A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  As with all of Billy Graham’s evangelistic endeavors, precise assessment of Global Mission’s effectiveness is impossible. That said, one can share the wonder expressed by David Barrett, co-author of the World Christian Encyclopedia and widely regarded as a top authority on world missions. “How,” Barrett asked, “can you envisage one man speaking to a billion people? I think there are only two people in the world who could have attained this: Billy Graham and John Paul II.” Future students of world religion, Barrett thought, would view Mission World “as one of the most significant events in the worldwide spread of Christianity.”

  Heartened by the success of Global Mission and unwilling to abandon the hundreds of thousands of contacts involved in that immense effort, BGEA followed it in 1996 with two additional globe-girdling initiatives known as the World Television Series. Both efforts made use of satellite transmission and national television networks, but instead of trying to attract people to stadiums and other large-scale gatherings, they enlisted approximately one million churches worldwide to help set up video house parties to which church members could invite their friends and neighbors. Reminiscent of Operation Andrew, in which Christians bring their friends to stadiums to hear Graham preach, this was called Operation Matthew, after the tax collector (and, subsequently, apostle and gospel writer) who invited his friends to his home to meet Jesus.

  In a second innovation, instead of the traditional format of music and testimony followed by a sermon, the entire program was based upon a sermon during which Graham’s message was illustrated and amplified by music and drama, often quick-cut in MTV style, and by statements from such internationally famous figures as Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and President Jimmy Carter. Prior to these home meetings, hosts were provided with discussion guides, follow-up materials, and literature to distribute to guests. In all, approximately 450 million pieces, culturally adapted and in dozens of languages, were sent to more than 150 countries for each of the two programs. BGEA estimated that between 30 and 40 million house parties were held and that more than 2 billion people watched at least one of the programs.

  On a more modest scale, Graham continued to press his attempts to preach the gospel in lands still dominated by or barely emerging from the shadow of communism. In 1986 Alexander Haraszti had said, “We don’t expect that Billy Graham will ever be able to preach in public in Moscow.” The next five years, of course, confounded most expectations about what would happen there. While other developments understandably attracted greater worldwide attention, the relaxation of restrictions on religious organizations, particularly those other than the Russian Orthodox Church, was certainly a significant indicator of sweeping change. In July 1991 Billy Graham engineered a breakthrough for Russian Evangelicals by gaining permission to hold a full-fledged school of evangelism in Stadium Druzba, an annex of Lenin Stadium. Almost 5000 pastors and lay leaders not only were permitted to attend the school, but also were housed and fed in dormitories at Moscow State University. As a further indication that Graham’s careful cultivation of Russian secular and religious authorities in earlier years had convinced them of his integrity, he was urged and agreed to warn participants to watch out for false teachers and exploiters from the West who would split indigenous churches and exaggerate accounts of their visits in order to raise money for their own use back home. During his time in Moscow the evangelist met with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. He reported that he had found both men to be interested in spiritual matters and said that his long conversation with Yeltsin had been primarily about moral and religious subjects.

  A fuller answer to Graham’s 1959 prayer for revival in Red Square (p. 264) came the following year, with Vozrozhdeniye (Renewal) 92, hailed by Decision magazine as “Something beyond all expectations.” With the support of 150 churches in the Moscow area and 3000 more from elsewhere in Russia, Graham proclaimed the gospel of Christ in the huge indoor Olympic Stadium. The stadium’s previous attendance record of 38,000, set at the 1988 Goodwill Games, was surpassed at each of the three services. At the final meeting on Sunday, 50,000 people jammed into the stadium and an additional 20,000 watched the proceedings on a large screen outside. More than a quarter of the audience responded to the invitation at each service. The cooperation of Russian authorities and institutions echoed that of Graham’s 1989 Hungary mission. The Moscow postal system distributed 3.2 million promotional leaflets, enough for every home in Moscow; Isvestia ran an in-depth interview; and Graham appeared on several national television programs. At one service the famed Russian Army Chorus sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” bringing the audience to its feet for the refrain, “Glory, glory hallelujah/His truth is marching on.”

  A few months before the Moscow mission, Graham had finally cracked through the shell surrounding the most closed of communist societies, North Korea. Once a country that contained so many Christian churches that it was sometimes called “The Jerusalem of the East,” Korea had ruthlessly repressed virtually all religious expression for more than half a century. Now only a tiny percentage of the population still identified itself as Christian; indeed, the capital city of Pyongyang had only two church buildings, one Protestant and one Catholic. Still, perhaps aware of Graham’s efforts on behalf of religious freedom in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states, the Korean (Protestant) Christians Federation and the Korean Catholics Association, with governmental approval, invited Graham to visit, with the understanding that his appearances would be quite limited. After gaining approval from President George Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Graham accepted the invitation.

  In Pyongyang, Graham preached at both of the city’s churches and spoke to about 400 students at Kim Il Sung University, laying out the basics of Christian faith and telling them something of the role religion had played in American history. He also met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs and, more importantly, with the aged and iron-fisted President Kim Il Sung. North Korean television, which featured their meeting as its lead story, described the conversation as “warm and cordial” and noted that President Kim had expressed hope that “a new spring will come in the relations between our two countries.”

  Two years later, Graham received a second invitation, once again coming from the two Christian associations. Graham announced that his primary reason for going was to preach the gospel of Christ, but acknowledged a willingness to explore more fully President Kim’s hope for “a new spring.” Graham spoke at the same venues as during his first visit and also to a public meeting that included some of the nation’s top leaders. But the centerpiece of this trip was a three-hour meeting with President Kim. This time Graham brought a message from the new American president, Bill Clinton, holding out hope of a warmer relationship once North Korea formally agreed to allow international teams to inspect its nuclear weapons facilities.

  According to Stephen Linton, an expert on Korea who accompanied Graham on the trip and was present at this meeting, Kim responded in an agitated fashion, shaking his fist and declaring that “President Clinton had the logic reversed: first the two presidents should establish a relationship. Then they could talk about the problems.” Linton described the conversation as “two old men bantering,” with Kim Il Sung loud and emotional, and Graham trying to assure him that Clinton, who “represents a new generation of Americans,” was “doing the best he can, under the circumstances.” Linton reported that even though Kim Il Sung did not agree with Clinton’s approach, he was open to the possibility that the young American president was sincere. Graham’s phrasing, Linton discerned, was “a polite way for one old man to tell another old man that they were dealing with young men, and that young men can sometimes be brash.” This “provided an explanation for the U.S. position in a way that made sense to an old village elder like Kim Il Sung” and also served as “a character reference for the young United States administration.”

  Once again, Billy Graham’s informal diplomacy may have had a significant impact. President
Kim made no commitment at the time, but a few weeks later he formally agreed to allow international inspectors to visit North Korea’s nuclear sites. In Linton’s view, Graham’s explanation “provided a motive for allowing the inspections that didn’t hurt Kim Il Sung’s pride. It made it more a favor that he was bestowing than a concession that had been wrung out of him.”

  Graham’s efforts in China did not progress far beyond his earlier visits, but he did visit again briefly in early 1994, just prior to his second trip to North Korea. When Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the U.S. in 1997, he requested a meeting with the evangelist in Los Angeles, where they reportedly discussed religious life in both the United States and China, including issues of human rights and religious freedom.

  As indicated by his government-approved visits to Pyongyang, Billy Graham retained his position as Chaplain to the Nation and occasional ambassador without portfolio. The media still sought his opinion on matters of state, and he still managed to provide transparent support for his political friends, as when he commended Ronald Reagan in 1991 by observing that “one of his greatest achievements was having the wisdom and courage [to choose] George Bush as his running mate.” When the nation proved unwilling to choose his old friend George Bush to fill a second term in the White House, Graham found much to admire in Bill Clinton and was pleased to lead prayers at both of his inaugurations, giving him the distinction of participating in eight inaugurations for six presidents—more than any other figure in American history except John Marshall, who was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835.

  Graham maintained his friendship with Ronald Reagan, visiting him on occasion and noting with regret the toll Alzheimer’s disease was taking on another Great Communicator. When Richard Nixon died in 1994, Graham presided over the internationally televised services and also at the more private graveside committal of his complex and controversial old friend’s body, a fitting end to a relationship that had drawn him further into the political vortex than any other of his flirtations with power and, in the process, had shown him the dangers of trying to swim in a whirlpool. In another manifestation of his role as the People’s Pastor, Graham joined President Clinton in a moving prayer service in the aftermath of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal office building in April 1995.

  In May 1996 the U.S. Congress honored Billy and Ruth Graham by presenting them with the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor Congress can bestow on a citizen. The first citizen to receive the award was George Washington; only 112 others had been so honored in more than two centuries. This was only the second time the award had gone to a clergyman, and the third time it had been given to a couple. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who hosted the event attended by more than 700 congressional, diplomatic, and religious leaders, called Graham “one of the great civic leaders of the 20th century” and lauded him and Ruth for having “given up their lives as a model for serving humanity, and [standing] as role models for generations to come.” Gingrich added, “By receiving this medal, you join about as exalted a group of citizens as we have in this country, and you frankly honor us by being here to receive it.” Physically frail and obviously moved by such tribute, Graham responded by saying, “As Ruth and I receive this award, we know that some day we will lay it at the feet of the One we seek to serve.”

  In addition to the several phases of Mission World and despite progressive physical decline brought on by what was thought to be Parkinson’s, Graham maintained a relatively full schedule of crusades during the last decade of the century, though most of these lasted only three to five nights instead of the eight days that had been customary in the 1980s. On what amounted to a decade-long farewell tour, he brought his team and his message to New Jersey, New York, three cities in Scotland, Philadelphia, Portland, Pittsburgh, Tokyo, Cleveland, Toronto, Minneapolis, Charlotte, San Antonio, Ottawa, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Nashville, and Jacksonville, breaking stadium records in almost every city.

  None of these gatherings drew more national attention than “An Afternoon in the Park with Billy” on September 22, 1991. As the conclusion to a three-year Mission New York that began in Buffalo and included major events in Albany and on Long Island, Graham climaxed a successful crusade at the Meadowlands in neighboring New Jersey—topping popular singer Bruce Springsteen’s former record turnout for that venue by more than 10,000 people—with a three-hour music and message extravaganza on the 15-acre Great Lawn of Manhattan’s Central Park.

  At least one New York City official scoffed at hearing that Graham and his team were hoping for as many as 50,000 people to show up for the event. “Surely their draw in the Northeast is not what it’s going to be in the South,” he said, “but this is New York City.” Evidently unaware of Graham’s earlier success at bringing the gospel to Gotham—and Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other locations far from the Bible Belt—this gentleman also failed to recognize that, if BGEA representatives were publicly setting a goal of 50,000, they probably had already confirmed bus reservations for at least 75,000. It was never their practice to set themselves up for public disappointment, and they certainly did not intend to do so in full view of the nation’s major media. Preparation had been extensive. Beyond the standard measures, 2.5 million brochures had been distributed house-to-house in all five boroughs of the city. In contrast to 1957, when Catholics were urged to stay away from Billy Graham’s Madison Square Garden Crusade and priests were provided materials to help them counter Evangelical teaching, on this occasion in 1991 John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, and Bishop Thomas V. Daily of the Diocese of Brooklyn wrote to their priests in 630 Catholic churches, urging them to invite their parishioners to go hear Billy Graham, and encouraged the distribution of brochures to hundreds of daily visitors to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. In addition to greater participation by African-American churches than in earlier years, at least a hundred Chinese churches actively promoted the event to their members.

  Once again, thorough planning, extravagant publicity, and the prospect of hearing the world’s most famous evangelist preach from the front porch of America’s cultural capital produced an astonishing result. By police estimates, 250,000 people turned out for what the New York Daily News called “the largest religious assembly in New York City history.” It was also more than twice as large as any audience ever to hear Graham in the United States. Mayor David Dinkins called it “perhaps the most multi-cultural revival meeting the world has ever seen.” More than 200 reporters crowded into the press area. The New York Times gave it glowing front-page coverage, and the Wall Street Journal exclaimed that “we live in a time when . . . such a large gathering turning out for a religious message is a phenomenon.”

  No other domestic event matched the Central Park rally in terms of a live audience, but the crusades of the 1990s were not simply formulaic reprises of what had gone before. Increasingly, crusade budgets included $50,000 to $100,000 in funds for distribution through social service agencies; collections of food and other items for the hungry and homeless became standard. At the Philadelphia crusade in 1992, 100,000 pounds of food was donated for distribution through local agencies, and 35,000 personal-care kits containing a variety of hygiene products were assembled and distributed to homeless people in Philadelphia and in Chester, Pennsylvania, and Camden, New Jersey. That crusade also continued a growing emphasis on developing a multicultural appeal, as the 7,400-voice choir sang hymns in English and Spanish and Korean.

  While these changes were significant, they were mild compared to what, starting in Cleveland in 1994, would become a hallmark of Billy Graham crusades during the last years of his public ministry. Recall that Graham first gained national and international attention with Youth for Christ, which featured vital young men dressed in loud clothes and accompanied by contemporary music and such novelties as a horse that could tap out the number of Jesus’ apostles or the number of persons in the Trinity. As Graham and Neo-Evangelical Christianity matur
ed and entered the mainstream, this youthful exuberance disappeared. The Graham team made a conscious effort to fashion services that would be thoroughly familiar to their middle-class constituency and would reassure backsliders and those who had never made a Christian commitment that coming forward at a Billy Graham crusade would plug them back into a community and cultural experience quite similar to what most of them had known in their youth. By the 1990s, however, high proportions of those attending the crusades—and, more importantly, of the younger generations Graham particularly wanted to reach—had never been to a “Little Brown Church in the Wildwood” and would not likely regard an invitation “just to trust and obey” as a particularly appealing offer.

  As Graham spoke of what Evangelicals call a “burden” for young people in his grandchildren’s generation, he found a receptive spirit in Rick Marshall, a crusade director with several teenage youngsters. Marshall had felt for some time that crusade services were not meeting the needs of young people and that a crucial step would be to introduce more music of the sort they enjoyed. Predictably, Billy Graham had no feel for the contemporary music scene, but he observed that when he went into different countries and cultures, he often needed an interpreter to put his message into a language people could understand. If popular music, however jarring to his own ears, could serve as a medium of translation, he was willing to give it a try.

  The experiment was launched in June 1994, in Cleveland’s venerable Municipal Stadium. Marshall enlisted popular Christian musicians Michael W. Smith and rock group dcTalk and publicized the event on MTV and the two most popular rock stations in the Cleveland market. Instead of having these artists simply sing a number or two and give a brief testimony, the idea was to have them present a full concert of high-energy music, then follow that with a message from Billy Graham, a caring adult who would attempt to let them know that he understood their world and wanted to help them find purpose and meaning in their lives. Tedd Smith, who by this time had assumed the lead role in producing the actual crusade program, admitted that “we didn’t know what was going to happen in Cleveland. I think there was some hesitation. Is this going to work? People who had been around so many years and had not been in a concert atmosphere wondered, ‘Are they going to behave?’”