A new Billy Graham came to Washington this week. He had the same transparent dependence on the New Testament message that he had when he conducted a crusade in the nation’s capital in 1952. He also had the same tanned face, lank frame, ebullient lungs, and artless manner. His familiar lieutenants—including song leader Cliff Barrows, soloist George Beverly Shea, and colleague Grady Wilson—were still with him.
Yet somehow many things were different. Instead of a boyish tent-preacher who had recently been “puffed” into a national phenomenon, he was now a mature, recognized national leader, the confidant of statesmen. The voice from the “wilderness” of the Carolina coastal plain had become an interpreter of world events in the light of God’s Word, and in the context of his own conversations with queens and premiers.
Eight years ago Billy Graham preached on the Capitol steps, and in an armory seating 10,000. This week he is speaking in Griffith Stadium, home of the Washington Senators, to perhaps as many as 25,000 or more. President Eisenhower had indicated he would be among those in attendance if he returned from the Far East in time.
Eight years ago Jerry Beavan had to warn Graham and Barrows that Washington would look askance at the brilliant ties and gabardine suits they were accustomed to wearing at their revival services. “This is the national capital,” he reminded them, “buy some button-down shirts.” By contrast, last week several hundred Congressmen, diplomats and government employees sat down at a banquet in the Presidential Ballroom of the Staffer Hilton Hotel, at the invitation of Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield and Crusade Chairman Boyd Leedom, to hear Billy speak. In a corner of the beveled invitation were the succinct words, “Black Tie.”
But most significant, perhaps, was the change in mood in eight years. In 1952 no hydrogen bomb had been exploded, no satellites launched, no summits had collapsed. The armory had attracted many who were gay, bored and frivolous, and who took in a crusade as they would take in a show. Doubtless there would be some such at the stadium this week, but there would also be many thousands of sober Americans who were deeply concerned about the national destiny and their place in it, many who saw in the challenge to moral renewal the only hope for the West.
In a preparatory move, the crusade committee arranged a series of top-level functions last week at which the evangelist spoke. They were of the type that emerged such a significant feature of the crusades in London, New York and San Francisco.
He addressed a breakfast at the House of Representatives, a Senate luncheon, a banquet for military personnel convened by Secretary of the Army Wilbur Brucker in the Mayflower Hotel, a luncheon of combined service clubs in the Mayflower with the Optimist Club acting as host, and a Sheraton Park Hotel banquet sponsored by the General Federation of Women’s Clubs of America.
In 1952 the sponsorship of the crusade was limited to a scattered group of churches, many of them small. This week the evangelist was being welcomed by some 300 churches of the metropolitan area, and unofficially by the Council of Churches of the National Capital Area, with solid support from its retiring director, Dr. Frederick E. Reissig and from its chairman of evangelism, Dr. Clarence Cranford. Thus Graham’s first return visit to a major city to hold a crusade resulted in a significant response from the main stream of Protestant churches.
The crusade was scheduled to open at 3 p.m. Sunday, June 19, in the stadium, with meetings each night and the closing rally on Sunday afternoon, June 26. Preparations were made by Crusade Director Walter Smyth, working with a 20-man executive committee headed by Leedom, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, and Pastors G. Dewey Robinson and Edward L. R. Elson. Six members of the committee, including the treasurer, were drawn from Negro churches. Graham told 700 Washington ministers at a breakfast last January, “In my opinion it is going to do us good, psychologically good, to have tens of thousands of people of several races sitting together at Griffith Stadium, an integrated crusade from start to finish, singing the hymns and listening to the Gospel.”
The detailed preparations for which the Graham team is famous have been completed. Nearly 2,000 counselors have been trained by team member Dan Piatt. Specially-trained counselors for the first time are being used for marriage problems, as a result of needs that have arisen in past crusades. A thousand-voice choir will be singing each night. The choir is flanking each side of the rostrum in the playing field.
“Operation Andrew,” the Graham plan for bringing uncommitted persons to the meetings in busloads, will be helping to pack the stadium. There will be reserved sections for Congressmen, Senators and their staffs. Special trainloads are expected from several other states including South Carolina and Indiana.
Nearly two thousand homes in the area have been opened for cottage prayer meetings, according to Dr. George Docherty, prayer chairman. Daily prayer broadcasts began May 30. Hundreds of ushers have been recruited and trained by layman Gratz Dunkum, who held the same post in 1952.
But beyond all the mechanics of the crusade, Billy Graham and his team members, including Associate Evangelists Wilson, Joseph Blinco and Leighton Ford, were seeking spiritual guidance for what will be a most significant test of their ministry. It is one thing to influence important people, it is another to win converts to Jesus Christ who will then give their lives completely into his service. The year 1960 is, like 1952, an election year; yet America’s problems go deeper than a choice between parties. Many believe the issue is moral disaster, and that a genuine spiritual revival is our chief hope. Yet was it really possible for the Holy Spirit to bring revival to sophisticated America in 1960?
Graham faced other problems as well. In a post-graduate thesis submitted to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the Rev. George P. Bowers analyzed the four-week Greater Louisville (Kentucky) Crusade conducted by the Graham team in 1956. Elis sampling of 100 persons making decisions at that crusade highlighted the imperative need for a more intensified follow-up on the part of pastors and counselors if the fruits of the meeting are to be conserved.
Graham and his colleagues readily concede that many inquirers fall by the wayside. Each crusade underscores human inadequacies in counseling and follow-up methods. Special problems persist.
Yet it must be said for the Graham team that efforts are continually being made to overcome deficiencies. The system of dealing with those who respond to the invitation is under steady surveillance. Improvements are incorporated as they are developed.
“Every day is a day of school in the crusade,” says Piatt, the alert young Baptist layman who is responsible for conducting the counselor training classes in Washington. “We review our procedures constantly and we try to apply the lessons that we learn.”
Last fall a new type of decision card was introduced, aimed at drawing out more fully the counselor’s initiative (he must now complete a third of the card and mail it in himself). A minister is now immediately assigned to call upon every person who records a decision for Christ, to check that the individual’s need has been met, and to see that he is invited to church the very next Sunday. Subsequently, the inquirer is supplied with an enlarged Bible study program and encouraged to become active in the church of his choice.
Another recent innovation is the plan for a series of breakfasts for ministers prior to the crusade’s start. The ministers are addressed by a team member, who usually gives a detailed briefing of crusade plans and describes how the individual clergyman or layman can cooperate. The pastors are encouraged to ask questions and to offer suggestions.
The evangelist’s health can still be a problem in itself. By the middle of June, Graham had recovered much of the energy lost in the rigors of the African campaign earlier this year. Although he no longer seems to have the stamina necessary for an extended crusade, the evangelist did consider himself “quite ready” for the eight-day Washington thrust. In an effort to conserve his physical resources he has been re-examining commitments to various evangelical enterprises, which, though commendable in themselves, nonetheless sap strength and consume precious time. Graham has been trying to weigh these considerations along with the burdens and priorities inherent in his own evangelistic outreach. As a result, he has recently tendered his resignation to several boards.
Convinced that pressures of the world tend to erode the spiritual powers of twentieth-century Christians, the evangelist and his wife have sought during the spring months to spend at least an hour a day in outdoor meditation—perhaps a walk in the woods near their home in the western North Carolina mountains with prayer and Bible reading.
The National Capital Crusade was but one phase of a four-continent effort by the evangelist during 1960. He has already spent nearly three months in Africa, and several days in South America. He has scheduled a five-week crusade in Germany (Berlin, Hamburg, Essen) and Switzerland (Lausanne, Bern, Basel, Zürich) during July and August. And he plans a unique three-day mission to New York City’s Spanish-speaking population in Madison Square Garden the weekend of October 7–9.
Existentialism … astronaut … Castro … beatnik … these were words unknown to Billy Graham and to most Americans in 1952. The space age and its jargon had not been invented. To a new Billy, moving in a wider orbit with his Gospel of repentance and grace, the city which has become the axle of the whole free world offered an unprecedented challenge.
