Review of Current Religious Thought: May 11, 1959

Critics of the Billy Graham Crusade have been surprisingly few. Support for the Crusade from church leaders and church members has been widespread and substantial. But there have been some isolated voices raised in querulous criticism and angry protest.

It began during the Melbourne Crusade. Letters appeared in the daily press attacking the subject matter of Dr. Graham’s addresses. It soon became clear, however, that many correspondents had little understanding of the Christian faith, and that their real quarrel was not with Graham but with the Apostle Paul.

This point was well made in an editorial published in the Roman Catholic newspaper, The Advocate (Feb. 26, 1959). The tribute is so generous in its praise and irenical in its spirit that it deserves full quotation:

“We feel, however, that, in the name of Christian brotherhood, a tribute should be paid to the great missionary effort which Dr. Graham and his collaborators have undertaken with a view to awakening their world to the vital truth and all-importance of spiritual reality, and to the challenge which is offered to every individual by the Divine Person and Message of Christ Our Lord. In this ‘post-Christian’ era, in which the vigour of Protestantism has been undermined by modernistic compromises until much that is styled ‘Christianity’ is secularism faintly tinged with emotion, it is heartening to hear a strong voice raised to assert the truth of Scripture, the binding force of God’s Law, and the Redemption of the world through Jesus; and to hear so much of the traditional moral code of Christendom stoutly upheld.

“Dr. Graham stands for a way of living which is completely ‘God-centered’; and he is, therefore, a sign of contradiction in a world which has become very largely unconscious of the idea that religion deals with an order of Actual Facts, and the most important facts in life. From the standpoint of the Catholic Christian, the most notable reflection to be made about many of the evangelist’s critics in the Press is that they appear never to have read the New Testament at all; and that they are incapable of conceiving of ‘salvation’ as something different from social betterment, the spread of humanitarianism, or freedom from the fear of an awful nuclear war!

“Many may be disposed to dismiss Protestant evangelism lightly as ‘superficial emotionalism’ or even to condemn it as harmful. But, while recognizing the shortcomings of these men and their ‘Bible-Christianity,’ it is also necessary to realize that the weight of a man, in God’s sight, is measured by his love; and that those who truly love Him and desire to serve Him can become instruments of great good in His Hand—as was John Wesley—despite errors and defects of doctrine.

“The Catholic has no need to ‘get religion’ from Dr. Billy Graham and cannot resort to him without sinning against his own greater light, as well as violating the religious law by which he is bound. But there are very many who cannot be reached with the Church’s voice, or whom inveterate prejudice would prevent from listening to it. If these can be aroused from their moral lethargy, or receive a partial light from this sincere man concerning Divine Truth, we have every reason to praise God and be thankful for it.”

It is a cause for sad and serious reflection that the most bitter criticism came from certain Protestant ministers. This criticism was often ill informed and in some cases ill natured. The Reverend G. D. Griffith, Librarian of St. Mark’s Library, Canberra, (and a former Fellow and Tutor of the General Theological Seminary, New York) saw fit to publish a booklet (in a series sponsored by the Anglican Truth Society) titled, Anglicans and Billy Graham. Mr. Griffith was undeterred by the fact that he had not heard Billy Graham; without hesitation he undertook the self-appointed task of defining the attitude which Anglicans should adopt to the Crusade. This was the more temerarious in view of the fact that the invitation to conduct the Crusade was issued by the Archbishop of Sydney and Primate of Australia, the late Howard W. K. Mowll.

Mr. Griffith criticizes the vast organization and expense involved in the conduct of the Crusade. The objects to the whole concept of mass evangelism, forgetting that we have the highest precedent for addressing crowds in the open air. He is critical of the message as well as the methods. It becomes clear that this is the real subject of complaint: not merely the practice of mass evangelism, but the proclamation of evangelical truth. “The Billy Graham movement is the spearhead of a world-wide fundamentalist or evangelical revival.” Says Mr. Griffith: “It is significant that responsive (sic) critics of the British campaign, and in particular the Bishop of Southwell and the present Archbishop of York, criticized not the evangelist himself but what he stood for, viz., a revival of fundamentalism which they consider a retrograde step in the history of the Church.”

Mr. Griffith is concerned to stress the purity of his motives: “People do not oppose Billy Graham for the heck of it or for the fun of it, but because they have the interests of the Church and the Good News very much at heart. They acknowledge the indisputable fact that he is sincere, but feel bound to say that he is sincerely wrong—both in the content of his message and in the methods he uses to put it across.”

And what is the alternative which is offered? It is the psychiatrist’s couch for the penitent form; and the technique of group dynamics for the experience of conversion. “The education program … through Church and Group Life Laboratories, Parish Leaders’ Institutes, Parish Life Missions, and Parish Life Conferences, offers a new way of evangelism which has produced startling effects.”

Mr. Griffith is clear that Billy Graham is not the answer: “he is likely to set back the cause of real Christianity by decades.” Mr. Griffith, however, can give us the answer: “the Church is the chosen instrument by scriptural authority, and it is through ‘the travail of her corporate life’ that people can take hold of the redemption that has been won.” Presumably this means something: the New Testament states—without ambiguity—that “it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

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