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Editor's note: The Fall 2006 issue of Christian History & Biography tells the story of the New Evangelicals. This vibrant, mid-20th-century movement eagerly sought active engagement in the culture, the application of Christian truth to society's problems, and the spread of biblical, historic Christianity throughout the world. From those early days, Billy Graham emerged as one of the movement's foremost leaders, as this article from the issue describes.

The giant tent that housed the 1949 Greater Los Angeles Revival has become an iconic image in accounts of the ministry of Billy Graham, now considered the world's most famous preacher. The 30-year-old former Youth for Christ evangelist prowled the platform in a voluminous double-breasted suit that hung on his bony frame like a scarecrow's garment. He was still unknown to most of America, but he was ready for a larger stage. As his hands became pistols to fire accusations of shortcoming into the transfixed crowd or machetes to hack through the jungle of contemporary sin, it was not difficult to believe he had a candidate in mind when he declared, "When God gets ready to shake America, He may not take the Ph.D. and the D.D. God may choose a country boy. … God may choose the man that no one knows, a little nobody, to shake America for Jesus Christ in this day, and I pray that He would!"

As the revival neared the end of its planned three-week run with only modest results, popular radio star Stuart Hamblen (who later wrote the gospel song "It Is No Secret") began attending, underwent a dramatic conversion, and plugged the meetings on his radio show. Then came an even more crucial break. One evening, a cluster of reporters and photographers met Graham when he arrived at the tent. Puzzled, even somewhat frightened, Billy asked a reporter what had happened. "You have just been kissed by William Randolph Hearst," the man said. "Look here." He showed him a scrap of paper from a wire-service machine. "The boss has said, 'Puff Graham.'"

The next day, the two Hearst papers in Los Angeles gave Graham and the revival banner headlines, and 12 other papers in the chain also gave the campaign extensive coverage. Within days, the Associated Press, the United Press, and the International News Service picked up the story, and Time, Newsweek, and Life followed suit soon afterward. On the train back to Minneapolis when the revival had finally ended after eight weeks, conductors and passengers treated him like a hero, and reporters crowded on board to press their inquiries. Billy Graham had become a national figure.

Although he had not been a party to the 1942 founding of the National Association of Evangelicals, Graham's efforts on behalf of Youth for Christ had introduced him to legions of people who were or would become leaders in that movement. Now, through his crusades and the attention they could draw, it seemed possible that he could play a significant role in helping the movement reach out to the larger culture. Eventually, no figure came to represent the spirit of the New Evangelicalism more fully than Billy Graham.

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, on November 7, 1918, and reared on a dairy farm in a strict Calvinist household, Graham had occasion to hear numerous itinerant revivalists. Some of them stayed in his home and sowed the first seeds of interest in a preaching career. Graham attended Bob Jones College briefly, Florida Bible Institute (where he began preaching and changed his denominational affiliation from Associate Reformed Presbyterian to Southern Baptist), and Wheaton College (where he met and married Ruth Bell, the daughter of a medical missionary, and undertook his first and only stint as a local pastor). He became the field representative for Youth for Christ International in 1945, and by the fall of 1948 he and his new music director, Cliff Barrows, were devoting most of their time and energy to Graham's revival campaigns.

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