A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  Unfortunately, not every service had such a happy outcome. During the Wednesday morning Bible class, attended by tens of thousands, gunfire rang out at a point where the edge of the crowd lay close to the jungle. Graham called for calm and no panic ensued, but a guerilla’s bullet had found its mark, leaving one man dead. As the service ended, a skirmish between guerillas and government troops resulted in several more deaths, but crusade leaders decided to proceed according to schedule, and no further incidents marred the meetings.

  Though Nagaland was one of the few Christian strongholds in India, Graham’s audiences contained Hindus, Muslims, and syncretists who might profess some form of Christianity but had no clear sense of the exclusivity Western Christians believed it entailed. Aware that many of his hearers might affirm allegiance to Christ but regard him as only one of many beings worthy of honor, Billy took great care in his invitation to stress that the God he proclaimed was not “one of the gods” but “the God,” and that pledging allegiance to him involved renunciation of all other gods. Seating arrangements at Kohima did not permit inquirers to come forward or make it possible for counselors to talk with them individually. Even so, observers believe that more than 4,000 people made decisions for Christ during the three days that Graham preached.

  Whatever the true number of decisions made at Kohima, Indian Evangelicals insist that the effects of the crusade involved more than an immediate net gain in church membership. Christianity is still a minority religion in India, claiming only about 3 percent of the population. That minority, however, is heavily Evangelical, especially in the northeast region of India that includes Nagaland and neighboring states. As in numerous other locales, nearly all of the growth among Christians is posted among Evangelicals, as conservative seminaries consistently turn out far more clergymen than do those of more liberal bent. And occasionally, men trained at the liberal seminaries find themselves attracted to the vitality they see in Evangelical circles. One such man was Robert Cunville. Exposure to Billy Graham and his team at Kohima so impressed Cunville that he gave up his more socially oriented ministry and came to America to enroll at the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary, supported by a scholarship from BGEA. Three years later, he returned to India with a doctorate in missions, and he has served since that time as an associate evangelist with the Graham organization. The crusade also seems to have had an impact on the tense political situation. Cunville and others believe that the rebel cease-fire negotiated by crusade leaders created a lull that provided opportunity for reflection and led ultimately to the writing of a peace motion that resulted in a stable government for Nagaland. Some government officials doubted that Graham’s appearance had much effect on the peace process one way or the other. Still, the Naga church leader most responsible for bringing Graham to his homeland and for persuading the guerillas to allow the crusade to proceed was also intimately involved in the deliberations that led to a 1975 agreement that ended the Naga rebellion, and he emphatically regarded the Graham crusade as a turning point in the quest for peace. And Robert Cunville, who was not prepared for what he saw, summed up his account by saying, “In Nagaland, we never call it the Billy Graham Crusade. To this day, we call it the Kohima Miracle.”

  Immediately after Kohima, Graham returned to New Delhi for a meeting with Indira Gandhi. At President Nixon’s request (“He knew I was a friend of hers”), the evangelist asked the prime minister what kind of ambassador she wanted the President to appoint. “She told me, ‘I want one who has the ear of the President, who knows economics, and who knows something about India.’ So I went right over to the embassy and said that straight to the President, and he appointed [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan.” Graham called the appointment “an absolute master stroke” and offered to share his insights about India, particularly information he had gotten from three Christians in Mrs. Gandhi’s cabinet. Moynihan was more than receptive. “When I got back to Washington,” Graham recalled, “Moynihan came over to my hotel and thanked me. He thought I had had him appointed. We got down on our knees and prayed together about his going to India.”

  In another notable brush with world leaders, Graham wound up his Eastern tour with a stop in Tehran, where he discussed biblical prophecies with the shah of Iran.

  Shortly after Nixon was elected in 1968, Graham began to contemplate returning to Washington for a major crusade. Noting that he was “convinced that the type of crusade we now hold could have a great impact,” he suggested to a friend that he contact several of the men who had spearheaded the recent New York City crusade to see how to organize an appropriate invitation. Nothing happened immediately, but early in 1972, a group of leaders that included Congressman (and former major-league ballplayer) Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell approached Nixon to see if he would sign an invitation to Graham, as he had done for the 1969 New York crusade. On John Dean’s advice that it would not be in keeping “with our general policy or the dignity of the Presidency,” Nixon chose not to sign but informed Graham in a warm letter that he wanted him to know “how pleased I would be to see you lead such a Crusade here.” Graham indicated that the current exploratory effort was “news to me” and that he would be unwilling to hold a crusade in the capital during an election year lest it embarrass the President in some way, but he did say that “after the election, I will get some of my people to investigate the possibilities.”

  True to his word, Graham began to put out feelers shortly after the election. The response was clear—and sharply divided. White churches wanted him; blacks did not. The board of the Council of Churches, with heavy black representation, voted to dissociate itself from the proposed crusade. The Reverend Ernest Gibson, later executive director of the council and cochair of the 1986 crusade, explained what he and his colleagues had felt at the time: “Tension between blacks and whites was high in 1972. Black leaders who were part of the civil rights movement were trying to identify friends. One of the criteria was whether whites would stand with us, support us, use their influence and positions of power to help. Mr. Graham was a frequent visitor to the White House, and we hoped he would say something supportive about the rights of black people in this country. But he didn’t. He said nothing at all.” That indictment was not quite accurate, but it was certainly true that Graham avoided movement rhetoric. To complicate the situation, according to Gibson, white church leaders did not so much consult blacks as to whether the evangelist would be welcome as inform them he was coming. “We resented that,” he recalled, obviously still feeling whites had miscalculated. “We decided we would not cooperate with the call for a crusade. We were a pretty consolidated group.” That decision killed a Washington crusade, erecting a barrier that had to be surmounted before the 1986 crusade could occur.

  Ironically, at the very time American blacks were finding fault with Billy Graham, blacks and mixed-race “coloreds” in South Africa were hailing him as a principled and effective enemy of apartheid. Consistent with his long-standing policy, Graham spurned all invitations to preach in South Africa until he could be assured that any service in which he participated would be fully and freely integrated. Then, in 1972, a breakthrough came when South African evangelist Michael Cassidy managed to wrest from his wary brethren an invitation that satisfied Graham’s criteria. Cassidy was a spiritual grandchild and avid admirer of Graham’s; won to Christ by a Harringay convert, he heard Graham preach at Cambridge in 1955 and again in New York in 1957. After studying at Fuller Seminary, he returned to his homeland and established a small multiracial team of evangelists who held revivals throughout Africa. At the Berlin Congress, he delivered a brief and quite moderate paper on “The Ethics of Political Nationalism,” in which he took an essentially Graham-like position, acknowledging the complexity of the South African situation, observing that the excesses of black nationalists were no more acceptable than those of their Afrikaner oppressors, and calling for government informed by love and justice for all rather than group self-interest. Unexceptional as it was, the pap
er generated heated response from South African representatives of the Dutch Reformed Church, who asked that it not be included in the official proceedings. That bit of attempted censorship failed, but Cassidy agreed to allow the proceedings to carry an appendix noting that the South African government observed and protected “complete freedom of evangelism” and stating that the policy of “parallel development” had a long and complicated historical background and “has been generally accepted by all the various racial groups” in the country.

  Inspired by the Berlin Congress and follow-up gatherings in other parts of the world, Cassidy organized a South African meeting, to be held in Durban in 1973. To his utter surprise, when he mentioned the meeting to Graham during a visit to the United States early in 1972, Graham volunteered to participate if he would be welcome. Elated at this unexpected offer, Cassidy was dumbfounded when the organizing committee decided by a narrow margin that it would be best if the famous evangelist were not invited, ostensibly out of fear he might dominate the meetings and divert attention from the primary agenda. Beneath the surface, the decision was more complex. Black members of the committee, appreciative of Graham’s long-standing refusal to wink at apartheid, wanted him to come. The more socially liberal white members tended to be suspicious of evangelism and feared that Graham might emphasize soul winning to the detriment of anti-apartheid efforts. A third and smaller contingent of staunch white Evangelicals either favored or had made peace with apartheid and correctly anticipated that a Graham visit would involve public criticism of that policy. Few of the resisters, however, were adamant in their opposition, and with a bit of active lobbying, Cassidy was able to win a reversal and official confirmation of his own informal invitation.

  When he volunteered to break his personal boycott of South Africa, Graham expected only to participate in the Congress of Mission and Evangelism in South Africa, which would be the largest fully interracial meeting that nation had ever seen, with whites, blacks, coloreds, and Indians all living and eating in the same hotel. At the urging of Cassidy and others, however, he agreed to hold a public rally at the King’s Park rugby stadium on condition that it would be open to all races and colors, with no separate seating arrangements. Then, both to appease Evangelicals who looked askance at his consorting with some of the liberal churchmen who would be present at the Durban Congress and to offer an additional witness against apartheid, he agreed to hold another public service in Johannesburg, this time under the aegis of Youth for Christ. Lest his hosts in either city later complain that he had misled them, Graham explicitly warned them that while he did not intend to launch an attack on apartheid, he would, if asked, state flatly that he disapproved of it.

  Because he was speaking only twice, with one of those occasions an addendum to the congress, Graham did not field a full team for his South African appearances, but one bit of preparatory work stood out for both its short- and long-term effects. Millie Dienert, who for several years had been in charge of the prayer campaign prior to Graham’s crusades, worked with a prominent South African Anglican woman to organize more than five thousand women into small interracial groups that met regularly to pray for the rallies. The groups proved so rewarding to the participants that instead of disbanding when the rallies were over, they became the nucleus of an interracial women’s prayer movement that claimed 350,000 members just five years later.

  Saturday, March 17, 1973, was a historic day in Durban, as 45,000 people from every racial and ethnic group in South Africa pressed into King’s Park stadium for the first major public interracial gathering in that nation’s history. Overcome by the sight of white ushers courteously welcoming blacks and of blacks and whites sitting together with no display of animosity or discomfort, a Zulu Christian said, through tears of joy, “Even if Billy Graham doesn’t stand up to preach, this has been enough of a testimony.” Graham did, of course, stand up to preach. Without mentioning apartheid, he repeated the same theme he had sounded during his 1960 African tour. Jesus was neither a white nor a black man, he said. “He came from that part of the world that touches Africa, and Asia, and Europe, and he probably had a brown skin. Very much like some of the Indian people here today. Christianity is not a white man’s religion, and don’t let anybody ever tell you that it’s white or black. Christ belongs to all people! He belongs to the whole world! His gospel is for everyone, whoever you are.” It was hardly a harangue against apartheid, but after 4,000 people answered the invitation, many for repentance of sins unspecified but surely including prejudice and discrimination, the headline of Durban’s Sunday newspaper proclaimed: APARTHEID DOOMED.

  Socially progressive churchmen who appreciated the significance of Graham’s King’s Park rally were disappointed that the evangelist did not mention apartheid in his address to the congress, where the risk would have been small and the possible impact great. To make matters worse, he left the convention hall immediately following his speech and departed for Johannesburg, leaving what Cassidy described as “an acute sense of vacuum and frustration” among delegates who had sought to elicit some more satisfying and helpful statement from him. Leighton Ford eased the situation by a more critical assessment of apartheid in his address to the assembly, and Graham’s representative insisted that the early departure had been planned all along and was in no way an effort to duck controversy, but many delegates who had hoped for more could sympathize with their American colleagues who felt that throughout his ministry Billy Graham repeatedly stepped back from the courageous statement or action that might have made a crucial difference in critical situations.

  If Graham’s aim was to avoid controversy, he should not have been in such a hurry to reach Johannesburg. On his first day in the city, he held a press conference at which he described racial separation as “un-Christian and unworkable.” He also moved a step beyond his oft-voiced position that changing hearts, not laws, was the only solution to the racial problem. Admitting that while in many respects America was no model for other countries to follow in addressing their racial problems, he pointed out that the U.S. Congress had enacted “the finest civil rights legislation in the history of the human race,” and asserted that “at least legally, we are on the right footing.” Then came a shot that hit his foot but ricocheted around the world. Aware that the United States Supreme Court had recently handed down the Roe v. Wade decision, a reporter asked Graham if he regarded abortion as the taking of human life. He said that he did but conceded it might be justified in some situations, such as pregnancy caused by rape. In an egregious example of a notorious tendency to allow a key word or image to send him down what his colleagues refer to as “rabbit trails,” he referred to a newspaper article he had read the day before about the gang raping of a twelve-year-old girl. He volunteered that he advocated stiff punishment for rape, adding, “I think when a person is found guilty of rape he should be castrated. That would stop him pretty quick.” Graham recalls that he immediately realized he had gone too far. “It was an offhand, hasty, spontaneous remark that I regretted almost as soon as I said it,” he said. “I meant to get back to it, but I got sidetracked.” Fortunately, South African papers paid little attention to the comment, but when it reached America, it created such a flap that White House staff members quickly prepared a memo for the President, alerting him to be ready to discuss it with Graham should the occasion arise. The remark drew fire because of a perceived barbaric quality and also because it was allegedly racist, since a disproportionate number of convicted rapists in America are black. Without trying to justify the statement, Graham explained that he had a deep concern about sex-oriented crimes and had been profoundly affected by the story of the young victim, who doctors said would probably be a psychological invalid for the rest of her life. He also noted that he had made a point of saying that any such penalty “should be administered fairly, objectively, equally and swiftly to all, without regard to race or wealth,” and observed that it was odd that his critics seemed more disturbed by his commendation of castration
than by the crime of rape.

  Cries of racism from critics in America must have seemed incongruous to blacks and other nonwhites in Johannesburg, for whom Graham’s rally at the Wanderers Cricket Ground was the first interracial public meeting most had ever attended. The service not only drew a thoroughly integrated crowd of 60,000, smashing the week-old record for integrated meetings by 15,000, but was carried live to the nation by the state-run radio network (television did not come to South Africa until 1975). No foreigner had ever been granted that privilege before, and the broadcast drew the third-largest audience ever registered by the network. Ever the gracious guest, Graham complimented South Africans for giving him “one of the finest receptions of my entire ministry” and showed himself worthy of such treatment by public association with two of the country’s most popular figures, cricket star Trevor Goddard and golfer Gary Player. Both men helped with press relations, and Player gave Graham and his entourage a well-publicized reception at his home. The evangelist also garnered favorable publicity for a generous gift of more than $70,000 to famine victims in West Africa, an effort that exemplified his growing determination to make a tangible response to physical as well as spiritual needs.