Graham’s conviction that this could be a valid and important part of his ministry led to the formation of the World Emergency Fund, a BGEA outreach that channels several hundred thousand dollars to disaster victims annually. But it was the simple, profound fact that by force of reputation and principle he had been able to set aside South Africa’s dominant and infamous social arrangement that made the greatest impression on that nation. Shortly after his visit, a popular magazine proclaimed, “Apartheid gets three knockout blows.” One blow was an international, multiracial athletic festival; the other two were Billy Graham’s rallies in Durban and Johannesburg. The nefarious system did not, of course, stay down for the count. But undeniably, two successive giant demonstrations at which blacks and coloreds and Indians and whites could meet and mingle, could stand and sit and sing and pray side by side without breach of peace or threat to order, could confess that they were all flawed and sinful creatures who alike needed forgiveness from a God who was “no respecter of persons,” could not but leave their mark.
Unhappily for Graham, many American blacks continued to view his efforts on their behalf to be less than adequate. That summer in Atlanta, his crusade drew a noticeably small turnout from the city’s large black population. A major bus strike played some role, but with the notable exception of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., most of the city’s key black leaders urged blacks to stay away. Ralph Abernathy, successor to Martin Luther King, Jr., as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, complained that blacks had not been involved in preparation for the crusade. Hosea Williams, of the conference’s Atlanta chapter, charged that Graham had a poor record on race and poverty issues. The president of a black seminary criticized Graham’s role as “chaplain to the Establishment” and his tendency to take “an oblique stand” on issues that vitally affect blacks, and for supporting Richard Nixon, who cut programs to benefit the poor. Others dragged up his allegedly racist comment about castrating rapists and faulted the “culturally white” style of his services.
Graham faced a similar boycott in Minneapolis a month later. Perhaps because black poverty was a less serious problem in Minnesota than in Georgia, Minneapolis ministers focused most of their hostility on his prescription of castration for rapists. At a long and frank meeting with the critical clergymen, Graham noted that a black friend counseled him not to apologize to blacks for the statement, since that would imply that he associated rape with blacks. He had decided, however, not to follow that advice. The statement, he said, had been “wrong and inflammatory,” and he was sorry he had made it. He also agreed that he had not done enough to aid the poor, adding that he would not simply assert his repentance but would demonstrate it. Then, after a tour of black neighborhoods in the Twin Cities, he made a little-noticed but significant change in theology when he told the men that he had come to believe that the gospel should aim at saving not just individuals but society itself. All but two of the critical clergymen declared themselves convinced of Graham’s sincerity and with drew their opposition to the crusade, but winning the confidence and cooperation of black Christians would continue to be a hill that had to be climbed, sometimes a wall that had to be scaled, in crusade after crusade throughout the remainder of his career.
Two months after the South African meetings, Graham returned to the Far East for a stunningly triumphant campaign in Korea. Perhaps no nation in the world has experienced such an explosive growth of Christianity as South Korea. Rather small and insignificant at the end of World War II, the Christian church claimed 10 percent of the population in 1970 and was experiencing a growth rate four times faster than that of the population as a whole. (By 1990 the proportion had grown to 28 percent, and at least one congregation claimed more than 500,000 members.) Favorable political conditions helped. In contrast to the anti-Christian bias found in some oriental countries, the South Korean government accorded favored treatment to Christianity, regarding it as a useful bulwark against, and counterforce to, communism. “Anything that promotes anticommunism,” one prominent Korean leader explained, “the Korean government favors.” But more important, Korean Christians display a level of commitment that amazes even the most dedicated of American Evangelicals. In hundreds of churches all over the nation, thousands of earnest believers gather every morning at four-thirty or five o’clock for fervent prayer meetings and enthusiastic preaching. Though not especially charmed by the dawn’s early light himself, Abdul-Haqq conceded that such habits inevitably create “a psychological ethos that is spiritual” and attributes much of the success of Korean Christianity to the fact that “fifty years ago, someone started to pray.”
The invitation to Graham came from a blue-ribbon committee representing sixteen hundred churches and led by Dr. Han Kyung Chile, a Presbyterian pastor who had served as the evangelist’s interpreter in 1951 when he addressed Korean audiences following his visit with American troops at Christmastime. Reflecting the influence of American missionaries, some extreme Fundamentalist churches with ties to Carl McIntire and Bob Jones refused to cooperate either with each other or with Graham, whom they had been taught to regard as an archcompromiser. Eventually, however, the overwhelming majority of Christians in Korea supported the crusade, initiating a new era of ecumenical cooperation. “It was really the first time,” Dr. Han observed, “that all the Christian people, not only in Seoul but also in a good many provincial towns, gathered together. In that sense, it was unique. When we knelt together, we found we were all friends.”
To oversee crusade preparation, Graham dispatched Henry Holley, a former Marine staff sergeant who had joined BGEA several years earlier after impressing team members with the administrative skills he showed while working as a volunteer during Graham’s 1960 Washington crusade. A thoroughly cordial but nevertheless spit-and-polish man accustomed to acting decisively, Holley clashed at times with local committeemen, who tended also to have definite notions about how things should be done. Holley was accustomed to thinking in large-scale terms, but the Koreans’ aspirations and plans seemed at times too grand to be realistic and generated considerable anxiety both for him and dubious team members back in Atlanta, where team operations were now headquartered.
Nothing illustrated the Korean vision better than the proposal to stage the crusade on the People’s Plaza, a mile-long former airstrip on Yoido Island in the middle of the Ham River. Holley and some Korean committee members feared that the facility was simply too big, so that even a huge crowd—100,000, for example—would be swallowed up in the vast expanse and appear insignificant in newspaper and television pictures. Still, the only other large facility, Seoul’s 25,000-seat National Stadium, was almost certainly too small, so there was little real choice. Yoido was also a fitting symbolic site; nearly ninety years earlier, the first American missionary to arrive in Seoul had been stoned when he stepped off the boat onto that same island. Ordinarily, the plaza was restricted to military parades and state-sponsored events.
In keeping with its pro-Christian policy, however, the government not only gave approval, but dispatched the Army Corps of Engineers to build a platform large enough to hold a 10,000-voice choir and to install powerful arc lights.
The crusade was originally planned for 1972, but an effort to control Graham’s chronic high blood pressure had forced a postponement until 1973. Even then, at his physicians’ direction, the evangelist notified Holley that he would not be able to follow through on his original plan to appear for the final service of six crusades to be held by his associate evangelists in Korea’s other major population centers. This news stunned local organizers, who believed not being able to deliver Billy Graham as promised would result in a severe loss of face for themselves and the church. They also suggested that Graham was suffering from what they saw as an occidental weakness. “Americans,” one observed, “always follow medical doctor’s way. But the Oriental, even though his health is a little bad, if we promise, then we should be there.” Graham stuck by his decision, but perhaps in the h
ope that he might change his mind at the last minute, the local committees did not publicize his withdrawal.
A second, less serious crisis involved the choice of interpreter. Dr. Han feared he was too old to perform the rigorous and stressful task of translating the evangelist’s words for a huge audience. The obvious second choice for the role was a thirty-nine-year-old Baptist pastor named Kim Jang Whan, now better known in Evangelical circles as Billy Kim. During the Korean War, Kim had been converted and adopted by an American soldier who took him back to America and financed his education—at Bob Jones University. Equipped with Fundamentalist fire and southern-revivalist technique, as well as with an American wife, Kim quickly rose to prominence in the Korean Church as a pastor, a powerful evangelist, and a director in several international Christian organizations, including the missionary-run Far East Broadcasting Company and Billy Graham’s old fraternity, Youth for Christ. He had also proved himself an effective translator by serving in the role for Carl McIntire, whose virulent anticommunism had gained him a considerable following in Korea.
At Bob Jones University, Kim had never heard either of the Doctors Bob or any guest speaker describe Graham as anything other than an enemy of true Christianity. Carl McIntire, of course, held the same opinion. Back in South Korea, where the minority status of Christians made shunning other believers less feasible than in South Carolina, Kim had moved away from strict separatism. He had attended the Berlin Congress, which had heightened his appreciation for Graham, and he had come to recognize that missionaries trained at BJU sometimes “talked of issues that were not central.” Still, he was not so great a fan of Graham’s that he felt he could not pass up the honor of standing beside him, and even more important, he feared that identification with Graham might cause some of his more conservative supporters in America to cut off contributions to programs in which he was involved. On the other hand, he could not escape the force of what both he and others believed: He was the right man for the job. In particular, he believed no one else could communicate Graham’s offer of the invitation as well as he could. Presbyterians, by far the dominant Protestant body in Korea, did not really believe in the invitation, and no other Korean Baptist had sat through hundreds of pleas for sinners to come to Jesus just as they were. If the maximum number of souls were to be snatched from the sea of sin, Billy Graham would need Billy Kim to help hold the net. Finally, after praying almost continually for three days and calling a key American backer who assured him that he would not withdraw his support, Kim notified Graham that he would be his translator. Ugly letters damning him for his apostasy came in as and whence expected, but Kim put them aside and immersed himself in preparation, listening to tapes, watching films, studying Graham’s tempo, even imitating his voice and gestures.
Bob Jones, Sr., had often spoken of Billy Graham as a man filled with self-importance and pride. An incident on the day Graham arrived in Seoul erased that image from Billy Kim’s mind. As they prepared to leave the hotel for a reception and dinner with the crusade committee, Graham was abashed to find a caravan of four black limousines, each with a uniformed chauffeur, waiting for him and his party, and a motorcycle escort ready to clear their way of traffic. Fearful that such ostentation would create a negative impression, Graham asked if it might be possible to use a smaller car. Kim was impressed that a world figure would respond with such modesty but gave him a quick lesson in protocol. “These cars are the courtesy of the Korean government,” he explained. “If you don’t accept this gesture, you will offend the government. Also, you will make the Korean people feel you are not important enough to rate a limousine. If you ride around in a taxi or a small car, your credibility will be shot with Korean people. Billy, for the sake of the Korean mentality, please get in the car. Just say thank you. If the press picks it up, that’s their problem.” Graham doubtless acted wisely when he decided not to risk offending President Park Chung Hee’s oppressive government. Though neither he nor the crusade could plausibly represent a threat to order or ideology, team members feel certain their hotel rooms and automobiles were bugged, and reflecting apparent conviction that any large gathering needed to be closely monitored, the army assigned an estimated 7,000 soldiers to the crusade services, ostensibly to help direct traffic, which seldom amounted to more than a few hundred cars.
Hours before the first crusade service, it was already obvious that the crusade committee had not overreached by securing Yoido Plaza. To provide some estimate of attendance, as well as to facilitate crowd control and the handling of possible emergencies, the physical-arrangements committee laid down a grid of paper strips glued to the asphalt pavement. Each square held six to twelve people seated on mats or pieces of paper or cloth they brought with them, and each section of 250 squares, roped off to form aisles, held approximately 2,000 people when all units were filled. By the time Billy and Ruth (who had spent time at a boarding school in North Korea as a girl) arrived at the island in the late afternoon, the crowd-control chart indicated that the dreamed-of throng of 300,000 was already in place. By the time the service started, it appeared that half a million people were sitting quietly, waiting to worship God and to listen to Billy Graham. Ruth later wrote in her diary that it was “one of those things impossible to take in,” and Billy could not hide the awe in his voice as he told the happy crowd that they were not only the largest audience he had ever preached to, but “the largest audience ever to hear a preacher in person anywhere in the world.”
Almost always in top form when preaching with an interpreter, Graham seemed even more effective than usual in Seoul as Billy Kim performed what almost anyone discussing these meetings seems convinced was the most impressive display of translation they had ever witnessed. Kim was so good, in fact, that some Korean television viewers assumed he was the featured preacher, with Graham interpreting his message for American military personnel. As usual, some pastors and theologians criticized the sermons for their theological thinness. And also as usual, the multitudes filled themselves happily with the simple loaves and fishes he offered them. When the services ended in the evening, thousands stayed afterward to pray, then bedded down right on the tarmac, so they could attend a 5:00 A.M. prayer meeting before returning home or hurrying off to work or, if they were from out of town, simply because they had no place else to go.
The huge crowds continued to gather, and the secular press and television paid the crusade an unprecedented amount of positive attention. Even the North Korean media noted that a remarkable kind of witchcraft event was occurring in Seoul. Then, for the closing service on Sunday afternoon, an incredible, impossible thing happened. When Billy Graham stood up to speak, he faced a densely packed ribbon of people stretching 200 yards in front of him and half a mile to either side—according to the crowd-control grid, 1,120,000 people, almost certainly the largest public religious gathering in history. Amazingly, what could have been a teeming multitude became instead a quiet congregation, able, with the aid of a superb sound system, to hear every word even at the farthest distance from the platform. The thousands of military policemen had little to do: One man in a million created a momentary stir with a brief and apparently aimless outburst; a few dozen people experienced minor medical problems, not one of which was serious. Few cities of a million inhabitants could match that record on any given afternoon.
During his twelve weeks in London in 1954 and again during the sixteen weeks in New York in 1957, Billy Graham had spoken to aggregate audiences of more than two million people. Now, in five days in Korea, he had addressed, in person, crowds totaling more than three million. Another million and a half attended the six associate crusades in other major cities. Inquirer cards from all the meetings exceeded 100,000. Billy Kim’s church increased almost immediately by 30 percent in a spurt of growth, and its pastor, turned into a national figure by the crusade, gained a permanent spot in the front rank of Asian church leaders. The effect on Korean churchpeople, as astonished as outsiders by what they had seen and wrought, was als
o immediate and dramatic. Kim speculates that Graham came to Korea in what Scripture calls “the fullness of time,” a time when momentum had reached a takeoff stage. “If he had come in ’63 or ’83,” he reflected, “I doubt we could have pulled off a ’73-style crusade. No question, ’73 was a critical time.” Dr. Han agreed that “with the Billy Graham crusade, the Korean church came of age.” Denominations and missionary agencies that had fought or ignored each other began to perceive each other as brethren who could accomplish more by working side by side. The already high growth rate nearly tripled over the next two years as Presbyterians established seven hundred new churches, while Baptists and charismatic churches totted up proportionately similar gains. In 1977 a group of Korean evangelists secured Yoido Plaza for a crusade of their own with no help from Americans; according to Kim, they matched Billy Graham’s million every night of the crusade. Finally, the Korean Church began to see itself as a sender, not just a receiver, of missionaries, as men trained in churches and denominational seminaries and at such ecumenical institutions as the Asian Center for Theological Studies and Mission (whose library was endowed by a generous gift from BGEA) began themselves to take the gospel to foreign lands. By the mid-1980s, South Korea was producing more foreign missionaries than any nation in the world save America and possibly India.
A Prophet with Honor Page 63