Graham in the Garden: New Challenges in New York

Another Billy Graham Crusade … so professional … so polished … so much like Madison Avenue.… At least that’s the way it should look to the 200,000 persons expected to attend his current crusade in New York’s Madison Square Garden, June 13–22.

Beneath the surface and behind the Garden’s show window, however, Graham team workers have spent twenty months scurrying about, raising money, soliciting personnel, driving business bargains, writing news releases, organizing prayer groups, and training counselors—in a frenzy that bespeaks continual inventory time.

Witness, for example, crusade director Bill Brown’s New York offices two weeks before opening night: A half-empty cup of cold coffee on a sloppy desk. Overflowing wire baskets. Empty boxes in one corner. Filled boxes in another. A worn map of the city on one wall. A score of letters, awaiting signatures, in disarray on a folding chair. A dirty, threadbare couch where visitors wait for interviews. And witness the sidewalks at rush hour, twenty-seven stories below. All this points up the spirit of hurry, confusion, yet definite destination, that has caught up the Graham team this spring.

Why all the commotion? For a partial answer, look at the more typical facets of crusade preparation: Organizing prayer groups, training counselors, raising money …

The money matter, supervised by a local committee that invited Graham to New York four years ago, called for meeting most of the $825,000 budget by June 13—a goal that by late May local crusade chairman Elmer Engstrom felt fairly confident about reaching.

The prayer backing was handled by organization of more than 40,000 area churchmen into some 5,000 prayer groups; each began weekly meetings early in May.

Preparation of counselors has been the most extensive of any crusade. Since last fall, Graham’s associates have taught nearly 6,000 persons how to counsel with the men and women who respond to the evangelist’s invitations. Significantly, about 10 per cent of the counselors are persons who first accepted Christ in Graham’s 1957 New York campaign, while more than 1,000 persons have made “decisions” (many for conversion) during the training sessions themselves.

A second cause of the frantic activity lies in the unique problems posed by this particular crusade. The most obvious is New York City itself—its immensity, its immorality, its seething qualities. Billy, after a recent walk down Times Square with his son, told staff members he was “absolutely overwhelmed” with the openness and depth of the sin he saw.

There also is the problem of church apathy. Despite the hectic pace at crusade headquarters, several members expressed concern that local churches may not be working as hard for the success of this crusade as they did in 1957, even though more than 1,000 of them have indicated support.

“I sometimes wonder if some churches are becoming blasé about evangelism,” said Brown. “Most of them don’t set everything aside for the crusade anymore. They seem to take for granted that Billy Graham will bring automatic revival. But we know, of course, that he won’t.” Added an associate: “Strange, but in some ways it’s harder than ever before. I wonder if it’s a trend of the times. Evangelicals seem to be even more of a minority here than in the past.”

Added to these difficulties is the pervasive problem of race. Though the crusade committee includes blacks and Spanish-Americans, efforts to enlist broad support from non-white communities have been frustrating. More immediately worrisome were constant rumors that militant blacks might attempt to disrupt or hinder at least one of the services.

“We know nothing concrete, and have no plans to cope with such problems,” said Brown. But one of his colleagues noted: “Many black people have said they can’t see us getting through the crusade without trouble. All we can do is commit the problem to God.”

A third cause of the bustle is that new techniques have been devised to meet New York’s unique problems. “This city seems like a restless bull,” says team member Gil Stricklin, “almost as if possessed by demons. We have to try everything we can.”

Thus the decision to set up a gigantic coffeehouse. In Manhattan Center, near the Garden, tables are being provided each night for some 1,500 youths expected after the service for an informal hour or two of youth-oriented music (folk rock, hard rock, and “Jesus songs”)—and talk. “It’s a brand new approach,” says the Rev. Forrest Layman, the man behind the coffeehouse. “We want to reach youth in their media, and music is their life. It will be an experiment … a soft-sell approach … the most exciting departure for me in ten years of crusades.”

Thus, also, the decision to set up a crusade TV network, sending each of the rallies into a potential of 30 million Eastern homes each night.

And thus the return to a kind of daytime “soap box” evangelism. Each day, vans will move into areas like Central Park, the shipping docks, and Times Square, with associate evangelists aboard to preach to open-air crowds. This approach may take some adjusting by more traditional preachers, Brown admits. “But people who have done this sort of thing say you can pull 1,500 listeners just like that. It’s exciting.”

Despite the intense activity, team members are not starry-eyed while discussing their hopes. Graham himself has said the man on the street would probably not notice great changes in the city. “The important thing,” said Engstrom, “is that we confront a substantial number of people with the call of Christ. Maybe those who respond will have a leavening effect on the city.”

… Like the Puerto Rican child confronted by a layman on his way to a crusade committee meeting. Noticing the lad scribbling on a subway poster, the man walked over intending to scold him—only to find the boy writing the words, “Jesus saves.”

“Do you know what that means?” he asked. The youngster replied: “Sure do! The preacher Billy Graham came to San Juan in 1967 when I still lived there—and I became a Christian.”

Korean Congress: ‘Christ For 30 Million’

Korea’s two million Protestants followed up the Berlin and Singapore Congresses on Evangelism with one of their own. A four-day Korean Congress last month drew more than 1,000 Christian leaders from all denominations to lay plans for national evangelism.

Then, putting their plans into action, they climaxed the congress with a five-day United Evangelism Crusade that on its first night alone packed Seoul Stadium with more than 40,000 Koreans to listen to a Chinese evangelist from Hong Kong, the Rev. Timothy Dzao. Though Asia-planned and Asia-directed, the congress did not exclude the West. Other speakers included Dr. Kermit Long, former evangelism secretary of the United Methodist Church in the United States. Daily Bible conferences in the municipal stadium added depth to the rallies.

Planning for the congress was directed by three prominent Korean Christian leaders: Dr. Simeon Kang, pastor of Saemoonan Presbyterian Church, the oldest Korean Protestant Church: Dr. Helen Kim, president emeritus of Ewha Women’s University (Methodist), the largest women’s college in the world; and Dr. Kyung-Chik Han, pastor of what may well be Asia’s largest single Christian congregation—the 9,000-member Yungnak Presbyterian Church of Seoul.

Both the congress and the rallies were challenging reminders to Korea’s Christians that although their church is the largest organized religion in Korea—now outnumbering both Buddhists and Confucianists—there are nevertheless more non-Christians in Korea today than when Protestant work began eighty-five years ago. Ninety to 93 per cent of Korea’s expanding population still does not acknowledge Christ as Lord.

The congress chose as its motto: “Let us put Christ in the heart of every one of our 30 million Koreans” (in South Korea).

SAMUEL H. MOFFETT

Religion In Transit

Twelve of the “Milwaukee 14”—including six clergymen—were found guilty of theft, burglary, and arson in the burning of draft records last summer.… Two days earlier last month, a group known as the “Chicago 15,” including two Catholic priests and a seminarian, were arrested on similar charges.

A Bronx district attorney is investigating the reported referral by New York clergymen of pregnant girls to illegally operating abortionists, four of whom were recently arrested in a raid on a lavish Bronx apartment. Twenty-one prominent clerics of New York two years ago formed the Clergymen’s Consultation on Abortion, but its spokesman won’t admit it’s illegal, the New York Times said.

Commencement at United Presbyterian Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, took on an avant-garde look this year, with students planning the exercises. The 420 graduates wore no caps or gowns, one of them refused her diploma, and a speakerless program included slides of atrocities in Viet Nam and Biafra. Loud protest music drew boos from many adults.

Already, reparations demands presented in different church groups total more than $1 billion, plus another $1.5 billion for black colleges, far more than the original $500 million asked in militant James Forman’s “Black Manifesto” (see June 6 issue, page 42). Demands made this month included $100 million asked of metropolitan Boston’s churches and synagogues, particularly the Christian Science “mother” church. Rejecting Forman’s demands were the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church and the General Board of the Christian Church (Disciples).

Personalia

Westmont College (Santa Barbara, California) will have a new president July 1: Dr. John William Snyder, 45, acting chancellor of Indiana University.

Now engaged is Ruth Bell Graham, 19, youngest daughter of evangelist and Mrs. Billy Graham. Her fiancé, Ted Dienert, 24, of Rydal, Pennsylvania, attended Taylor University in Indiana and works in Philadelphia. Miss Graham is a sophomore at Gordon College. No wedding date was set.

Convicted draft-subversion conspirator William Sloane Coffin, Yale chaplain, will marry Mrs. Harriet H. Gibney of Boston, former wife of an encyclopedia-company executive, this summer. The controversial United Presbyterian clergyman was divorced last year.

Although trustees did not act on his resignation, Stetson University president Paul F. Geren said he plans to leave the Baptist-associated school by fall (see June 6 issue, page 46). The faculty voted 93–0 “no confidence” in Geren’s administrative leadership.

Dr. John H. Tietjen, 40, public-relations secretary of the Lutheran Council in the U. S. A., has accepted the presidency of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

A United Presbyterian will be in charge of the world’s most powerful court if President Nixon’s choice for the next Chief Justice of the United States is confirmed. Warren Earl Burger and his wife belong to National Presbyterian Church, where Dr. Edward L. R. Elson (the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s pastor and chaplain of the U. S. Senate) is senior minister. The nominee was raised a Methodist, attended House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul. Burger’s churchgoing is spotty, but intimates consider him “a witnessing and working Christian.”

Terence Cardinal Cooke of New York became the sixth clergyman—and the first Roman Catholic—to preach to the President at last month’s White House church service.

DEATHS

ROBERT G. LETOURNEAU, 80, pioneer developer of earth-moving machinery, college founder, and internationally known church layman; in Longview, Texas.

TRUMAN B. DOUGLASS, 67, vice-president of the National Council of Churches and head of the United Church of Christ’s Board for Homeland Ministries; in New York.

World Parish

In a stately mansion by the River Seine northwest of Paris, the four-year-old French Evangelical Theological Seminary closed the current academic year with thirty-four students from eleven countries. The seminary—said to be the only “thoroughly evangelical” graduate theological school for 210 million people where French is officially spoken—started with five students.

To the beat of African tom-toms booming through St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Paul VI and twenty-four newly ordained priests from different countries concelebrated a Pentecost mass.

Evangelical leaders of Argentina have founded the Evangelical Theological Society. Its creed is like that of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. Latin America IVCF director Dr. Rene Padilla is president of the new group.

Conversions to the Christian faith have reached “staggering proportions” in some parts of India, a militant Hindu leader reported at an all-India Hindu conclave. A massive drive was planned to win back the converts.

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