To the University of California’s Berkeley campus—freshly embroiled in turmoil over the sudden firing of President Clark Kerr—came new conflict last month centering on militant Christianity and Billy Graham.
It was touched off when Dr. William R. Bright brought 700 staffers of his world-wide Campus Crusade for Christ to the campus for a week-long “work” convention, the first since Bright started the organization in 1951. CCC board member Graham addressed a breakfast gathering of 300 faculty members and a noon crowd of 8,000 students on the last day of the session.
All week, CCC activists buttonholed students with straightforward, person-to-person gospel appeals. They staged noon rallies before thousands and conducted evening meetings in scores of residence halls. They infiltrated “The Forum,” a popular Telegraph Avenue coffeehouse frequented by hippies and budding political radicals, and scored many conversions there. Nightly they put on high-quality programs at a 3,000-seat theater. They saturated surrounding neighborhoods with a visitation campaign, and in the campus Plaza area they manned Christian literature tables next to tables run by such groups as the Campus Sexual Rights Forum, the leftist Students for a Democratic Society, and the Maoist-oriented Progressive Labor Party.
By the end of the week almost 1,000 decision slips were tabulated, not including more than 150 inquiry cards checked in at the Graham meeting.
Widespread criticism resulted. The Daily Californian editorialized that it had no objection to religious discussion activities but that “there are limits to these activities which should not be overstepped, and this group of zealots has managed to transgress those boundaries with gay abandon.” It complained that students had been roused from bed by early-morning telephone calls—a charge denied by Bright but one that made Bay Area headlines. Campus editor John Oppedahl admitted that he could not substantiate the complaint.
The editorial claimed further that the crusade workers were “unfair” in their persistence with those who declined to listen “to the continued sales drive.” It went on to liken the crusade to an early American tent show, whose promotion “falls far short of the dignity of the product.”
One former CCC’er who is now a UC student said many Christians on campus were offended by the “bombardment from outside.” She complained, “These outsiders failed to consider the mood of this campus; their razzle-dazzle methods are out of style here.” She did praise the local CCC unit—responsible for about four hundred campus conversions last year—for its rapport with UC students.
Asked by the press to comment on criticisms of CCC militancy, Graham answered, “People get zealous over everything else—Why not Christianity? At least they are proclaiming, and not protesting.”
The crusade began January 23, the first school day after Kerr’s dismissal. At noon about 3,000 of UC’s 26,000 students flocked to the steps of Sproul Hall, an assembly site immortalized by Mario Savio and fellow protesters. Expecting to be led in a giant protest over the Kerr incident, the crowd was surprised to find the steps had been reserved by CCC. Some drifted away, but most stayed to hear folk singers. CCC leader Jon Braun stepped to the microphone and explained the crusade. When catcalls and boos arose from a segment of the beard-and-sandal set, Braun boomed, “We are revolutionaries! We don’t like the world the way it is either. We are against racial hatred, poverty, war, and immorality. God did not intend the world to be like it is. The only solution to our problems is Jesus Christ.”
On Wednesday the New Left took the Sproul steps to air the Kerr issue but lost most of its audience to a nearby CCC rally. Irritated, some New Left adherents vented their anger over the competition in Daily Californian pages.
But to a large degree, it was the campus radicals who seemed to give the most intense hearing to the CCC personal workers. They often concluded interviews with a warm handshake and a grateful “Thank you for talking with me.”
Explained local CCC chief Ted McReynolds, “Ideas are at a premium on this campus. These students are searching intellectually, and they will genuinely listen to your ideas.”
And listen they did. Bright had an interview with self-professed Communist Bettina Aptheker. One worker told of a student who had been on an LSD and sex binge and had prayed that God would forgive him. Another reported that eleven in a fraternity group of twenty-one became Christians on the same night. A Hong Kong student accepted Christ at a chance meeting in a restaurant. Story after story of such encounters was told in morning testimony meetings.
When Graham arrived on campus, he was asked about a university-wide rule stating that UC facilities “shall not be used for the purpose of religious worship, exercise, or conversion.” Graham said he thought that the events of two years ago—an allusion to the Free Speech Movement—had “dealt with the subject.”
One university official supported Graham’s right to speak freely and said, “If it’s all right for students to speak without restriction about a pseudo-religion such as Marxism, we wonder about enforcing a rule aimed at an established faith.”
Dr. Burton Moyer, chairman of the physics department, presided at the faculty breakfast meeting with Graham Friday morning. He had hoped to get at least 500 of UC’s 3,000 faculty members to attend, but only 300 showed up.
An Episcopal student chaplain, asked to give the invocation, instead read a statement that many felt was more a swipe at Graham than a prayer to God. In it he urged deliverance from “a narrow dogmatism that might obscure thy glory.”
During the hour-long question period after Graham’s speech, there was a surprising lack of hostility toward the evangelist. He fielded potentially explosive questions and artfully dodged taking a stand on the Viet Nam war.
Other questions dealt with resurrection, Christian social involvement, problems of guilt, ethics without Christ, and the place of non-Christian religions.
To a near-capacity crowd of collegians at the open-air Greek theater, he declared, “Man needs God as much as he needs air or sex. This unsatisfied longing for God is the reason for the sense of emptiness in the student world. When you enter university life you are pressured to experience sex, LSD, and pot. Why not experience Christ instead?” A rumored protest against Graham failed to materialize.
Graham touched some of the most relevant issues on the UC campus. A sizable number of its students are enmeshed in increasingly severe problems. LSD and marijuana usage is soaring.
The Bay Area is also a focal point for the “sexual revolution.” The campus-based Sexual Rights Forum, whose members hawk such lapel buttons as “Fondle Me” and “If It Feels Good, Do It,” is linked to the Bay Area’s Sexual Freedom League. The SFL sponsors nude dances and parties, beach excursions, and weekend outings to the mountains. Most participants are college age. At least one church sponsors social functions for homosexuals. The homosexual population of the Bay Area is estimated at well over 100,000.
Graham had warned at the faculty breakfast that a moral vacuum results if spiritual needs are unmet, and that into such a gap steps “a Hitler or Communism, pot or LSD, sex sins or suicide.” He reminded the teachers that every 1½ hours an American student kills himself. Suicide is second only to auto accidents as a cause of student deaths.
After the Berkeley visit, Graham went south to UCLA and drew the first overflow crowd in the four-year-old student speaker series. As he spoke to an audience of 6,000 that had been shifted to giant Pauley Pavilion, anti-war demonstrators carried such signs as “Go to Hell Billy.” The evangelist asked those who wanted to accept Christ to attend a later meeting in the student union.
Reagan On Religion
Although the Presidential Prayer Breakfast (adjacent story) gets the most publicity, similar sessions occur on the state and local levels, including one last month on Inauguration Day in the nation’s most populous state, California. New Governor Ronald Reagan said prayer is “the most logical and proper way to begin anything,” including his administration.
Among speakers were Jewish and Roman Catholic clergymen and Don Moomaw, hulking ex-All-America footballer whom Reagan calls “my pastor.” Moomaw, a strong evangelical and minister of Hollywood’s Bel Air Presbyterian Church, told the breakfast that Reagan is one who seeks first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.
The new Republican governor, seen as presidential timber by GOP conservatives despite a past divorce, said, “I don’t believe that any one of us could conceive of carrying on and meeting the problems of our state without the help of God.” In fact, he said part of the reason for unrest at the University of California Berkeley campus was that parents of students there weren’t religious enough.
Although Reagan often attends Moomaw’s church, he’s a member of the fashionable Beverly Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), where longtime employee Mrs. Bessie Newport says “Ronnie has very definite Christian convictions and would stand by them.” She said Reagan contributes regularly to the church, where he transferred his membership from First Christian Church of Dixon, Illinois, his boyhood congregation.
Moomaw thinks Reagan “will never do the immoral or dishonest thing as he understands it.” There are reports that Reagan recently was led to Christ. In regard to the governor’s religious beliefs, Moomaw was wary of betraying private confidences. “I don’t know really what being a Christian means to him. I assume from my association with the governor that he and his family are people of prayer. Yes, he gives evidence of being a Christian, and I know only one kind, and that is one who is born again.”
Hayley Mills: ‘Decision For God’
Actress Hayley Mills tells of her Christian conversion at Billy Graham’s 1966 London Crusade in the February issue of Motion Picture. An article by Rose Gordon describes how the attractive 20-year-old screen celebrity walked the aisle at Graham’s invitation on the final night of the Earls Court meetings.
“Yes, it’s true,” Hayley was quoted as saying. “I was converted.… What it means is becoming a Christian. That is, someone who actually lives as a Christian rather than just having been christened and not doing anything about it.”
The article further quotes her as saying, “I was interested in the crusade and had read much about it. But it wasn’t until the last night that I went up to the rostrum when Billy Graham asked for volunteers to profess their belief in God. And I went forward to answer his call to make a decision for God.”
“I feel that my life has taken on a deeper meaning than it had before, and I have found a new kind of happiness with my conversion.”
Born into the Church of England, Hayley Mills now says she attends Baptist services.
The Prayer Breakfast
Speaking from a head table featuring such diverse Democrats as Georgia Governor Lester Maddox and Robert Weaver, first Negro Cabinet member, President Johnson said, “We know that in the hour of decision, faced with tormenting choice, none of us can be certain we are right.” But “we believe the whole drama of human history is under the scrutiny of a divine Judge.”
The main speaker at the annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast was a layman, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Fowler. Episcopalian Fowler said he has a “conviction that the need is clear and the time is ripe for a spiritual reformation,” and he called upon national leaders to live lives worthy of Christ’s example.
Quoting Pope Paul and the Apostle Paul, Fowler expressed hope for worldwide renewal. And speaking to the United States, he said, “If there was ever a time for Christian behavior combined with national greatness, it is now.” This doesn’t mean “national arrogance or self-importance,” he said.
The treasury secretary, who noted that he is “a layman in a highly secular activity,” also urged the congressmen and other national leaders present to form small groups to read the Bible and “discuss the relevance of Christ and his teachings.” He said there is a need for the “individual and personal commitment which God requires.”
The presidential breakfast, an idea that has spread to many nations, is the outgrowth of weekly prayer breakfast groups from the U. S. House and Senate. Senator George Murphy of California, a Roman Catholic, speaking in a half-whisper because of a throat operation, said these weekly meetings are “one of the most rewarding and substantial experiences of my life.” Speaking for the House group, Representative G. Elliott Hagan said the President and all wielders of political power “realize and publicly recognize that there is access to an even greater power through faith and prayer to God through Jesus Christ his Son.”
