NEWS
CHRISTIANITY TODAY
Mass Evangelism
“I doubt whether we have very much longer to preach the Gospel.” Such utterances were always common with evangelist Billy Graham. Not until last month did the world take them seriously.
Stricken with a rare malady which reduced vision in his left eye to a blurry 20–70, Graham was told to slacken his pace or expect the worst. Millions fell to their knees in behalf of evangelical Christianity’s most widely accepted spokesman. Few were aware of the real seriousness of his condition.
Doctors traced the trouble to a tiny yellow spot in the most vital area of the retina. Drops of fluid abnormally released from the blood stream had caused a small swelling which clouded the line of sight. Eighteen-hour days, jangling phones, and overflowing appointment books—which most often culminate in heart attacks—had taken an unusual course in this case.
Two weeks after diagnosis, the disorder had still not responded to heavy doses of cortisone and five days of treatment at the Mayo Clinic. Even with full recovery, doctors said, remaining scar tissue could impair vision as much as 10 per cent.
Disclosure of Graham’s ailment jolted evangelicals in Australia, where revival, something the 10,000,000 “down under” have never seen, seemed closer than ever as preparations for meetings by the American evangelist reached unprecedented proportions. To give him an extra week’s rest, the opening crusade in Melbourne was delayed from February 8 to February 15. Graham will bring nightly addresses, but is under doctors’ orders not to accept additional speaking engagements.
There were fears that any sort of curtailment of Graham’s ministry might lessen the spiritual awakening potential developed in such preliminaries as all-night prayer meetings, interdenominational cooperation, and counsellor training sessions. Actually, very few crusade plans were changed. But the immediate effect of developments was an even greater prayer rallying and increasing interest in the coming meetings.
What is Australia like? Here lies an island continent nearly as big in area as the United States. It currently boasts the lowest unemployment rate in the world, even as it leads the globe in the rate of highway accidents proportionate to miles travelled.
Summer holidays traditionally begin immediately after Christmas, though the moderate year-round climate allows outdoors sports during every season. Australians thus find their pattern of living based in large measure upon recreational activities, which include a great variety of pastimes (e.g. on a population basis, Australians are said to be the greatest gamblers in the world).
Australian religion is marked by almost exclusive Christian ties. Forty-two per cent of the population is identified with the Anglican church, one-fourth with Roman Catholicism. Methodists number 12 per cent of the population and Presbyterians 10 per cent.
“The background to all this,” says CHRISTIANITY TODAY Correspondent Leon Morris, “is a nation with the spiritual indifference of the materially prosperous. Australia has had a long run of good seasons. While there have been local droughts the country has not known a really bad season for 12 or more years. Last year a big drop in wool prices gave the economy a heavy blow, but it has not yet affected ordinary people very much. There is widespread spiritual complacency. While there is an undoubted quickening in spiritual things, and an air of expectancy among believers, we are a long way yet from a nation-wide revival.”
Coordinating crusade activities for the continent is Dr. Jerry Beavan, a Graham associate for 11 years, Graham’s public relations advisor, and the architect of the crusades in London, Glasgow and New York. Beaven has been laying the groundwork for the Australian evangelistic meetings for 18 months.
The crusade plan is as broad as the Australian continent, calling for a major five-week campaign in both Melbourne and Sydney, the cities in which 39 per cent of Australia’s total population is resident. Second phase of the effort: crusades running for periods varying from one to two weeks in capital cities of Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth, and across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand’s principal cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. For these crusades associate evangelists will be in charge with Graham himself conducting the two or three final meetings.
Third level of the evangelistic effort are special one-day area-wide rallies planned for key Australian cities, including among others the federal capital, Canberra, and Launceston and Hobart on the island of Tasmania. Finally, to reach the rural population of Australia living in a network of tiny hamlets and sheep stations in the vast “outerback” region, a series of “relay crusades” are planned, utilizing land lines of the government-operated telephone service.
Local committees have been understanding, cooperative and appreciative of the Graham team’s offer to meet all of their own expenses from American funds, leaving only local items as the Australian committees’ contribution.
Prominent churchmen headed the committees; in Sydney, the Right Rev. R. C. Kerle, Anglican bishop; in Melbourne, the dean of St. Andrew’s Cathedral, the Very Rev. S. Barton Babbage; in Brisbane and Adelaide, the Rev. George Nash and the Rev. Erwin Vogt, both Methodist ministers.
Monthly the crusade chairmen from each city meet with team members in a federal liaison committee. Offices are maintained in Sydney and Melbourne.
Graham prepared to open the Melbourne crusade with a series of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer. (Films were to be taken of the rallies and flown to the United States for showing on television.) The meetings are scheduled for the West Melbourne Stadium, erected for boxing and wrestling events in the 1956 Olympics. With closed circuit TV extension, capacity was to total about 11,000. A climactic closing rally is planned for next month in the 100,000-seat Olympic Stadium.
When he comes back to the United States, Graham will face the necessity of curtailing activities even though his tentative schedule extends through 1961. The release of responsibility will be made more difficult in the face of an expansion in his ministry. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association revealed that 1958 was the greatest year in its seven-year history. There were more responses from radio and television programs than in any previous year. Biggest single month the association has ever had from both the standpoint of mail and contributions was December, 1958. During the year the association bought nearly a million dollars worth of radio time and more than a million dollars worth of television time.
Would an incapacitated Graham reduce world-wide revival potential? Few would say so, for history has never produced a revival built on a single individual. Yet Christians pray that the evangelist’s health will allow him to maintain evangelical leadership while the world’s hour of decision is running out.
How Graham Was Stricken
What is the nature of Billy Graham’s eye ailment? Here are qualified answers from the evangelist’s own surgeon father-in-law, Dr. L. Nelson Bell, Executive Editor ofCHRISTIANITY TODAY, who writes with 40 years professional experience and a thorough understanding of Graham’s medical history:
For several weeks Mr. Graham had sensed increasingly an impairment of vision in his left eye. By January 8, the impairment was so marked that he phoned Dr. Kenneth Gieser, an outstanding opthomologist in Chicago. Dr. Gieser immediately phoned a well-known opthomologist in Louisville, where Mr. Graham had an engagement that day. Dr. Gieser flew to Louisville the next morning and after careful examination diagnosed the trouble as a rather rare condition called angio-spastic edema of the macula, which is almost always the result of excessive work and strain.
After extended telephone consultations it was decided that Mr. Graham should go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Gieser accompanied him.
In his five-day stay, Mr. Graham received a complete physical checkup, all findings being negative other than the left eye, the original diagnosis in this being confirmed and a strict regime of medication and rest prescribed.
Mr. and Mrs. Graham then left for a Hawaiian island rest. From there Mr. Graham planned to go directly to Australia for the start of his long-planned crusade.
The overwork and strain which brought on the eye condition has not been the result of a wilful disregard of needed rest and relaxation. Nor has it been the result of poorly budgeted time either during his crusades or in interim engagements.
Rather, the abandon with which Mr. Graham has thrown himself into the work of evangelism stems from (1) an unparalleled number of open doors for the preaching of the Gospel in city and country throughout the world, and (2) the conviction that world conditions are such that doors open today may not be open tomorrow, that opportunities almost unparalleled in history should be accepted while there is yet time.
Nevertheless, Mr. Graham is entirely resigned to this enforced rest and sees in all of this a renewed challenge to undergird every effort with the power of prayer.
Reigious Assemblages
Morality And Economics
Calls for responsible capitalism at home and firmness against communism abroad marked a national conference on moral foundations of economic growth, meeting in Washington’s Mayflower Hotel January 15–16. The conference was held under auspices of the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order, more familiarly called FRASCO. Founded in 1953 by Dr. Charles Wesley Lowry, Episcopal clergyman and authority on communism, with Dr. Edward L. R. Elson, National Presbyterian Church minister, as co-chairman, the nonsectarian foundation aims at “uniting men and women of all faiths in a great spiritual counter-offensive against world domination by communism.”
Dr. Raymond W. Miller, Harvard Business School lecturer, told the conference that capitalism stood in need of “informed missionary communicators” for maintenance of its strength.
“The great moral foundation of capitalism is that it must assume responsibilities to society commensurate with its strength and privileges. It must be administered by its stewards both for benefit to themselves and to society. That is the function of American service capitalism.”
Professor Edward H. Chamberlin of Harvard University, remarking on Christmas season strikes, declared that it was time to reopen the question of the great accumulation of carelessly-allotted powers now exercised by labor unions. He pointed to the necessary restraints placed upon industry by anti-trust laws.
In lively rebuttal, Arthur J. Goldberg, general counsel for AFL-CIO, denied the efficaciousness of the anti-trust laws and claimed labor has not yet reached the level of management in the present power apportionment.
In general discussion on “Religion and Foreign Policy,” considerable impatience was shown toward the “most ardent welcome” given Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan by business men and civic leaders.
Even more prominent was disapproval of the actions of NCC’s Fifth World Order Study Conference in regard to Red China. Dr. Elson pointed out that the conference had spoken only for the 600 members present and not for American Protestantism. But their pronouncements were “providing moral missiles for our adversaries,” as manifest in the Communist press, he said.
He voiced his annoyance with repeated recurrence in Christian documents of the expression that we have “left to us coexistence or coextinction.” This represents “secular eschatology.” The Communists use it, but “it has no place in Christian thought.” The purpose of life, he went on, is “not to exist or coexist,” but rather to glorify God and serve him in “truth, mercy, and justice.” The question for the Christian is not one of extinction or survival, for “on the third morning was the Resurrection.” “There is the other side … the eternal.”
F. F.
Episcopal Installation
Washington Cathedral was the scene of the Right Rev. Arthur Lichtenberger’s installation as 21st Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, January 14 (for his election, see Oct. 27 issue). In a colorful service essentially following forms used in English cathedrals on such occasions, six processions of some 500 ministers and laymen preceded the Bishop’s arrival—signaled by trumpet fanfare. Before a congregation of 3,000 which included 2,000 clerical and lay leaders, the Right Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, retiring Presiding Bishop, inducted his successor.
In his inaugural sermon, Bishop Lichtenberger stressed church mission and unity. Their goals he saw as the transformation of the world and the ecclesiastical unity of “all who believe in Christ.” The catholic and evangelical traditions within the Episcopal Church he asserted to be “not opposed,” but “essential aspects of God’s truth.”
To newsmen he said that any eventual church union would come rather by individual denominational mergers than “in any general way.” Such union, he felt, should include the Roman Catholic Church.
Now his church’s chief spokesman, the bishop affirmed the church’s right to speak out on political issues but thought greater effectiveness in this area lay in action of individual Christians. F. F.
A Record?
Who holds the world record for perfect Sunday School attendance?
Mrs. Harry C. Morgan of Greene Street Presbyterian Church in Augusta, Georgia, says she has passed her 45th year of perfect Sunday school attendance—2,340 consecutive Sundays!
CHRISTIANITY TODAY readers knowing of a longer record are invited to write to the Editor.
Congress In Madras
A mile-long procession of 2,100 registered delegates climaxed the 10th World Congress of Youth for Christ International at Madras, India, last month. Thousands of others joined the line as it filed into a thatched tabernacle for the closing service of the seven-day event. Speaker was the Rev. Joe Blinco of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
The congress was held on the grounds of Doveton School in Madras. Counsellors counted some 1,200 spiritual decisions as a result of the Congress meetings. A party of 45 North American delegates was led by Youth for Christ President Ted Engstrom. The trip was marked by visa delays after a misunderstanding with Indian officials.
Facts And Figures
Church Attendance
In an average 1958 week, 50,500,000 American adults (49 per cent of them) attended church or synagogue services, according to Gallup pollsters. Back in 1955 a similar percentage was recorded as a peak in church-going. The figures fell off slightly in the two intervening years.
The Gallup Poll taken at year-end also showed:
—Women were more faithful in worship attendance than men (55 per cent to 45).
—Roman Catholics attended much more regularly than Protestants (74 per cent to 44).
—Worship attendance was highest in the Midwest (54 per cent, compared to 52 for the east, 51 for the South, and 35 for the Far West).
—Proportionately, there were more churchgoers in larger cities than in small-town America (because of more Roman Catholics in metropolitan areas, said the pollsters).
—Middle-aged persons had better attendance records than either young adults or those 50 and over.
The Gi Clergy
The Veterans Administration disclosed last month that 35,827 veterans of World War II and 12,392 veterans of the Korean War have undertaken training under the GI Bill of Rights to become clergymen.
The ministry ranked just below medicine and law in the number of veterans who undertook preparation for the professions with aid of grants from the government under the GI program.
Protestant Panorama
• President Eisenhower, honorary chairman of Brotherhood Week, February 15–22, says the achievement of brotherhood is the “crowning objective of our society.” In a message to the National Conference of Christians and Jews, which sponsors Brotherhood Week annually, the President said that “with nations poised for mutual advancement or destruction, we must enlarge our spirit of brotherhood to include all men who live under the banners of liberty and law.”
• The Temple University School of Theology lost its accreditation in the American Association of Theological Schools last month. Several alumni reportedly said they believed the association had decided “that the school lacked a proper ratio of full-time instructors to its number of students.” The loss of accreditation applies only to the undergraduate school and the standing of its bachelor of divinity degree. A number of students are leaving as a result of the action.
• “A representative of the dominion government will read the lesson,” said the program of St. John’s Anglican Church, Ottawa. To the surprise of 150 worshipers who braved temperatures of 15 below zero to attend a Week-of-Prayer service, the “representative” proved to be Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, a Baptist.
• The Church of England has sold its 260,000 shares in the British Aluminium Company for a profit of at least a million dollars, Religious News Service reported last month.
• A new Swedish law authorizing women clergy prompted a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Lutheran Church of Sweden. Contents were not immediately disclosed, but limited intercommunion between the English and Swedish state churches reportedly is endangered because the Church of England does not recognize women clergy.
• In Berlin, some 130 Christian young men say they will help build churches, hospitals and other welfare institutions abroad in repentance for the suffering caused by Nazi tyranny before and during World War II.
• The Rev. David J. du Plessis, world-famous Pentecostal leader, says revival is “touching the hearts” of officials in the World and National Councils of Churches. Du Plessis describes himself as an “ecumenical Pentecostal,” meaning he favors cooperation in church unity movements.
• More Communist publications are appearing on newsstands of Khartoum, capital of the Sudan, under martial law since an army coup November 17. Marxist literature is said to be available under nearly every green tree in Khartoum and nearby Omdurman.
• To assemble data for a long-range, nation-wide program to combat syndicated crime and organized racketeering, the Justice Department is establishing field offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami.
• Spiritual stirrings are in evidence in Norway. Signs of awakening have been noted in a number of communities during the winter. Evangelistic meetings are drawing unusually large crowds. Many gather in state churches.
• The Church of the Nazarene in 1958, its golden anniversary year, started an average of two new churches every three days. Nazarene churches now total 4,587 in North America.
• February 10 marks the centenary of the birth of Dr. Jonathan Goforth, esteemed missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. Goforth devoted nearly half a century to missionary work in China.
• The Anglican Church of New Zealand is entering “exploratory conversations” with a joint committee working toward union of several denominations. The church’s triennial General Synod authorized the move.
• Two Roman Catholic newspapers on Flores Island in Indonesia suspended publication on orders from the government. They were charged with publishing “objectionable” comments on a regulation requiring all foreigners to display the flag and name of their nation outside their homes.
Church And State
Ohio Parochialism
Under Ohio law, public school boards are legally free to provide bus transportation to children attending parochial and other private schools which meet state standards, according to Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) Prosecutor John T. Corrigan. The prosecutor disclosed his opinion at the request of a community school board which has been asked to provide bus transportation for some 400 parochial school pupils.
Corrigan’s opinion counters a 31-year-old opinion of former Ohio Attorney General Edward C. Turner who said that only pupils attending public schools are entitled to transportation at public expense.
Corrigan contends that the trend of opinion is toward consideration of such benefits as bus rides, textbooks, lunches, medical and dental expenses as being for the safety and protection of children, not for the benefit of any particular kind of school.
He cites a 1947 U.S. Supreme Court decision which held that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is not violated if public transportation is provided for children in parochial schools. Similarly, he adds, the court has held that a state may provide textbooks for children in parochial and other private schools.
In his opinion he quotes the St. Louis University Law Journal thus: “The same principle has been applied to the GI Bill of Rights and more particularly to the National School Lunch Act.”
Transportation of parochial school children is not the only big church-state issue in Ohio. A showdown looms on whether Roman Catholic nuns may wear religious garb while teaching in public schools.
Last fall, former state Attorney General William Saxbe ruled that wearing of a distinctive religious habit by teachers in public schools does not amount to a teaching of religious doctrine which is forbidden by law.
The ruling was protested by Protestant church groups. Last month Republican Representative B. A. Broughton introduced a bill in the state legislature which would prohibit nuns from wearing their garb while teaching in public schools. The measure would not, however, prohibit “the hiring by a board of education of any person associated with any religious sect, order, or denomination as a teacher or employee in a public school.”
