Would Billy Graham conduct a crusade at the Vatican? If a place were made available and Christian leaders in Rome wanted him to, he might.
No campaign in Catholicism’s capital is on the evangelist’s calendar now, but his five-day crusade last month on the Notre Dame University campus proved he is not afraid to go deep into Roman Catholic territory. It also showed that many elements in the once-hostile Catholic community are now receptive to Graham’s type of ministry.
Only “Fighting Irish” football games have ever drawn more people to an event on the South Bend campus of America’s premier Catholic educational institution. The final rally of the crusade attracted approximately 45,000 to the Notre Dame stadium, which seats 59,075 for games.
The Sunday-afternoon outdoor meeting climaxed a series that also set a record for the indoor facility across the street, where the first four services were held. Around 13,500 people, the largest crowd ever to attend a program in the Athletic and Convocation Center, came to the Saturday-night service. Of that number, some 3,000, unable to get into the main arena, watched on closed-circuit television in the adjacent fieldhouse. Cumulative attendance for the crusade was estimated at 95,600, and 3,421 decisions for Christ were recorded.
Officially known as the Michiana [Michigan and Indiana] Billy Graham Crusade, the campaign was also called “the Michiana miracle” by members of the executive committee and other local supporters. For them, the miracle was not that Notre Dame facilities had been made available but that Graham had come to these small industrial communities ninety miles east of Chicago. Some committee members had been praying specifically for a Graham crusade there for nineteen years. People in northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan attached little importance to the site of the meetings. The convocation center is often used for business, social, and entertainment events unrelated to Notre Dame or Catholicism. It is the closest thing South Bend has to a civic auditorium, and it has housed a number of non-Catholic religious events, from a 1975 crusade by Graham’s associate evangelist John Wesley White to Jehovah’s Witnesses conventions and Lutheran meetings.
While it was the first time the evangelist had conducted a full-scale crusade on Catholic grounds, it was not the first time he had preached on Catholic property. Twice on one day in 1967 he preached on the soccer field of a Catholic school in Zagreb, Yugoslavia. Still, he described the Notre Dame event as “historic.” On several occasions he publicly thanked university officials for their cooperation.
Roman Catholic leaders maintained a low profile. Before the series began Graham talked on the telephone with Theodore Hesburgh, the president of the university. Midway through the crusade they had lunch together, but the priest did not appear in public with the evangelist. He sent Notre Dame’s director of campus ministries, William Toohey, to represent him on the platform at the final service. Toohey welcomed the crowd to the stadium on behalf of the university. His clerical collar was one of the very few in evidence during the crusade.
One priest who attended in clerical garb removed his collar as he came forward at the invitation. When the counselor asked if he intended to rededicate his life to Christ, he insisted that he was receiving Christ as Saviour and Lord for the first time.
The Catholic bishop appointed two observers to attend meetings of the crusade executive committee in the early stages of planning. Priests throughout the diocese understood that they were not to oppose the event, but neither were they encouraged to get involved in any public way.
Being thus uninstructed, many lay Catholics felt free to participate in a variety of crusade activities. Some attended the Christian life and witness classes and worked as counselors. Others volunteered to usher or sing in the choir. Many attended preliminary meetings. Hundreds of them responded to the evangelist’s invitation to make a public commitment to Christ. More than 11 per cent of those counseled said they were Catholics.
Christian students at Notre Dame and at the adjacent St. Mary’s College for women had prayed and worked for weeks in the hopes that fellow students would hear Graham’s preaching. At St. Mary’s, a weekly prayer meeting was held on each floor of each dormitory. During the week of the crusade, tables were set up in strategic spots, including the foyer of the Notre Dame library, offering literature and tickets for reserved seats. If evangelization of the collegians was the goal, however, the timing was faulty. It was final-examination week at Notre Dame, and few were able to leave their studies to go to the services. While some from the host campus took time out from cramming to attend, most of the students who participated were from other institutions. One-third of the recorded decisions were by young people.
The responses came at the end of services that followed the standard crusade format in use for several years. Graham’s sermons were of the type that audiences throughout the world have heard, with only a few more references to such Catholics as Bishop Fulton Sheen and Mother Theresa of Calcutta. The necessity of a new birth and a personal relationship to Christ were stressed.
At the time of the invitation, Graham emphasized that he was not asking for denominational allegiance. “You may be Protestant, or Catholic, or Jewish,” he declared, “but if you have doubts about your relationship with Christ get up out of your seat and come forward. You may have been confirmed and baptized, but come. I’m not asking you to join a particular denomination.”
Counseling and follow-up, areas in which Graham has often been criticized, were planned with particular care in the Michiana crusade. The names of Catholics making decisions were not referred to any churches, Catholic or Protestant, crusade officials said. Instead, other follow-up methods were planned, including enrollment in nurture or discipleship groups. The names of inquirers not indicating a church connection were sent to “participating” congregations, and no Catholic parishes were considered to be “participating.”
There is a slight variation in follow-up procedures from crusade to crusade. Decisions are made locally by the crusade’s counseling and follow-up committee in cooperation with the Graham team members who assist them. The next test of the system will be in another strong Catholic territory, Cincinnati, Ohio. The evangelist is scheduled to preach in that city’s Riverfront stadium October 21–31. The resident bishop there is Joseph L. Bernardin, current president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, who is widely known for his interest in interreligious cooperation.
Graham’s next major overseas crusade is also in a nation long identified as Catholic, the Philippines. He plans to preach there at the end of November. This crusade will be followed by meetings in three cities in India: Calcutta, Palayamkottai, and Kottayam. These early December dates were only recently added to his schedule.
The evangelist’s 1978 calendar is also filling up. Only two domestic crusades are scheduled: Las Vegas and Memphis. He will go to Canada also. Graham is committed to another series in Scandinavia, probably in October, and he expects to accept other overseas invitations for 1978. But there is no Rome crusade on the books. Invitations from other places, “Catholic” and otherwise, are more pressing now.
The Bishops Reply
Joseph L. Bernardin, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, was a tired man when he returned home to Cincinnati after presiding at the Chicago NCCB meeting. There was no time for rest, though, since he had guests coming for dinner at the cathedral—the members of the governing board of the National Council of Churches (see story, page 35). He extended greetings and reported on the bishops’ actions in Chicago.
With good humor still intact after the week with fellow archbishops and bishops, Bernardin suggested that last year’s Catholic “Call to Action” meeting in Detroit (see November 19, 1976, issue, page 56) was akin to the NCC’s 1969 Detroit Assembly (which ended in turmoil and led to a major NCC reorganization). And he added that the Chicago gathering of the bishops was not unlike an NCC board meeting since it ended without a quorum.
After a bit of wit he reviewed for the NCC policy makers the background of the “call” conference and said he and his fellow members of the hierarchy generally welcomed the recommendations from Detroit. A special committee was authorized to begin examining all of them except for the handful “contrary to church teaching.” Included in those which the bishops won’t consider are calls for an end to the requirement for clerical celibacy, an endorsement of a couple’s right to choose a form of contraception, and support of non-discriminatory legislation for practicing homosexuals.
The bishops did respond to a call for ordination of women by promising more study of the need to “identify, formally authenticate, and expand ministries’ performed by women in the church. But they stopped short of coming out against the recent Vatican declaration against female priests.
One recommendation from the Detroit conference was endorsed and sent straight to Rome for approval. That was the one asking for an end to the practice of excommunicating Catholics who are divorced and then remarry against church law. The U.S. hierarchy imposed the penalty nearly a century ago, but since it is not canon law elsewhere the Vatican is expected to approve the repeal.
Also discussed in Chicago was the suggestion that members of the church be allowed to receive communion wafers in their hands instead of on their tongues. A mail ballot was required on the question, however, since it came up after many bishops had left and a quorum was not present to pass the recommendation.
Changing the Gender
As international Lutheran women’s consultation that brought together seventy-two women pastors, liturgists, writers, musicians, hymnists, and educators from eleven countries resulted in some potentially explosive recommendations for this month’s Lutheran World Federation assembly in Tanzania. The women, who met in Madison, Wisconsin, last month, called on the LWF to initiate studies aimed at finding ways “to enlarge the images of God and Jesus in the language of worship so that they include female as well as male characteristics.” They also asked that more room be made for women in church and institutional life.
The women asked scholars who are preparing a new Lutheran Book of Worship to reduce the “overwhelmingly male references and imagery about God, particularly the use of male pronouns.” And they asked that the Nicene Creed’s text on the incarnation be changed from “… and was made man” to “… and was made human.”
The Chicago Call
A summons to greater continuity with historic church doctrine and practice was issued May 3 by an ad hoc group of forty-six comparatively unknown Christians who are more or less identified with evangelical institutions or views. Meeting in Warrenville, a western suburb of Chicago, the group recognized “with gratitude God’s blessing through the evangelical resurgence …,” but charged that “evangelicals are hindered from achieving full maturity by a reduction of the historic faith.”
The document, entitled “The Chicago Call: An Appeal to Evangelicals,” limited its focus to eight of the many areas of alleged reductionism: historic roots, biblical fidelity, creedal identity, holistic salvation, sacramental integrity, spirituality, church authority, and church unity. The five-page “call” was a product of careful, often line-by-line scrutiny by persons from about ten denominational traditions. The statement on biblical fidelity was designed to sidestep the dispute involving the issue of biblical inerrancy raised in Harold Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible. The Bible is affirmed as “the infallible Word of God” and “is to be interpreted in keeping with the best insights of historical and literary study, … with respect for the historic understanding of the Church.”
No stand was taken on ordination at all, much less on women’s role. Sacramentalism was watered down from a more traditional view to simply recognizing that God’s grace “is mediated through faith … in a notable way in … baptism and the Lord’s Supper.”
To the extent that polity was touched upon it was simply to deplore one-man rule in some churches and the absence of practical submission to any godly authority on the part of many Christians and organizations.
The call was planned by eight men, five of whom attend an Episcopal church (though none is of that background) near Wheaton, Illinois, including the chairman, Robert Webber. A theology professor at Wheaton College, Webber is of Baptist heritage, graduated from Bob Jones, and has his doctorate from a Lutheran seminary. Before converting to the Episcopal Church he was a Reformed Presbyterian clergyman. The non-Illinois committee members are best-known for their books: Donald Bloesch of Dubuque Seminary. Thomas Howard of Gordon College, and Peter Gillquist of Thomas Nelson Publishers. Gillquist is one of the top “overseers” of a relatively new church body, the New Covenant Apostolic Order (a number of the leaders, formerly associated with Campus Crusade for Christ, are known as “apostles,” and they stress authority and discipline in congregational life).
Almost all of the conferees had close contacts with one of the four centers represented on the planning committee (Dubuque and Trinity seminaries, Gordon and Wheaton colleges). Those invited were expected to have interests in historic continuity but nearly all were from denominations other than Episcopal. They ranged from two Roman Catholics from a Catholic institution in Dubuque, Iowa, to two Plymouth Brethren members, who represent a far less formalized kind of churchmanship.
DONALD TINDER
Chicago Declaration: Barely Audible
Some three dozen Christian activists from around the United States met in Philadelphia last month to determine the future of Evangelicals for Social Action. The organization, which drafted the widely acclaimed Chicago Declaration in 1973 (see December 21, 1973, issue, page 38), has been torn by dissension ever since, and after its annual gathering in Newark last October most observers wrote it off as finished. Its backers insist it has done a lot to sensitize theologically conservative Christians to social issues. However, except for spawning the Evangelical Women’s Caucus, it has done little to implement the principles of the 1973 statement.
Thorny problems of identity and purpose faced the conferees. Everyone wanted to broaden the group’s base and involve a wider spectrum of the Church. Some, however, argued that the very term “evangelical” impeded this, though one ecumenical participant stated he was not uncomfortable with it. The old controversy between “theorists” and “activists” once again plagued the deliberations. And some felt the group had yet to come to terms with racism and sexism in its own ranks.
More serious was the cleavage between the “radicals” and the liberal or moderate “reformists.” The radicals, working from an Anabaptist theological perspective, were suspicious of organization and stressed communitarianism and a countercultural life-style as the most appropriate form of witness. The reformists were willing to work within existing socio-political structures to bring about change. Although both factions claimed to be biblical in their approach and both articulated a passionate concern for social justice, they differed widely in their views of how to achieve this justice.
According to the radicals, the moderates were simply too cautious and were unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to bring about genuine social justice. Editor Jim Wallis of Sojourners in Washington pointed out that the common ground in 1973 had been a reaction against the “evangelical establishment,” with the Chicago Declaration as a rallying point, but that since then the group’s constituents had gone off in different directions. Another person said that Evangelicals for Social Action had become an “albatross” that could “pre-empt the Holy Spirit,” and recommended that the group consider disbanding. The moderates, on the other hand, contended that ESA could serve as an educational instrument and a clearing-house for ideas, organize people for action, and meet the needs of activists for fellowship.
After rejecting proposals to call a national congress on social justice and to dissolve the organization entirely, the participants decided to keep ESA alive, probably under a different name but with the Chicago Declaration as its basis. The spark plug of ESA from its inception, Ronald J. Sider, who is assuming a faculty position at Eastern Baptist Seminary this fall, agreed to coordinate an eight-person steering committee that would name a permanent board of directors.
RICHARD V. PIERARD
A Gay Get-together
“There is no clear condemnation of the homosexual condition and no universal condemnation of homosexual activity to be found anywhere in the Bible,” asserted Jesuit priest John J. McNeill, author of The Church and the Homosexual, at a Kirkridge Retreat Center conference on “Gay and Christian” last month. In lectures, panels, and discussions, the eighty-five conference participants focused on problems surrounding the expressed desire of homosexual Christians to be true to their faith and to their sexual orientation.
Ten homosexually oriented religious organizations were represented by conferees: the Brethren-Mennonite Gay Caucus, Dignity (a Catholic group McNeill helped to found), Evangelicals Concerned (the Ralph Blair organization), Integrity (Episcopal), Lutherans Concerned for Gay People, Presbyterian Gay Caucus, Unitarian Gay Caucus, United Church of Christ Gay Caucus, United Methodist Gay Caucus, and the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.
The group comprised men and women, black and white, married and single, gay and straight, liberal and fundamental from more than a dozen denominations and from seventeen states plus Canada. Roughly half were ordained; about half were Roman Catholic and Episcopal.
Robert A. Raines, an author and the director of Kirkbridge, a Christian retreat and study center near Bangor, Pennsylvania, coordinated the event. Other speakers included Nancy Krody, national coordinator of the United Church of Christ Gay Caucus, and Malcolm Boyd, the controversial Episcopal clergyman and author.
The Church generally has held that homosexuality is contrary to the will of God, that homosexual activity is sin, and that homosexuals are a menace to society (McNeill pointed to singer Anita Bryant’s anti-gay campaign in Florida as an example of such a viewpoint). Countering these views, McNeill in his workshop on Scripture summarized his three main theses:
1. “God so created human nature that a certain percentage of men and women always and everywhere develop as homosexuals. Thus the homosexual condition is according to God’s created plan, [and] it has no necessary connection with sin, failure, or sickness. It is another way of being human.”
2. “Rather than being a menace to society, its values, and the family, homosexuals as a part of God’s created plan have particular gifts, qualities, and talents which they bring to human society. This is so true that if homosexuals should disappear, the further development of society towards greater humanness would probably be seriously jeopardized.”
3. “The love that exists between homosexuals, granted that it is a constructive human love—a love in which both parties can grow and develop in their humanity—is not sinful nor does it alienate the lovers from God. On the contrary, that love can be a holy love, mediating God’s presence into the human community.”
The balance of McNeill’s lectures provided scriptural exegesis and a reexamination of tradition, in and outside the Church, to support his conclusions. Similar arguments are found in his book, which the Vatican forbade him to publish for two years while sixteen scholars investigated the manuscript. (Finally the scholars were convinced that the book is “a prudent work that meets the standards of scholarship for publication of a book on a controversial moral topic.”)
Speaking on “The Lesbian Christian Experience,” Nancy Krody testified to the problems in and out of the Church for a Christian woman who is a lesbian and a feminist. Many homosexuals have left the churches, she said, some giving up spiritual life, others to worship in gay churches or gay caucuses large enough to offer worship as well as support. But she herself has chosen to work for change within the Church, she said. She sees herself as a bridge between the Church and the lesbian-feminist movement, even though “as a bridge, you get walked on, in both directions.”
Malcolm Boyd dealt with “The Gay Male Christian Experience” in largely autobiographical, poetic, and typically very personal language. Before his recent “coming out” (public acknowledgment of his homosexuality), friends advised him not to do it since it would destroy his “usefulness.” “My usefulness,” Boyd said he replied, “is not in public relations; it is in Jesus Christ.” He likened his coming out, after weighing positive and negative reactions, to being “born again.” He felt he no longer had a choice: “the long, slow suicide had to end, and I could no longer betray the Gospel, as I felt I was doing—‘How can I lie about this, and be honest about that?’ ” He claimed it has brought him back to the Church.
The speakers seemed agreed on these points:
• The Church by silence and by negative vocal attitudes toward gay Christians has fostered duplicity or voluntary withdrawal when it should have welcomed honesty and wholeness.
• Since the Church has adopted Western culture’s anti-Christian image of male and female, the primary problem is with sexuality, not just homosexuality.
• A monogamous homosexual relationship characterized by fidelity, honesty, and love is possible, desirable, and honoring to God.
The conferees endorsed an open letter to Anita Bryant listing three specific grievances against her “Save Our Children” campaign, which is aimed at defeating a Dade County, Florida, ordinance that guarantees the civil rights of homosexuals. They accused her of disseminating false and misleading information about gay people; of using Holy Scripture, which teaches of God’s love for all, as a tool for continuing the oppression of some of God’s children; and of using fear and ignorance as a planned part of her strategy.
RICHARD CHRISTOPHER
Invalid Pact
Colorado’s first same-sex “marriage” has gone on the rocks. David Bruce McCord, 28, asked the district court in Colorado Springs to invalidate the marriage on the grounds that his “mate,” David Robert Zamora, 28, had made “a false representation” to him before their marriage in 1975. District judge John F. Gallagher, however, ruled that the marriage was not valid under Colorado law in the first place, and he dismissed the case.
Zamora, who opposed dissolution of the marriage, vowed to appeal the ruling to the Colorado Supreme Court, which has never been tested on the same-sex marriage issue.
The couple were married by a municipal judge in Fountain after obtaining a marriage license in Boulder County (they were turned down in Colorado Springs). The Boulder clerk issued the license when District Attorney Alex Hunter informed her that there was no state law preventing persons of the same sex from being married.
Judge Gallagher disagreed, noting that the state’s laws provide that “a marriage between a man and a woman licensed, solemnized, and registered is valid in this state.” If the law had meant to validate marriages between persons of the same sex, he said, “it would have said so expressly.”
