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Niebuhr's mid-Fifties preoccupation with Graham kept the two thinkers linked in the public eye. As preparations mounted for Graham's scheduled 1957 New York City crusade, Niebuhr dashed off a critical editorial for Christianity and Crisis in March of 1956. He did not mince words, writing at the outset of the editorial: "The Protestant leaders seem to have reached the decision which will bring Billy Graham, the evangelist, to New York City in about two years. We dread the prospect."7
Historian Mark Silk has characterized this piece as the first assault of a "guerrilla action" that Niebuhr carried out over the course of the next year. Silk's view is typical of the dominant understanding of Niebuhr and Graham's relationship: that it was colored only by antagonism and critique. That was part of it, but it was also a relationship richly complicated by instances of charity and cross-fertilization. For example, Graham startled the Protestant world with his admission in 1958 that he had read "nearly everything Mr. Niebuhr has written." Graham apparently meant what he said. As late as the 1980s, Graham claimed: "Look, I need some more Reinhold Niebuhrs in my life. I would say Reinhold Niebuhr was a great contributor to me. He helped me work through some of my problems."8
Niebuhr never went quite so far as to profess any Grahamian influence on his work, but he never ceased praising Graham for his sincerity, integrity, and certain aspects of his evangelism. Niebuhr noted in a 1955 New Republic article, for instance, that Graham's "fundamentalist version of the Christian faith . . . expresses some of the central themes of the Christian faith. He demands that men be confronted with God in Christ; and hopes that this confrontation will lead to conversion." (We should note in passing that even as Niebuhr characterized Graham thus, fundamentalists were denouncing the evangelist.) Niebuhr also consistently distinguished Graham from the "success cult" of Norman Vincent Peale. Graham, Niebuhr thought, had something of the prophet in him in comparison with Peale.9
The Christianity and Crisis editorial that launched Niebuhr's mid-Fifties interest in Billy Graham was his harshest critique. He signaled his aggressive misgivings about Graham as a representative of the gospel by referring to Graham's "Christian message" with quotation marks. And though he agreed with Graham that New York City was a modern-day "'Babylon,'" whose "'sins'" invited condemnation, he doubted whether Graham could "discern the real sins of such a Babylon." Niebuhr worried that the pietistic moralism of Graham would "accentuate every prejudice which the modern 'enlightened,' but morally sensitive, man may have against religion." Niebuhr had a vested interest in "enlightened" New York. He lived there and had spent two decades defending Christianity—especially its estimation of human nature—against the optimism of liberal humanism's leading exponents, most notably Columbia University's John Dewey. Graham's oversimplified view of sin threatened to undo some of that work. In particular, Niebuhr objected to Graham's belief that if enough "'bad'" people could convert and become "'good'" people, delicate problems such as potential atomic warfare might be solved. Niebuhr reminded Graham that "all men sin, even good men. The latter may be involved in sin, particularly when they try to do good, as for instance when they try to save their civilization." Niebuhr insulted Graham's ministry at the end of the editorial. He asked whether the Protestant leadership of New York had fully considered the cost of Graham's "petty moralizing" before inviting Graham to evangelize the city. Graham's "simple answers to complex questions" endangered any relevance the gospel had gained with the "modern generation."10
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