replayed tapes of his addresses in convents and rectories, establishing the fact that Billy Graham was no enemy of Roman Catholics. He did not follow up on his expressed desire to hold a crusade in Ireland—largely because of opposition from the Protestant clergy—but eighteen months after his visit, BGEA associate evangelist Akbar Abdul-Haqq held a full-scale campaign in Dublin with extensive cooperation from the Catholic community.
Later in 1972, just after the election, Graham made another visit to a strife-torn region, this time to Nagaland, a state in the northeast of India, along the border with Burma. In a situation similar in some respects to that in Ireland, the predominantly Christian Nagas had sought independence from the Hindu-dominated New Delhi government since 1947, when India obtained independence from Great Britain. Guerilla action against national troops was a constant feature of Naga life, creating a situation so explosive that Westerners were seldom permitted to enter Nagaland. Graham did not visit Nagaland during his 1956 tour, but the Nagas knew well of his ministry and longed to have him hold a crusade in their region. In 1967 Akbar Abdul-Haqq held a crusade in the city of Kohima and indicated that Graham might respond positively to an invitation. Five years later, the Naga dream seemed about to come true when the evangelist agreed, pending government approval, to come to Kohima in November 1972.
Seldom, if ever, did a proposed crusade face such obstacles. During Abdul-Haqq’s preliminary visit to prepare the churches for Graham’s visit, a guerilla band killed three people in an attempt to assassinate the chief minister of Nagaland, a development that led to a stiff increase in state security measures and appeared likely to destroy chances of getting a permit for Graham. With endorsement from the chief minister (a Christian himself) and gracious but lukewarm assistance from a well-known young liberal Indian clergyman named Robert Cunville, a delegation of Naga churchmen went to New Delhi to beseech the minister for home affairs not to prohibit Graham’s visit. The minister had no objection to Graham’s coming but feared the rebels might kidnap or kill him in an effort to draw attention to their cause, thus creating a severe embarrassment for the Indian government. Finally, in an almost laughable gesture of governmental hand washing, the home minister agreed to allow Graham to come if the Baptist Church in Naga would take responsibility for maintaining peace during the crusade. Readily conceding, at least to themselves, the essential absurdity of that request, the churchmen agreed and dispatched one of their number into the mountainous jungle, where he met with rebel leaders and won from them a written promise not to engage in disruptive action during the crusade. Even so, the home minister, on a visit to the United Nations in New York, met with Graham and explained to him that while the government viewed his coming in a positive light, it stood ready to withdraw the permits on a moment’s notice if the situation in Nagaland became too volatile.
Meanwhile, the Nagas were getting ready. To raise money for crusade expenses—as always, BGEA picked up the costs incurred by Graham and his associates—the churches obtained a contract from the government to build a road connecting a major artery to an airstrip four miles away. In less than two days, 7,000 volunteers cleared a path through steep jungle terrain with hand tools brought from their homes. The same spirit of commitment flourished in Kohima. Because crusade organizers expected as many as 100,000 souls to descend on the relatively small town, nearly every family opened its doors to guests, the town government allowed pilgrims to sleep in schools and other public buildings, and the Indian Army provided hundreds of tents as additional shelter. Villagers also sold meat and produce at low prices and gave away firewood on which to cook it.
Early in November, Baptists in Nagaland had celebrated the centennial anniversary of their denomination’s presence in the state. That event, which the central government watched closely to see if the promised cease-fire would hold, passed without incident. Then, less than a week before the crusade was to begin, and after 80,000 pilgrims had arrived in Kohima, some walking for five or six days, guerillas ambushed an army convoy, killing and wounding several soldiers. The Naga church leaders were aghast, but remarkably, the government did not cancel the permits for Graham and his team, who were already in the Far East. Several of Graham’s own advisers, however, including Akbar Abdul-Haqq, urged the evangelist to cancel the crusade, fearing either that the guerillas might stage an uprising and kill or injure innocent parties or that the central government would use the event as an excuse to dispatch more troops to Nagaland. In either case, the embarrassment to Christianity might outweigh any good a crusade could do.
In Bangkok Graham reluctantly decided to cancel the crusade, something he had never before done, except for illness. On Saturday he prepared a press release and directed Walter Smyth to take it to New Delhi for publication the following Monday. Back in Calcutta, Robert Cunville, who had become enthusiastic about the crusade, was crushed at the news but refused to accept it as final. “God can still do a miracle,” he insisted, and he placed a call to Kohima, urging the multitudes gathered there to begin assaulting heaven with requests for deliverance from this quite real dilemma. Recalling this incident fourteen years later, Cunville insisted that God an swered those prayers with nothing less than a miracle. During the night, Graham received several cables, including messages from the U.S. State Department, acknowledging the risk but suggesting it might be better not to cancel the crusade. Early the next morning, Graham answered an insistent knock at his door and found himself facing a Naga Christian and a young American who had once been a missionary to Nagaland. The missionary announced dramatically
that “I have come here as the servant of the Lord. You’ve got to go to Nagaland.” He and his Naga friend explained the harm that a cancellation would bring to the church and, because church leaders had a key role in trying to bring peace to the region, to the whole state. They also challenged his faith, assuring him that God would protect him from danger. Ever susceptible to intimations that his ministry was part of some grander divine plan, Graham seized upon their importuning as the very sign from God that he had been seeking through a prayer-filled night, and he set out immediately to join several team members waiting for him in Calcutta. Monday afternoon, following attendance at a cricket match and a visit with Mother Teresa in Calcutta on Sunday, Graham and the team descended on Kohima, where the assembly, now swollen to an estimated 100,000 and packed onto a soccer field tucked in front of dark green mountains, cheered ecstatically at his long-awaited arrival. Later, he wrote in his diary, “Tears came to my eyes. I felt rebuked that I had even doubted about coming to these mountain people to minister the gospel. I felt terribly unworthy.”
Graham stayed in Kohima four days. When he spoke at the morning Bible study sessions and at the late-afternoon crusade services, twenty interpreters translated his words into regional languages and dialects, not from soundproof booths wired to individual headsets or closed-circuit TV screens, but standing throughout the crowd, using bullhorns and mega phones to carry their voices to clumps of people gathered in the various language groups. No tongues of fire appeared, but the comparison to Pentecost, when “each one heard them speaking in his own language,” could not be avoided. Perhaps the inescapable association with that event stimulated the expectation that other Pentecostal flowers might blossom in that remote jungle. In any case, crusade leaders responded to numerous requests by allowing people who sought healing of physical or spiritual affliction for themselves or for others to put the names of the afflicted person in a large box, which was then presented to Graham. The evangelist carefully explained that he did not claim the gift of healing nor believe that his prayers were more valuable than those of any other faithful Christians. Still, he did believe that God answers prayer and, if he willed, could meet any need. With that qualification, Graham prayed that those whose names were in the box might be healed if it pleased God. No lame people cast crutches aside and no blind men professed to see, but within a few days, grateful believers began to report what they could only interpret as miracles—recovery from epilepsy, from tetanus, from undiagnosed but apparently life-threatening ailments, and from the grip of soul-deadening sin. Graham’s colleagues recall these incidents with an amusing mixture of mild skepticism, humility in the face of evidence, and unmistakable satisfaction. They tend not to approve of Pentecostal healing ministries, but they stop short of denying that God can intervene supernaturally in human life today if he so chooses. Best of all, they seem to relish the conviction that even in a field in which he does not specialize, Billy Graham still got good results.
A Prophet with Honor Page 61