Billy Graham’s Euro 70 crusade was unprecedented. Preaching to overflow crowds of up to 20,000 in the German city of Dortmund’s Westfalenhalle, the evangelist was seen and heard simultaneously from Norway to Yugoslavia.
A nightly total audience of more than 100,000 people in thirty-five relay cities across eleven countries shared the crusade through the largest closed-circuit TV network ever attempted in Europe.
“Never before have we tried to reach so many people in so many countries at the same time by TV,” commented Graham. “This week I have preached to more people in person than any previous week of my life.”
German opposition to the crusade seemed to melt away. Even a demonstrator who crashed a meeting of clergy (see April 24 issue, page 34) to denounce Graham, later showed up at an evening meeting sitting quietly in the crowd. A bomb threat in the main auditorium proved false, and promised left-wing student demonstrations never materialized.
Bishop Hans Timme of the Protestant State Church of Westfalia made this assessment: “While many Lutheran clergy of Germany do not support Dr. Billy Graham … there has been a major breakthrough with many sympathizers coming to the side of the evangelist and recognizing that he is an instrument of God. The present hour for Germany is the hour of evangelization, and the churches of our country would do well to learn from Billy Graham’s methods, and especially the use of mass media in communicating the message of God. There is no doubt that thousands of German young people are reacting to him positively. This is a great joy to me.”
Pastor Paul Deitenbeck, who heads No Other Gospel, the controversial new confessional movement in the German state church, said: “Billy Graham’s Euro 70 is the greatest and most successful evangelistic effort that Germany has known in the twentieth century.”
Spiritual effectiveness was undoubtedly aided by technological efficiency. Three hundred technicians combined their efforts to transmit sound and vision over a 3,600-mile network. Some manned radio links on mountain tops in Norway. Others were alongside huge Eidophor projectors that put the picture on large screens, giving relay audiences a greater sense of communication than that experienced by some sitting in the back of the Westfalenhalle (to them the preacher was a pinpoint in the distance). One Eidophor operator left his projector during a meeting—just long enough to join those responding to the invitation to “commit your life to Christ.”
Such relays had been done before but only within a single country, Britain. Euro 70 was different because Graham had never visited most of the countries to which he preached. Precrusade observers wondered whether this would hinder local interest, but many centers reported overflow crowds.
Many European leaders agreed with Algemeen Dagblad, a Dutch national daily, which headlined one crusade story: “Billy Graham Dusts the Church in Europe.” Commented Graham: “Many people told me that for Europe today the Bible is not relevant and that people would not listen to a simple biblical message. But the great crowds throughout Europe night after night were saying, ‘The Bible is relevant. Young people will listen.’ ”
Dr. Wilhelm Gilbert, president of the German Evangelical Alliance, claimed the crusade touched Europe “on a scale we never dreamed possible even a few days ago. The effect of the preached Gospel is in all our churches, and true Christians found courage to proclaim this same Jesus.”
Another evaluation came from the Reverend Johannes Heider, pastor of the largest state church in Dortmund and chairman of the local crusade: “The simple proclamation of the Bible by Billy Graham has brought more results than we ever expected, and it has also brought many problems to German theologians. The hearts of Protestant pastors in Germany have been opened to the unchanged, authoritative Gospel message.”
Before Graham, tired (“I don’t have the energy and strength of ten years ago”) but obviously happy, left Dortmund, he said: “The crusade went far beyond all expectation in most of the cities of Western Europe.… It was a technological breakthrough.… We intend to use this method in other parts of the world. It is too early to evaluate, but I suspect that religious history will record that this crusade has been the greatest evangelistic breakthrough in Europe in this century.”
DAVE FOSTER
This Land Is ‘His Land’
Jewish leaders in Jerusalem praised a motion picture described as “a musical journey into the soul of a nation” made by Christians. General reactions were best summed up by Israeli actress Dahlia Lavi, who described it as “a most beautiful film … done with so much love you could feel it.”
The film, His Land, is the latest production of World Wide Pictures, the film division of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. It features Britain’s popular singing star Cliff Richard and was written and directed by James F. Collier.
At the first of two special showings in the Israeli capital last month, World Wide Pictures president Cliff Barrows, who is featured in the film, welcomed a select group headed by Prime Minister Golda Meir. He told her: “No film we have ever produced has given us greater satisfaction and fulfillment.”
Neither has a World Wide film ever evoked such an immediate response from Christians, for whom it was made, and from Jews, whose history it vividly depicts. According to executive producer Frank Jacobson, the company has never placed a larger print order, and it is still inadequate. Between ten and fifteen thousand people daily are seeing it in the United States. Recent premiere showings in London were packed, and bookings for the film are solid for months ahead. There are plans for it to be dubbed in French, German, Spanish, and Japanese.
“How about Arabic?” Mrs. Meir asked smiling, as she settled down to watch the film’s more than hour-long endorsement of fulfilled prophecy in the land she leads. As it finished, she was visibly moved and said quietly: “So many thanks for picturing our land as it is. I’ve never seen it so beautiful.”
Later the film came under the wider scrutiny of Israeli state officials, government ministers, civic dignitaries, and leaders of the film industry. Of particular interest to Jerusalem’s affable mayor, Teddy Kollek, were the sequences about the city with which his name is synonymous. He is generally recognized as one of the world’s best authorities on the Holy City. “I was deeply moved.… I haven’t seen a better film about Jerusalem—ever,” the mayor said.
One of the few non-Jewish viewers of the film was film actress Leslie Caron, presently co-starring with Richard Boone in a Western now being made in Jerusalem. “It’s dynamic and moving … and it made me want to read the Old Testament, if only to check on what the film was saying,” she said in an interview.
Before the showing, film director Jim Collier told a reporter: “If God would use any part of this picture as a gesture of love from a Christian to a Jew, it will be more than worthwhile.” The spontaneous and warm applause given by a Jewish audience left no doubt about that.
DAVE FOSTER
Abortion: ‘Holy Innocents’?
Roman Catholic opposition to liberalizing abortion laws has given state legislators pause, though it has failed to prevent liberal laws in Hawaii and New York (see April 24 issue, page 36). When the New York bill came before the State Assembly the second time last month, a Jewish legislator changed his negative vote—which reflected the opinion of his largely Roman Catholic constituency—to an affirmative, allowing the measure to pass. Now George M. Michaels’s county Democratic committee has refused to endorse the five-term assemblyman for re-election.
In another striking piece of resistance, Roman Catholics in England and Wales (where abortion was legalized two years ago) plan to observe December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, as a day of prayer in sorrow for the “unborn victims of abortion.” The feast commemorates the young children slain by King Herod in his attempt to kill the baby Jesus.
Battle For Berkeley
Christians were in the thick of it when leftists plunged the Berkeley campus into violence described by Chancellor Roger Heyns as the worst in the history of the University of California.
On Sproul Steps at noon on the second day of April Moratorium activities, Chinese refugee Calvin Chao addressed nearly 1,000 persons on the evils of Mao and the virtues of Christ. The rally, legally scheduled, was sponsored by the Christian World Liberation Front (see December 5, 1969, issue, page 35), headed by former Penn State professor Jack Sparks. The CWLF, despite threats, refused to yield to anti-war spokesmen. Angered, the leftists—including scores of enraged Maoists—set-up an illicit amplifier next to Chao and harangued the crowd, then began throwing rocks at windows, and set afire the nearby ROTC building. Chao concluded just as police—and tear gas—arrived.
In San Francisco two days later, an anti-war parade that was expected to attract 20,000 drew only 700 hardcore militants. Early arrivals were met at the Golden Gate Park staging area by nearly 100 CWLF’ers, who handed out pamphlets and underground-style newspapers. Maoists upset the CWLF sound system, an act ignored by American Civil Liberties Union observers. Undaunted, the CWLF’ers joined the rear of the march, behind the New Left’s red banners of revolution and Viet Cong flags. They carried gospel placards and banners, leafleted spectators, and spiritedly proclaimed Christ as the only answer to hate and war.
Back on campus the following week, clusters of somewhat subdued activists were engaged in dialogue with CWLF’ers. On two successive nights hundreds of students and “street people” showed up at CWLF Bible-study sessions on campus. Significantly, it was exactly one year earlier that the first CWLF’ers had arrived in town; their mission: the New Left.
EDWARD E. PLOWMAN
Paisley’s Progress
Belfast bookies were offering odds of two to one on “The Big Fellow” who was canvassing last month for election to Ulster’s parliament. The constituency was a unionist stronghold; his chief opponent was backed by a party machine long entrenched but not underestimating the threat; his policy was to “root out that nest of traitors” in the Belfast legislature that was allegedly betraying its Protestant heritage; his campaign platform was “For God and Ulster.”
In that sign he (and the bookies) conquered. In a three-cornered fight, Ian Paisley secured 7,981 votes to the government candidate’s 6,778. With the Labour representative, a Roman Catholic, coming a poor third after the two Protestants, the inference has been drawn that some Catholics voted for Paisley—for reasons that would be devious anywhere but in Ireland.
Overshadowed by the Paisley contest had been the other casual election of the day in South Antrim, where a Free Presbyterian colleague of Paisley was a contender. In a much greater upset, the Reverend William Beattie confounded even the bookies by romping home against an official candidate himself regarded as a Protestant hard-liner.
Four days later, Paisley and the 27-year-old Beattie took their seats in Stormont as the first representatives of their Protestant Unionist party. Their election is a shattering setback to an administration which has for years become both accustomed to and complacent about the absence of any concerted opposition. The government has reason to be apprehensive, for this comes on top of a deep division within its own ranks, the very real threat of civil war, and the humiliating and increasingly resented presence of British troops as peacemakers.
Paisley’s double success may be seen also as an answer to Bernadette Devlin’s victory last year. It cannot be ruled out that Paisley’s purpose ultimately is to sit also in the London Parliament. Even the Big Fellow’s electioneering door to door in Bannside was a remarkable performance, combining tender pastoral concern with blunt warnings to all comers that any sellout to Rome will be resisted to the death.
Questioned about his nonstop activity, he says: “My fantastic energy is the gift of God.…” He has promised that far from being muzzled by his new status, he will be the most acute embarrassment the unionists have had in fifty years of unchallenged rule—a declaration that will provoke no argument even in Ireland. As a starter, he asked for the resignation of Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark. “I’ll make it so hot for the Prime Minister he will want to retire,” Paisley vowed.
J. D. DOUGLAS
Expo 70: Few Mindful Of ‘What Is Man?’
Japan’s Expo 70, says an official brochure, helps answer a question people often ask themselves: “What is Man?” If such a philosophical question is much on the minds of those attending the fair, though, they rarely show it.
Ten million had passed through the Osaka turnstiles by mid-April—waiting in line four hours outside major pavilions, dazzled by the 35,000 reflecting lamps of the Swiss exhibit, grumbling at high food prices, often carrying tags or flags to avoid getting lost from their groups. But what most were not doing, apparently, was pondering meanings. Instead, they were having fun.
Nor did the pattern seem to vary significantly at the joint Protestant-Roman Catholic Christian Pavilion, designed by its sponsors “to help fairgoers, in perhaps the most gala extravaganza ever, to reflect upon the state of contemporary man and upon his own life.”
Ten thousand people a day descend into a catacomb-like chamber filled with thought-provoking photographs, three Vatican tapestries, and two sculptures (one a likeness of Christ carrying a broken world on his shoulders). Then they return to a lighter room and hear recitals on the world’s largest bamboo organ.
Frequently the pavilion succeeds. A collegian pauses to read the single Japanese Bible on display. Someone asks one of the attractive mini-skirted guides the significance of an unexplained chalice and saucer in the upper room. A Tokyo Buddhist is moved by a word from the Lord’s Prayer in a brief noon service. Another visitor buys a New Testament at the small bookstand.
But by and large the mood differs little from that of other pavilions. Christian culture clearly overshadows Christian challenge. Direct presentation of the person of Christ, or explanation of his message, is missing. Noted one guide: “The most popular spot here is the washroom; it’s convenient.”
But overt evangelism isn’t totally absent in Expo-land. Nine Pocket Testament Leaguers pass out Japanese-language Scriptures daily. And the Mormon pavilion, staffed mainly by American students speaking a heavily accented Japanese, clearly tries to convert visitors.
JAMES HUFFMAN
A Rainbow For Religion?
The most dramatic moment of the three-day Religious Communication Congress came during a luncheon session when it was announced that the Senate had just rejected Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell. The news was greeted by applause, but a moment later everyone went back to his fruit cup. Much of the rest of the Chicago meeting was devoted to indicting traditionalism in religion in a way that has become ho-hum (see also editorial, page 25).
“There is no way to call off the unfolding drama,” said sociologist Jeffrey K. Hadden. “Holding onto traditional beliefs and practices involves a gradual but certain estrangement from the central and critical problems of our society and world.”
Hadden, a young professor now at Tulane, wrote The Gathering Storm in the Churches two years ago. In the book he documented the downhill trends of organized religion. In his speech at the congress he said things look even worse. But there might be a rainbow, Hadden said, if churches are willing to subsidize autonomous sociological studies. He is not sure how sociology might help religion, but he advocates dialogue because “too much is at stake not to try.”
Most of the speakers at the congress shared Hadden’s pessimistic view of the Church, though his was the most thorough presentation. Perhaps the most challenging word came from Paul Simon, lieutenant governor of Illinois (a liberal Democrat and Missouri Synod Lutheran), who said that people in the religious media may be taking on a more significant role if church attendance continues to decline.
The meeting was the first in North America to draw together on a continent-wide basis key professionals in religious communications. Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish groups were represented. The Associated Church Press, the Catholic Press Association, and the Religious Public Relations Council held concurrent annual meetings.
Participants were shown a preview of Acts, an eighty-five-minute color feature film commissioned by Lutheran Film Associates (remembered for Martin Luther, Question 7, and A Time for Burning.) The new film is a sometimes sordid account of a young father who is preoccupied with himself. The setting is the controversial Washington Square United Methodist Church in New York’s Greenwich Village. Although purporting to use the cinéma vérité idiom (without actors and without script), the film stereotypes older people and exploits their theological ignorance.
DAVID KUCHARSKY
