Page 2664 – Christianity Today (2024)

Barack Obama may seem like the perfect candidate for the Religious Left.

He’s outspoken about his faith, he has a staff devoted to religious outreach, and he talks about finding common ground on divisive issues like abortion. Still, recent polls show he hasn’t pulled many votes away from John McCain.

David R. Swartz, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame, writes about the Religious Left’s influence among evangelicals in CT’s sister publication .

“Evangelicals’ engagement of diverse politics – including New Left, progressive New Deal, and right-wing politics, all since the early 1970s – suggests the volatility of evangelical politics and its susceptibility to co-optation, sudden shifts, and identity politics. The politicization of evangelicalism has exposed the limits of evangelical politics.”

Swartz says Amy Sullivan and Jim Wallis may have the best case for a “sea change” now than at any other time since 1973.

“But given the persisting limits of evangelical politics on the Left in the past three decades, Wallis and Sullivan’s hopes for a large, robust progressive movement may well be dashed again.”

Also, if you’re thinking about plopping down the bucks to see W., Brett McCracken wrote a commentary over at Christianity Today Movies on whether political movies matter in the election season. Read the whole thing, but here’s his conclusion:

“Perhaps film isn’t the best method of political propaganda; there just isn’t enough evidence to back it up. But don’t expect Hollywood to stop producing election-themed fare any time soon. As we’ve seen from Saturday Night Live this season, enjoying 50 percent higher ratings than this time last year, politics is good for entertainment. But is entertainment good for politics? Does it make a difference? The verdict is still out.”

53% Attendees in large churches (1,000+members) who say they shared their faith with strangers in the past month.

35% Attendees of small churches (<100 members) who say so.

(Source: Baylor Religion Survey)

50% Southern Baptist pastors who believe the Holy Spirit gives some people the gift of a special language to pray to God privately.

4% Southern Baptist pastors who say they personally speak in tongues or have a private prayer language.

8% All Americans of all faiths who say they have spoken or prayed in tongues.

(Source: Lifeway Research and Baylor Religion Survey)

17.6% Widows and widowers in the U.S. who say they give 10 percent or more of their income to the church.

8.6% Non-widowed Americans who say they give 10 percent or more.

(Source: Baylor Religion Survey)

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See our earlier Go Figure postings from October 2008, September 2008, August 2008, July 2008, June 2008, May 2008, April 2008, March 2008, February 2008, January 2008, December 2007, November 2007, October 2007, September 2007, and earlier issues.

Looking Before And After: Testimony and the Christian LifeAlan Jacobs

“Testimony.” If you are an evangelical of a certain age, that word will have a powerful resonance for you. It’s fallen out of fashion a bit, in part because we have seen a necessary correction to an excessive emphasis on individual Christian experience. Without dismissing this “ecclesiocentric” turn, Alan Jacobs wants to rehabilitate testimony. “What is my story? And how can I tell it?” That’s the burden of this superb book, a slim volume based on the 2006 Stob Lectures at Calvin College.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A MemoirHaruki Murakami

I’m a walker, not a runner. The two are as different as cats and dogs, with a long history of mutual suspicion. (Runners tend to be rather snooty about their slow-footed cousins, alas.) But I’m not going to let such petty concerns stand between me and a good book. Haruki Murakami, the most widely translated contemporary Jap-anese novelist, is also a dedicated runner (he has even done ultramarathons). His memoir touches not only on that pursuit but also on writing (“writing novels,” he says, “is a kind of manual labor”). On both subjects Murakami is a charming guide, and yet I finished his book with a sense of emptiness. We see the world differently.

Paradise LostJohn Milton Edited by William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, and Stephen M. Fallon

Here’s an idea for your book group. In this, the 400th anniversary of John Milton’s birth, why not take up Paradise Lost? Don’t be daunted. This new edition, now available in paperback, is well annotated. I’ll admit that I’ve never found Milton congenial. Reading him is a chore for me. But this great poem—one of the indispensable products of the Christian imagination—will repay every minute you give to it.

John Wilson is editor of .

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Other Bookmarks and reviews are in our books section.

The Vice Presidential nomination of Sarah Palin stunned the American public, especially the mainstream media. For weeks, the focus of Palin puzzlement shifted daily, from her support for aerial wolf hunting to her claiming per diem payments for nights spent at home to Tina Fey’s jaw-dropping Palin impersonation.

But two sex- and gender-related questions caught our attention. First, reactions to news of Bristol Palin’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy: liberal pundits gleefully announced that this was going to seriously undermine Governor Palin’s standing with the Republican Party’s evangelical base. Any informed evangelical watcher or evangelical believer could have told them that this is a non-issue.

It is a non-issue because John Newton’s famous line, “I once was lost but now I’m found,” defines the evangelical ethos. We specialize in troubled lives. Stories of transformation from sin and degradation to righteousness and wholeness frame the way evangelicals see life. From the slave-trading Newton to the White House “hatchet man” Chuck Colson, God saves people from their slavery to sin and uses them to restore others. Indeed, those of us who never did anything particularly shocking sometimes have trouble fitting in.

Evangelical pews are full of people whose family lives are untidy. If we get angry when a teen gets pregnant, it is not at the hot-blooded teens but at the fashion and entertainment industries that persistently sexualize the images of the young and set them up for bad choices. It’s no wonder: One recent study showed that adolescents with a sexually charged media diet are more than twice as likely as others to have sex by the time they turn 16. Teen pregnancy is one of the situations in which it is easiest for us to hate the sin but love the sinner.

The second media reaction that caught our attention was liberal puzzlement over conservatives who believe that only men should lead churches and marriages, yet who would not hesitate to have a woman a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Richard Land told Christianity Today that such concerns are asinine. The president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission compares the Palins to the Thatcher household: Dennis was head of the family, while Maggie ran the government. Land subscribes to the Baptist Faith and Message, which teaches that ecclesiastical and marital leadership are male territory. But Land is married to a strong woman, a professional with a Ph.D.

Are Christians like Richard Land inconsistent? We don’t think so. Gender is complex and fundamental and not a mere social construction. It functions in archetypal ways. Many conservative Christians (though not all) believe these archetypes provide symbolic structure to church and marriage. God distributes gifts across gender lines, and women and men who develop their gifts do so to the Giver’s glory. God created church and marriage, they say, and God wrote the user’s manual for each. But God also created society, and he gifted women from the biblical Deborah to Israel’s likely new Prime Minister Tzipi Livni with the gifts to govern.

Not all evangelicals believe that biblical admonitions about gender, church, and marriage apply beyond their first-century context. Indeed, the late Kenneth Kantzer, Billy Graham’s handpicked editor for CT, was an outspoken egalitarian. Yet the majority of evangelicals find it natural to follow what they see as a biblical pattern. Maleness and femaleness, though potent archetypes in church and home, are neither qualification nor impediment in any other endeavor.

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Previous Christianity Today editorials can be found here.

For more politics coverage, see Christianity Today‘s campaign 2008 section and the politics blog.

This article originally appeared in the November 18, 1988 issue of Christianity Today.

Billy Graham has been gifted with the ability to identify and gather around him men and women of great skills who can execute and bring to pass the things he envisions. He has also benefited from, and has brought to fruition, ideas that have come from the fertile minds of these many associates and friends. The list of organizations that have come into being directly and indirectly through his ministry is extensive and impressive; only a few of them can be mentioned here.

First on the list is the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). More than a billion dollars have been contributed across the years to this multifaceted organization, money that has been used with care and discernment to advance the cause of worldwide evangelization. Hundreds of talented people have been associated with this one enterprise as trustees and as co-laborers carrying out the visions of the founder.

The BGEA, as it is known popularly, publishes Decision magazine, with millions of copies circulated around the world in English and other languages. In addition, hundreds of millions of books published by the BGEA’s World Wide Publications have helped individuals either come to Christ for salvation or build them up in the holy faith.

World Wide Pictures also sprang out of the BGEA. Its films have been shown in neighborhood movie outlets and in thousands of churches, as well as in homes and small-group gatherings. The Corrie ten Boom film alone connotes the greatness of this particular enterprise brought into being by Graham.

The Billy Graham Center, located on the campus of Wheaton College, again illustrates the genius of Graham in working for the completion of the Great Commission. The center houses the artifacts connected with Graham’s crusade history as well as those related to other significant evangelists and their ministries. It also houses a vital missionary research library widely used by scholars from around the world. The center has a missionary training program, offers graduate study, and is a repository for the effects and papers of a host of well-known scholars.

Christianity Today magazine was another Graham idea that came to fruition quickly. It has become the largest evangelical conglomerate by adding to its roster of magazines Leadership, Marriage Partnership, Today’s Christian Woman, Campus Life, Sunday To Sunday, and Lay Leadership, as well as a host of ancillary products that are having a positive impact on the minds and hearts of so many.

Graham also played a major role in the merger of Gordon Divinity School and Conwell School of Theology, now Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Here men and women are trained for the parish ministry and for overseas services as missionaries. CUME in Boston is a multiracial instructional offshoot of Gordon-Conwell and exists to train minority leaders. It has become a model effort that is being replicated in other large metropolitan cities in America.

Billy Graham goes on dreaming dreams and is now engaged in developing and seeking to endow the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove, in the mountains of North Carolina. Here laypeople and clergy can come for training in fruitful Christian service.

All of these endeavors (and so many more!) were brought into being through the vision, leadership, and businesslike gifts of a man whose blameless life, financial integrity, and loyalty to the Word of God is unexampled. His wife, Ruth, has shared and contributed to those dreams. Without her prayers, counsel, and support, it is hard to believe that all of this could have taken place. Together they have had one aim—to glorify God, advance the work of the church, and finish the task of world evangelization.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

This was excerpted from an address by Billy Graham to the National Press Club in Washington, D. C., November 19, 1969. It was originally published in the December 19, 1969 issue of Christianity Today.

Norman Cousins said recently in an editorial in The Saturday Review that there are no insoluble problems on earth. Dr. Henry Pitney Van Dusen, president emeritus of Union Theological seminary in New York, took issue with him. “I know no one,” he said, “who faces the facts and has taken accurate measure of the manifold symptoms of profound, perhaps mortal, sicknesses in American society and still clings to such illusions.”

The American people have been sold a number of illusions that have no biblical foundation. I want to mention three of them. You might not agree with me; and that’s your privilege. I once heard Walter Reuther speak in Toronto just after he had called a strike of the United Auto Workers throughout Canada. He was addressing the Empire Club, and the leaders of the industry were there. What a cold reception he got! But he laid it on the line, even going so far as to name the salaries of some of the men who were sitting in front of him. I don’t think a man in the room agreed with him, but when he was finished, they gave him a standing ovation-because he had the guts and the courage to tell it like it was.

The first illusion I find prevalent in America today is that permanent peace is a reality apart from the intervention of God.

A few weeks ago it was my privilege to see Mrs. Golda Meier during her trip to the United States. While I was waiting to be taken to her room, one of her aides told me that a man in New York had said to her: “Madam Prime Minister, why don’t you Jews and Arabs sit down and settle your problems like Christians?” And I said: “Like in northern Ireland.”

Jesus predicted many centuries ago that we would have wars and rumors of wars to the end of time. Now why did he say that? Not because he approved of war. He said it because he knew human nature, knew its lust and its greed and its hate. Without God’s help man is not capable of solving the war problem.

Where does war come from? James the apostle tells us. “From whence come wars and fightings among you?” he asks. “Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?” In other words, we have something down inside us that is at war. As long as that spiritual war goes on in individual hearts all over the world, all other kinds of war remain possible. I read in a magazine the other day that forty-six wars are now going on. Right now. This includes such conflicts as the guerrilla activity in Venezuela, the fighting in the mountains of Colombia, and the many tribal wars in Africa. Forty-six wars-in a time of relative peace.

Does this mean that there is never going to be real peace? No. The Bible says there is going to be peace. The human race is not headed for destruction: we’re not going to destroy ourselves. The Bible teaches that God is going to intervene in the affairs of men and that we are going to know permanent world peace. The human race is headed toward utopia. Micah the prophet said, “He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

There is indeed a day of peace coming, but God is going to bring it, and it is going to be on his terms. The Jew looks for the Messiah, and the Christian looks for the Messiah also. The difference is that the Christian says that Jesus is the Messiah. But there is going to be a Messiah. There is going to be a person who can bring about peace in our world.

However, we don’t have to wait till that day comes to have peace in our own hearts. “My peace I leave with you,” says Jesus. “I can give you a supernatural peace and security, a supernatural love and joy that you’ve never known, if you put your confidence and your faith and trust in me.”

The second illusion that I think millions of Americans hold is that economic utopia is the answer to man’s deepest needs. Advertising has sold us a bill of goods and created an expectation gap. We’re told that if we use a certain kind of deodorant or a certain type of soap, well find happiness and peace and serenity and security. Well, suppose that all of us could have everything we wanted. Suppose there were two swimming pools in every home, three cars in every garage, a dozen chickens in every pot. Would that give us happiness and peace? No. Jesus said, “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” He also said: “Man shall not live by bread alone.” Man has much deeper needs. Loneliness, emptiness, alienation, guilt, the fear of death -these are his real problems.

Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, was asked why students riot and demonstrate. She replied: “The real reason is that fundamentally students are empty and alienated and theirs is a burning quest for reality.” I spend a lot of time at colleges and universities, and I can tell you that one of the gut issues today on campus is the search for reality: “Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going?” Modem education is not answering these questions that bum in the hearts of millions of students in America and throughout the world. A friend of mine who is a film star has a son attending Berkeley. This boy came to his father recently and said, “Dad, I’m dropping out; I’m going to become a hippie.” The father said, “Why?” And the son said, “Well, Dad, I hate you.” The father was of course shaken by that. “Why do you hate me?” he asked. His son said, “All right, Dad, I’ll tell you. You’ve made it too easy for me. I’ve had everything and you didn’t give me anything to believe in. And I hate you for it.”

We’ve given them the idea that material wealth is the answer—the higher the standard of living, the greater our happiness and peace. But our young people are rejecting that concept. They are lashing out and saying, “We don’t want it. We’re going to bum it down.” German students rioting in Berlin last year said that they were rioting against socialist materialism. A materialism without a faith.

The third illusion I see prevalent in America today is the assumption that democracy can survive without a religious faith. The direction in which we are now going—toward total secularism and total materialism—will lead ultimately to suppression and dictatorship. When honesty, integrity, and morality go, democracy is in jeopardy. Marcus Aurelius once said: “When a people lose confidence in themselves, the society crumbles.” We in America have become so self-critical that we are in danger of losing confidence in ourselves as a people.

Something very dangerous is happening: a vacuum is developing in philosophical America. It has many parallels to the situation in Germany in the late twenties and early thirties—many differences also, but many parallels. When a religious vacuum developed in Germany, Nazism moved in. Martin Gross, writing recently in the Miami Herald, says there is a new American religion. Some of its young practitioners ape the Jesus-look, he said. They make liturgical chants against war, racism, and poverty; they use marijuana as a religious opiate. “What of democracy’s future in such a false religious environment?” asks Gross. The spirit of this new religion is anti-democratic, he says, for it supposes that truth, is magically revealed only to an elite following. It claims to know better than the people—a spiritual lie that imprisons man. America broke that lie when it created a republic and a democracy with its base in religion, says Gross. To yield now to an ancient falsehood with a fashionable new religion would be pure folly.

What we need most in America today is a revitalization of Judeo-Christianity. We must have a renewal of faith in God, faith in one another, faith in America, faith in everything our country is supposed to stand for. Without that renewal, without a revitalization of the Church, the educational system, the government structure, and the mass media, our survival as a free democracy is, it seems to me, improbable.

This renewal can begin right here in my heart and in yours, if we will rededicate our lives to the God of our fathers. Not only would such a re-dedication transform our personal lives and our personal relationships; it would also enable us to make the, greatest contribution possible to the nation that we love and to the world in which we live.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

This article originally appeared in the January 4, 1974 issue of Christianity Today.

During a visit last month to Washington, D.C., where he preached at a White, House Christmas service attended by President and Mrs. Nixon, Vice-President and Mrs. Ford, Senator Edward Kennedy, and other dignitaries, evangelist Billy Graham met with the editorial staff of Christianity Today. The time was spent in a candid discussion of the Watergate affair and Graham’s association with President Nixon. The following is an edited distillation of that discussion.

What was your reaction when you received the invitation to speak at the White House?

I was in Switzerland attending an administrative committee meeting of the International Congress on World Evangelization when Mrs. Nixon called. She asked if I would come and hold a Christmas service on December 16. Naturally, I realized the delicacy of such a visit in the present “Watergate” climate. However, I recognized also the responsibility of such a service and the opportunity to present the gospel of Christ within a Christmas context to a distinguished audience. I have said for many years that I will go anywhere to preach the gospel, whether to the Vatican, the Kremlin, or the White House, if there are no strings on what I am to say. I have never had to submit the manuscript to the White House or get anybody’s approval. I have never informed any President of what I was going to say ahead of time. They all have known that when I come I intend to preach the gospel. If Senator McGovern had been elected President and had invited me to preach, I would gladly have gone. I am first and foremost a servant of Jesus Christ. My first allegiance is not to America but to “the Kingdom of God.”

How do you answer those who say this implies a kind of benediction on everything that happens at the White House?

That view is ridiculous. Twenty years ago we called such thinking “McCarthyism”—guilt by association. This was the accusation of the Pharisees against Jesus, that he spent time with “publicans and sinners.” Through the years I have stated publicly that I do not agree with all that any administration does. I certainly did not agree with everything that President Johnson did, and I was at the White House as often under Johnson as under Nixon. I preached before Johnson more than I have preached before Nixon and had longer and more frequent conversations with him. But I did not agree with everything Johnson did. I publicly stated so on several occasions. On one of those occasions, I think he was irritated with me, but he soon got over it. Since then, I have tried to make it a point, which I am sure is obscured and blurred, that I go to the White House to preach the gospel and that my preaching visits have absolutely nothing to do with the current political situation. It is quite obvious that I do not agree with everything the Nixon administration does.

Do you think Watergate and its related events were illegal and unethical?

Absolutely. I can make no excuses for Watergate. The actual break-in was a criminal act, and some of the things that surround Watergate, too, were not only unethical but criminal. I condemn it and I deplore it. It has hurt America.

Some of our evangelical friends wonder why you don’t go into the White House like a Nathan and censure the President publicly in these services. What’s your response?

Let’s remember that I am not a “Nathan.” David was the leader of “the people of God,” and it was a totally different situation than today’s secularistic America. A better comparison would be with ancient Rome and Paul’s relationship with Caesar. Also, when a pastor has in his congregation a mayor or a governor who may be in some difficulty, he doesn’t point this man out publicly from the pulpit. He tries to encourage and help him and to lead him. Perhaps in private he will advise him on the moral and spiritual implications of the situation, but I don’t think the average clergyman in the pulpit would take advantage of such a situation and point to this man and say publicly, “You ought to do thus and so.”

Let’s also remember that in America a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. As far as I know, the President has not been formally charged with a crime. Mistakes and blunders have been made. Some of them involved moral and ethical questions, but at this point if I have anything to say to the President it will be in private.

Dr. Graham, have you had second thoughts about stating publicly that you voted for Nixon?

I am a Democrat, but I thought Mr. Nixon was the best qualified man to be President. Secondly, he and I had been personal friends for over twenty years. I hardly knew Senator McGovern, though I know Sargent Shriver very well and consider him to be a close personal friend. Mr. Shriver has been in my home and I have been in his.

One of the famous examples in church history is Ambrose of Milan, who publicly rebuked the Emperor Theodosius when he came to church and told him he couldn’t come in until he had made a public confession for certain things. What about this?

That’s not a proper parallel, though I greatly admire Ambrose for his courage. Ambrose was a political as well as a religious figure. I am not a bishop, as was Ambrose, nor is President Nixon my subject, as was Theodosius. As I have already stated I have no proof that the President has done anything illegal, and I would have no ecclesiastical power over him to do anything about it if I did have proof. I think the President comes into the church with the same status as anyone else: either a sinner saved by God’s grace or a sinner in need of that grace.

You say there is no crime for which the President could be censured directly or obliquely. What about the sin of misleading the people by making such a statement as, “I have ordered John Dean to make a thorough investigation; he reports that nothing is wrong”; or “I ordered Ehrlichman to make his investigations, and he reports nothing wrong”; or “I am going to tell the full story.” This has been going on for twelve months now and there’s more to come. Is this not censurable?

If the President knew and withheld the information, then he might be accused of obstructing justice. But I do not know the full story. The full story as he knew it should have been told. It may have been told—he may have told all he knew at that moment. I don’t know! The mass of information and contradictions is so confusing that I cannot make a fair judgment at this time except to say that apparently someone has committed perjury, and bearing false witness, or telling a lie, is a sin. I’m not privy to what has been going on; I’m not a confidant or counsel to the President on such matters.

What do you think about the idea of a religious service in the White House on a regular basis?

I wish the President could set an example and go to a local congregation, but since the assassination of President Kennedy it’s a problem for a President to go where he wants. The Secret Service gets nervous. And then we had a period when people demonstrated on every conceivable subject, and many church services might have been torn apart by this type of thing. President Nixon wanted to avoid that. Those who wrote that there had never before been services in the White House just didn’t know their history. I conducted services at the White House for President Johnson as well as at Camp David and the LBJ ranch.

Some say the White House is simply making you a tool to assure respectability in the eyes of people who would be influenced by seeing the President at prayer or listening to a sermon. What is your reaction to that remark?

That’s foolish. Did Kennedy make a tool of Cardinal Cushing? Of course not. If Mr. Nixon wanted to make me a tool, why has it been so long since he invited me to the White House? During the period when he might have needed a person like me the most he didn’t have me.

Twice this year I offered to talk to the President. One of his aides said that one of the reasons Mr. Nixon didn’t have me is that he didn’t want to hurt me. Now whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but I remember in 1960 when he was running for President there was a rumor that I might endorse him and he called and told me not to endorse him if I was thinking of it. He said, “Billy, your ministry is more important than my election to the Presidency.” Many Presidents have had close relationships with clergymen. I have a research scholar who has been spending many months doing research on the relation between Presidents and clergymen, and I would say that my relation with Mr. Nixon is not as close as that between other Presidents and clergymen of their day. For example, the relation between John R. Mott, called the architect of the ecumenical movement, and President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson went to Mott for advice and counsel not only on religious matters but on political and diplomatic matters as well. I don’t think people credited or blamed Mott for what went on in the Wilson administration. I also don’t think people held Cardinal Cushing accountable during the Kennedy administration. And he certainly was with the Kennedys a great deal more than I have been with Mr. Nixon. Cardinal Gushing acted as a pastor to the Kennedy family. He might have given political advice privately. I knew Cardinal Cushing quite well, and I know that he wasn’t above giving a political word here and there. Throughout the years I have said things to various Presidents that could be construed as political advice. I’m not so quick anymore to make political judgments.

Because of your geographical location at the time, some people feel you were very involved in 1968 in the selection of the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate …

That’s wrong. I had been invited to lead a prayer at the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. The invitation had come while I was visiting the Johnsons on a Sunday at the White House. Mr. John Criswell, who was in charge of arrangements at the Democratic convention, asked if I would be willing to come and lead a prayer on President Johnson’s birthday. I said I would be glad to lead a prayer at the Democratic convention but only if I was invited by the Republicans also. Thus I attended both conventions briefly and said a prayer at both of them.

As I recall it, after his nomination I went to the hotel to congratulate Mr. Nixon. It was after midnight. He had invited several Republican leaders to meet with him privately. He grabbed me by the arm and said, “Billy, wouldn’t you like to sit in?” Naturally, I was curious about what went on at such occasions. I sat in the rear. Mr. Nixon sat in the middle of a circle of about twenty people. He asked everyone in the room for his opinion. And I never heard the name Agnew mentioned at that meeting. Senator Thurmond and the Southern group were holding out for Governor Ronald Reagan. To my surprise, Mr. Nixon turned to me and said, “Billy, you’ve heard all this. What do you think?” I answered, “Well, Dick, you know who my candidate is—it’s Mark Hatfield. I believe in his spiritual commitment. I believe that he’s a moderate liberal and that you need a balanced ticket because you are considered to be a conservative. You need the spiritual strength he could bring to the country. The country needs it.” Mr. Nixon thanked me and I went on back to the hotel-it was two or three in the morning—and went to bed.

Did you help engineer Mark Hatfield’s endorsem*nt of Nixon prior to the convention?

Emphatically no. In fact, Senator Hatfield had already decided what he was going to do before I saw him. He had made a public announcement to that effect a month earlier.

Many media people, both liberal and conservative, have become infuriated with President Nixon because of what they feel is his incurable self-righteousness and his unwillingness to admit to any mistake. This has cost him the support of a lot of people like Buckley and Kilpatrick. If a person is unwilling to admit a mistake, that appears to be a spiritual problem, too. Would that be something you should concern yourself with if you’re in a kind of pastoral relationship?

I won’t say what I have already said to him privately on this present visit, but I have personally found that when you have made a mistake it’s far better to admit it. I’ve had to admit errors in judgment, and I’ve found Christian people more than generous in understanding my faults. I think they would try to understand any President’s position, too. It’s better to show humility and it’s better to say “I’m wrong” or “I’m sorry” when you’ve made a mistake.

The Bible says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” That commandment has never been rescinded, and lying is wrong no matter who does it.

Let’s put the situation in context. We’ve tended over the past forty years to make a “monarch” out of the President. Every President needs some people around him who still call him by his first name and tell him exactly what they think so that he doesn’t become isolated from the thinking of the people. He becomes isolated partially because even his friends are afraid to tell him the truth. Everybody needs some friends around him who will just say, “You are wrong!” And that includes me. I really value the friendship of people who’ll just tell it to me like it is, even though I may try to defend my position for a while. Mr. Nixon has made mistakes, and I would say that this has been one of them: you cannot, as President, isolate yourself. The whole Watergate affair has taught the country something. I’m sure if Mr. Nixon could redo many things he would. That’s the reason I feel that if there’s any way he can get his credibility back, which may not be possible, he now would make a stronger and better President. I’m sure he’s learned some very valuable lessons through this whole experience.

Isolation seems to he one of the major problems. Mr. Nixon had a housecleaning. Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned, or were fired. Haig and Laird came in. Yet it seems that the isolation is still there.

It’s hard for outsiders to know what goes on, but I have read that he is meeting with people every day. However, there are only so many hours in a day. I haven’t been there until this weekend and haven’t had the kind of relationship with him lately to be able to know, but the newspapers seem to indicate that he’s meeting with people from morning till night. I’m sure, from what I’ve read, that some of the sessions have been quite candid.

What kind of a man is Nixon, really? Most people think that he is a loner and isolated, that people don’t see the real Nixon.

This is probably true of every President. We probably know more about our President today than any other generation in history, because of the mass media. This may be one of the problems. All Presidents make serious blunders and mistakes. Yet a mistake made by any President today is far bigger than a mistake made, let’s say, by President Coolidge. Today, a mistake is beamed by television, radio, and the printed page to the entire world in a matter of minutes.

We need to remember two things. Number one is that most of us deal with imaginary power. We think what we would do if we were President. But nothing comes of our imaginary decisions. Yet the instant electronic media make us all feel as if we are a part of the decision-making process. When the President makes a decision, numbers of people are involved. He tries to get the best advice he can, just as we try to get the best doctors we can if we are sick, or the best surgeons if we need an operation. Now, I would not go into an operating room and presume to point out to a surgeon what he should cut out or how he should proceed. In fact, I would be scared to death in an operating room for fear I might bump into his elbow. I have felt this when I have been around Presidents. The decisions they make are so involved and affect so many people and are so often on matters that involve the highest degree of skill that I would not presume to speak on many matters that people think that I have spoken of with the President.

The second thing to remember is that President Nixon or any President is only a human being. He is finite, and no President I have ever met considered himself really big enough for the job, especially after the first year. I don’t think there was even a White House press corps until McKinley’s administration, and then there was only one reporter. All of this tends to drive a President into some isolationism in order to live with himself, think a little, read a little, and spend some time with his family.

However, I have to speak about the Nixon I knew before he became President. To me, he was always a warm and gracious person with a great sense of humor. He was always thoughtful. Sometimes I have been with him when he was preoccupied, but I never had the impression that he was cold or diffident. Of course, other people know him better than I do and have known him in a different way. For example, some people have accused him of using profanity, but the strongest word I have heard from him is “hell,” and that only on a few occasions. But you know, people act differently around clergymen than they do other friends.

I have always admired Nixon’s close family life. I admire his love for his mother, his wife, and their daughters. I admire his tremendous passion for “peace,” which I think came partly from his Quaker background. I also admire his personal discipline. I’ve known few men that live such a disciplined life. He once told me that the reason he gave up golf was that there were too many books to read, and too many interesting conversations to hold. He said, “I may never be elected President but I’m going to continue preparing myself.”

That brings up another interesting point. During 1967 and early 1968 he really did not want to run for President. He almost decided not to. He was actually afraid that what is happening now would happen to him. I think his running for President came partially as a result of ambition but mostly as a result of sheer patriotism. He really felt he could make a contribution not only to America but to the world, especially foreign affairs. He seemed to feel the mid-seventies would be very dangerous for America and the world.

Is any blessing possible out of all this? What does the future hold, spiritually speaking?

First, I think we will reform the political process by which we elect our officials. I think this whole matter of candidates’ depending on wealthy people for election is deplorable. Secondly, I think people in public life will think twice before they do something wrong. Thirdly, I think the loose handling of thousands of dollars will be a thing of the past.

Fourthly, I think there’s going to be a look at the whole American system. I think we demand too much of our Presidents. We haven’t had a stable Presidency since Eisenhower. The budget today is double what it was in John Kennedy’s day. John Kennedy was shot. Johnson was brought to the point where he didn’t run for re-election. Now Nixon is in deep trouble, and I think that part of it is the system itself.

I’ve read that there are 1,300 separate commissions reporting to the President. He probably doesn’t know that many of them even exist, much less what they’re all about. Yet he is responsible in the eyes of the public for everything they do! If they are right or wrong, the news will say, “the Johnson administration” or “the Nixon administration,” and the President may not even know about it. Then the President is also the ceremonial head of the country. He has to lead the major ceremonies for visiting dignitaries. And then he is the executive head. Now this function is separated in nearly all of the countries of the world, like Britain or Germany or the Soviet Union.

I hope the Watergate Committee in its recommendations for new legislation will go into this. We demand too much of a President. The physical and psychological wear and tear is far too great.

Fifthly, Watergate will cause Americans to realize how fragile our democracy is, how fragile our security is. And I think this was demonstrated in the case of Viet Nam, and the energy crisis as well. We’re beginning to realize that we are vulnerable, both outside and within. We’re not almighty, as we thought for a while. These things should bring us to a point of great humility.

And sixthly, I think it should bring us to a point of national repentance, from the White House on down. I think of Jonah, who preached repentance to the people of Nineveh. The king repented and the people repented. And God spared the city of Nineveh. I think that these crises are all part of God’s judgment on this country. I hear God saying we need to repent as individuals, as a Church, and as a people. Repentance means that we acknowledge our sins, and change our way of living. You know, when six per cent of the world’s population controls so much of the world’s wealth, we have a terrible responsibility.

I think God is saying something to us, through Watergate. We had better listen! He was trying to speak to us through the prosperous years. Now he’s trying to speak to us through some judgments. And unless we do repent, unless we do turn, I think the judgment is going to get more severe and we’re going to see even greater crises ahead.

How do you think that the seemingly good, upright men of the Nixon administration went wrong?

First I would like to clarify one other thing. I noticed one or two religious press articles that tried to tie evangelicals in with the men that had been accused in the Watergate affair. As far as I know there were no evangelicals involved with the possible exception of one.

I think these men have what I would call a “magnificent obsession” to change the country and the world. A year before Mr. Nixon decided to run for President, he listed to me point by point what he thought ought to be done. One thing was to end the Cold War. He also wanted to balance the budget. Another goal was to control crime, which was growing rampant at about that time. And another one was ending the Vietnam War. This was his number one concern, and I think he really thought he could end Vietnam much quicker than he did end it. (It was interesting to me—by way of parenthesis—to watch the show on the late President Kennedy the other night in Europe. His speeches were hawkish. I mean, if Nixon were saying the things Kennedy said ten years ago, we would condemn him. We forget how fast things change. We have become dovish and isolationist, in many of our viewpoints.)

These Nixon aides thought his re-election was the most important thing in the world. They thought that future peace depended on him. I think most of them were very sincere, but they began to rationalize that the end justified the means, even if it meant taking liberties with law and the truth. They had seen the law broken by people who had other “causes.” They had heard people call for all kinds of civil disobedience. They felt that their “cause” was just as great as peace in Vietnam and civil rights. In fact, they felt peace in Vietnam could only be achieved by the reelection of Mr. Nixon. Many of these men were very young. In fact, the President had the youngest staff in the history of the White House.

In addition, I think the President himself was so occupied with “detente” with the Soviet Union and China and giving so much time and thought to it that he gave little thought to his reelection campaign. I think he was so sure of his election that he just left it to other people, and I think that this was part of the problem.

Do you think that the absence of an absolute standard of right and wrong contributed to wrongdoing?

Yes, I do. We’ve been told by popular theologians for some years that morals are determined by the situation, and now we are reaping the bitter fruits of that teaching. Some of the men involved in Watergate practiced that kind of ethics. If God is, then what God says must be “absolute”—man must have moral boundaries. He cannot devise his own morals to fit his own situation. The Bible tells us that with what judgment we judge we shall be judged. So we must avoid hypocritical and self-righteous glee at the evil that has been done. The Bible also teaches us, “Lie not one to another.” There is no blinking at the fact that Watergate has become a symbol of political corruption and evil. But let us hope that by God’s grace we may turn the corner. Let’s hope we realize that there is one crisis more urgent than the energy crisis and that this is the crisis in integrity and in Christian love and in forgiveness.

Do you think that the McGovern campaign did as many “dirty tricks” as the Nixon campaign?

I don’t know whether they did as many or not, but you still have the same “absolute” involved, even if they did only one, don’t you? The principle would be the same whether it was one or a hundred tricks. Also, don’t forget that corporations gave money to both parties, and both parties have historically been guilty of unethical practices that do violence to the sincere Judeo-Christian conscience. No political party has any corner on ethics.

Do you think that President Nixon will resign or be impeached?

I do not know. I think that if no other bomb explodes he might well survive. He still has time to recover a great deal of lost credibility in his remaining three years. If another bomb explodes, he is in serious trouble.

Do you think that evangelical Christianity is now America’s civil religion? Is there an alliance between government and evangelicalism?

I don’t think that at all, any more than there was an alliance between President Franklin Roosevelt and the old Federal Council of Churches. I don’t recall Roosevelt ever seeing evangelical leaders. During his administration, evangelicalism was at a very low ebb. It was the heyday of modernism and liberalism. Perhaps he did have evangelicals to the White House, but I don’t recall it. In the Truman administration, I don’t recall evangelicals trooping in and out of the White House either. Dr. Edward Pruden was his pastor at the First Baptist Church here in the city, and he was a wonderful man. Under the Eisenhower administration it was largely Dr. Edward L. R. Elson who had the influence, though I was at the White House a few times myself and knew Eisenhower quite well. Evangelicalism has become so strong in the country in recent years and has gained such momentum that now “we” are targets of criticism at every level because we are, as someone has said, “where the action is.” By we, I don’t mean Billy Graham. I mean the evangelical movement as a whole. Today almost all denominations are divided between the evangelicals on the one hand and the liberals on the other.

I think another point ought to be made: having a conservative theology does not necessarily mean a person is a sociological or political conservative. I consider myself a liberal on many social subjects, but in the eyes of most informed Christians I am a theological evangelical. I gladly take my stand with them. However, some of the criticism hurled at evangelical theology lands on me, and I suppose when I make a mistake it hurts the evangelical cause. I sometimes put my foot in my mouth. I’ve made many statements I wish I could recall. I am an erring, fallible disciple of our Lord Jesus Christ and am subject to all the temptations, human frailties, and errors of other disciples of the Lord.

One of the leaders of the evangelical revival has been Christianity Today, along with other parachurch organizations that have come to the front in recent years. I think these things have given an intellectual respectability to evangelicalism that did not exist in the country twelve years ago.

Getting back to civil religion, I don’t recall a single President, including President Nixon, talking about Jesus Christ publicly. Nearly all Presidents in their public statements have talked about God. Our civil religion in America has always been a sort of unitarianism. This was true of Kennedy, of Eisenhower, and Presidents all the way back.

I don’t think America has ever been an all-out Christian nation, such as Great Britain, where you have an official relationship between church and state. The London Telegraph last September made an interesting point along this line. They said, “Why should we ask Billy Graham about Watergate any more than we ask the Archbishop of Canterbury about our scandals?” And they said the Archbishop of Canterbury is tied in far more closely with the government than Billy Graham is in Washington. That’s quite a valid point.

In countries where there is a state-church relationship, people don’t necessarily hold the church or church leaders responsible for all the political decisions. I’ve never quite understood why I am considered in some way responsible for or part of any administration, whether under President Johnson or Nixon. I just happened to be friends with both of them long before they became prominent in public life. We should guard against guilt by association. As I said before, twenty years ago we called it McCarthyism. Since you are someone’s friend you are supposed to be guilty of the same things he’s guilty of.

You’ve been criticized for not criticizing President Nixon, or accusing him of various kinds of wrongdoing. Several people have defended you by saying, Well, if Graham has been a pastor of Nixon, then of course he could not violate the President’s confidence in public in any way. Has this sort of thinking influenced you at all?

When you have the confidence of a public official like that and he tells you things in private, if you ever once break that trust you’ll never again have that opportunity, with him or with anyone else. I don’t think that clergymen should go around telling private conversations any more than a psychiatrist or a private attorney or a doctor should. We clergymen should certainly have as high ethics as the medical profession—in fact, much higher. I wouldn’t be free to talk about some of these things for at least some years to come.

Has the President told you that he has considered you to be his pastor?

No. He has several friends among the clergy.

So that while a lot of people think you are the President’s pastor, neither by his word nor by actual time spent with him is that a justifiable statement.

I have been more a personal family friend than a pastor. I actually met Mr. Nixon twenty-three years ago through his father and mother. They had attended my meetings in southern California.

When a friend is down, you don’t go and kick him—you try to help him up. I have a personal high regard for the President. I think many of his judgments have been very poor, especially in the selection of certain people, or the people who selected others for him. I think there’s a difference between doing the wrong thing and being wrong. For a person to err in his judgments is not wrong, or not sin. I also think there is a difference between judgment and integrity. Until there is more proof to the contrary I have confidence in the President’s integrity—but some of his judgments have been wrong and I just don’t agree with them.

You continually preach that a change of heart in the individual is the answer to our problems. The criticism we keep getting is that regeneration in so many people does not seem to be having the effect we claim it will have, and that we are not seeing the fruit of the Spirit among believing Christians in America. Our compassion is so minimal for people who are downtrodden and wanting for one reason or another …

I think evangelicals have been far too much on the defensive at this point. Many of the great social movements of our generation have had their roots in regeneration and in evangelical theology. They asked Martin Luther King, when he was receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, where he got his motivation, and he said, “From my father’s preaching.” Well, his father is a real evangelical preacher. However, I think that beginning about the middle of the 1920’s, in reaction to modernism evangelicals went too far in defending the redemptive gospel to the exclusion of the great social content of Scripture. The parable of the Good Samaritan is a dramatic case in point. We have a social responsibility, and I could identify with most of the recent Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. I think we have to identify with the changing of structures in society and try to do our part.

What is your reaction to Nixon’s disclosure of his charitable giving for the past few years?

I must say I was surprised at the small amount he reported giving to charities in relation to his total income, but there may be some other explanation in that his finances and contributions were left to other people. I believe that every Christian should give 10 per cent of his income to his church or charity, and above that if the Lord so prospers him.

From what has been revealed about the way that his estates in California and Florida were acquired, for example, and the way federal tax money was spent in upgrading them, do you think Nixon has been ill served by those who were handling his finances so that they do appear questionable? What of the way he stretched the claiming of deductions? Hasn’t the President set a poor example?

I think that is right. He had some very bad advice. The General Accounting Office said “too casual an attitude prevailed.” Apparently that was right. I know that I told the people who handle my own tax affairs to always pay the tax if there’s any question. I think this ought to be the attitude of all taxpayers, but especially one in such a sensitive office. And this is why I believe he didn’t know. I think he left his finances to other people and rarely went into them himself.

However, we have to realize that after the assassination of President Kennedy the Secret Service became terribly sensitive. I’ve been out to San Clemente and seen their operation out there. The landscaping was done after the Secret Service tore up the yard and put in their wires and cables. I read recently that it cost the government $300,000 for President Kennedy to go see a cup race in New England one afternoon. We have read that it cost $400 million to bury President Kennedy. It cost a large amount of money to set up all the operations at the LBJ ranch that the Secret Service insisted on.

Let’s don’t put all the blame on President Nixon, though it seems to me some of these expenses probably should have been called personal. But again they apparently were handled by lawyers, friends, and government officials. It’s the “system” that has developed. Wherever he goes, the world’s most powerful office travels with him and all of its trappings. Whether this is right or wrong is something the Congress should decide. But this system has been developing for a number of years. I think we should put these matters in perspective with other Presidents.

Do you share the fear that the Agnew admission of income-tax evasion and the questions raised over the President’s returns will encourage more widespread cheating by the public?

Not necessarily. The public could react the other way—I hope so.

What should the Christian’s attitude toward government be in the light of Watergate?

The Bible teaches several things, but the Christian has one primary duty to those in authority: to pray! “I exhort therefore that first of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men; for kings and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty” (1 Tim. 2:1-2). And Nero was then emperor!

Dr. Graham, most people tend to turn to the Church more in times of trouble. Does it concern you that during this crisis the opposite seems to be true of Mr. Nixon, that he has attended hardly any religious services in the past year and sought hardly any spiritual counsel?

I would like to see any President who is a professing Christian go to church every Sunday, and attend the prayer meetings at the White House—and show up once in a while for the Senate and House prayer breakfasts. It is my prayer that all the events that have happened during the past few months will tend to deepen the religious convictions of the President. The agonies of the Civil War caused Lincoln to turn to God in a greater dependence than ever before. This tends to be true of most Presidents in periods of crisis.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

This is the second part of an interview the 1977 editors of Christianity Today conducted with the evangelist. It appeared in the September 23, 1977 issue.

What did you think of Anita Bryant’s campaign and how do you feel about the demands being made by hom*osexuals?

She is a very brave woman. hom*osexuality is a sin. That is the teaching of Scripture. I think she was right in emphasizing that God loves the hom*osexual and we should love the hom*osexual and present Christ to the hom*osexual. Some things she and her associates said I would not have said in the same way.

I did not join in the local conflict in Dade County because I have become fearful of getting diverted from my primary role as proclaimer of the Gospel. I’m asked to lead drives against p*rnography, against liquor, and so on. I have learned to endorse what moral issues Christians ought to stand for. I don’t always take a leadership role because my primary job is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and I don’t want anything to divert me from that. I was also fearful that her campaign might galvanize and bring out into the open hom*osexuality throughout the country, so that hom*osexuals would end up in a stronger position. Whether that is going to materialize I do not know.

What is the spiritual temperature of the human race? Have you noticed any changes over the last year or two?

I think a gigantic battle is going on between the forces of evil and the forces of God all over the world on a scale I have not known in my lifetime. I think there is a wide-open door in many parts of the world indicating a deep spiritual hunger. There is a spiritual vacuum. At the same time, the forces of evil are becoming more vicious, more hostile, more out in the open, as evidenced, for example, by so many new motion pictures on the devil—monster and horror pictures. Take the violence in the streets in many parts of the world, the kidnappings, the terrorism. The recent blackout in New York is a dramatic illustration. The veneer of civilization is very, very thin. Right underneath are the forces of evil just waiting for their moment to pounce, and maybe even to take over as much as they can of the world.

This brings us to a point Christians must wrestle with, namely, what does it mean to be separated from the world? People want to hear sermons about that. It doesn’t mean that we’re to get out of the world and forget the world’s spiritual or social needs. It does mean that we are to remain unspotted from the world and the forces of evil. Christians have grown permissive without knowing it. Although there is a growing interest in Bible study and in living a disciplined life for Christ, we haven’t made it clear that we’re to be separated from unclean things, situations, and people. Jesus mingled with the world; that’s one thing. But we must be separated from the evils of the world. There are things that have become acceptable to me over the years, primarily I suppose because of the influence of television. I have to be careful now because I find myself watching things that were not previously part of my life. Others, I’m sure, are similarly affected and that’s why we need more teaching on separation. All in all, I see the battle lines being drawn. Efforts are being made to destroy Christianity, whether through violence, which takes lives, or in classrooms where professors are undermining faith with sophistry.

Are you saying then that the spiritual situation has, over the last twenty-five or thirty years, deteriorated?

I couldn’t say that, because I don’t know. I don’t see the situation as deteriorating. I see evil as being more out in the open. On the other side, there is a greater receptivity to the gospel than there was twenty years ago.

How can you say that when communist influence and domination has been extended so much in recent years?

Well, I actually think that the evangelism of the future might come out of the Soviet Union. We’re hearing so many stories of young people being converted there and in all of Eastern Europe. This shows the spiritual hunger and the response to the gospel.

What’s your appraisal of the charismatic movement?

I think the charismatic movement has been used of God in many areas of the world—for example, Sweden. It has awakened some people. It has made an impact. Look at the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church, where people are longing for an experience and a personal relationship with Christ. I think in other areas of the world and in the church it has been divisive.

What do you mean by divisive?

The charismatic movement itself has been very divided. The charismatic conference this past summer in Kansas City indicated that. There was a great sense of unity there, but at the same time there was a recognition of the diversity in interpreting various important passages of Scripture. By and large, however, it has been a movement that has opened many doors for the gospel. Of course, every time something genuine comes along the devil has his counterfeits. We have a great deal of counterfeit evangelism. We have Elmer Gantrys beginning to rise in a way we have not seen in the last few years.

You are writing a book about the Holy Spirit. What has the work of this book done for you in your personal life?

You’d have to ask my wife, Ruth.

Seriously, it has caused me to be aware of the person and work of the Holy Spirit in a way I never was before. Also, it has caused me to be less sure of some of the positions I have held. I have read different sides of different questions that have led me to rethink some of my ideas. I was extremely interested in a recent issue of Christian Life, which listed the charismatic beliefs. I checked off those I agreed with, and found only one that I had some difficulty with.

Which one was it?

The alleged lack of interest among charismatics in the authority of the Bible and in theology generally. Now if this list was an accurate summary of charismatic views, then I would say they certainly are part of the evangelical mainstream.

What are you going to say in your book about the baptism or the filling of the Spirit, with speaking in tongues as its sign?

I think if I were to say now what I am going to say in the book it would take some interest away from the book. Many people may want to read the book just to see what I say about speaking in tongues and the baptism in the Spirit.

There is now a difference of opinion in the evangelical camp as to whether the Bible is totally without error or whether its inerrancy is limited to matters of faith and practice. What do you think?

My view is that the Bible is without error in its totality. I can’t prove it. I base it on faith. I know some people will object to that. I would also like to say that this does not affect my Christian fellowship with people who hold differing views, providing they hold to the deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the Atonement, and the Resurrection—the cardinal doctrines of Christianity.

As a matter of fact, some of my closest friends do not hold this high a view of Scripture. But in my judgment, the issue of biblical authority is a growing concern throughout the worldwide Church. It’s a very important issue. I have always believed and preached—since 1949—the infallibility of Scripture, including the first eleven chapters of Genesis, which are very crucial. I took this position by faith in the summer of 1949 when I was having some doubts. But it changed my ministry. I had a cutting edge to my ministry that I never had before, because I felt that when I was quoting Scripture I was quoting the very Word of God.

Now there are questions that I don’t have answers to. There are certain figures and statistics that I don’t presently know what to do with, but I believe in the truthfulness and integrity of the Bible. In the original autographs, I mean. Obviously, I can’t defend every translation. But I believe that the only logical conclusion that I can come to is that we either have to accept all of it, or each one of us decides what the Bible is for himself. And that approach brings chaos.

You recently had a successful evangelistic crusade in Taiwan. There is speculation that the United States would like to break diplomatic relations with the Republic of China. What do you think of that?

There are a great deal of maneuverings going on behind the scenes throughout the world. I have learned that when I speak out on that type of a subject I speak out of ignorance. There are things going on that I don’t know about. Taiwan in just twenty-five years has made some of the greatest material progress probably in the history of the world. Its gross national product is greater than that of the People’s Republic of China, even though they have only 16 million people. Taiwan combines state ownership and private enterprise in a unique way. There is freedom to preach the Gospel, and that’s a big plus. I think judgments by Christians should be made on whether countries allow freedom of religion. There are so many forms of government in the world today. There are only twenty democracies out of 158 nations. I think Christians should rejoice that there is still freedom of religious faith and practice in most of the countries of the world. Doors to preach are opening to me now that I never dreamed possible in my lifetime. For example, it’s possible that I soon will be going to one or more countries of Eastern Europe to preach the Gospel. But as to what the U.S. government position on Taiwan should be, I don’t think I should get into that sensitive, political area right now.

However, my general impression is that most Americans feel that they should not turn their backs on old friends. I only know that the people of Taiwan gave me one of the greatest receptions I’ve had anywhere in the world.

Do you still hope to visit mainland China where your wife was raised as the daughter of a medical missionary?

We tried to go three years ago. Ruth wrote for permission and never heard back one way or another. We want to go, but we are not going to push the issue.

What socialistic countries other than those you have already visited do you think might be open to you?

As you know, we have already held a crusade in Yugoslavia. A great deal of consultation and communication is now taking place between me and my staff and religious leaders in Hungary, Romania, Poland, and the Soviet Union.

What stipulations do you place in accepting invitations from socialistic countries?

I’ll go anywhere to proclaim the gospel. If the Vatican would invite me to come and hold a crusade inside the Vatican I would go. But I’d accept no strings on the message that I preach concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ. I would never compromise the gospel, even if it meant my death.

How do you handle the down times in your life?

I have “downs.” Most of my Christian life I have read the Psalms daily. The writers of the Psalms constantly had their downs as well as their ups. This was true of some of God’s greatest servants, such as Elijah. But in the midst of downs, God is always present and there is an underlying joy that words cannot express.

Sometimes downs are caused by physiological conditions. For example, I have high blood pressure. One of the side effects of my medication is the tendency toward depression. But I can face that and recognize where it’s coming from. It causes me to pray and ask for God’s grace. I don’t mind when I’m being criticized for the right things I am doing, because I have a clear conscience before God. It’s in those areas where I am not sure that criticism is troublesome. Particularly in the earlier part of my ministry criticism discouraged me. In the early fifties, for example, I was severely criticized by some of the extreme fundamentalists in America. They wrote article after article, and I couldn’t believe that Christians could write such articles, because they quoted me out of context, and so on. One paper came out and said that one of my closest advisors was Bishop Pike. I had only met Bishop Pike three times in my whole life and had never had a talk with him. It was that sort of thing. During that period I felt deeply hurt because these were my people, the people I had come from.

At the same time I was severely attacked by some of the more extreme liberals. I learned from both of them. When Reinhold Niebuhr wrote articles about me in The Christian Century I learned some things. I also learned from John R. Rice, whom I greatly love and respect. I think that because I was being attacked from both the left and the right God used it to help keep me balanced, more in the middle, and by the middle I mean right at the foot of the Cross. I wasn’t drawn off onto side issues.

I had good advice in those days from people like my father-in-law, Nelson Bell, and from V. Raymond Edman and my close team associates. As it says in Proverbs 11:14, “in an abundance of counselors, there is safety.” I had people around me who supported me and gave me the right kind of counsel. God also gave me love for my critics. I don’t think you will find any letters in my private correspondence in which I answer any of them with any vitriolic spirit. I’ve had to accept criticism because of my friendships with certain political figures. Interestingly, all those friendships began before the people became president and continued afterward.

When I read biographies such as those of John Wesley and all the terrible things the people of God have had to endure, I realize how mild are the criticisms I have had to bear. And Wesley’s wife opposed him. Yet Wesley went on victoriously through it. I have a marvelous wife and family supporting me.

Moody suffered in ways that many people don’t realize. Campaigns had to be postponed until accusations were clarified. Things like that have not happened to me as yet. But I suspect that I will have that kind of suffering before my death. I would hate to miss it. Paul would have his scars and others of God’s servants would have theirs, and I wouldn’t want to be there without any scars. Scars are going to come—not necessarily physical ones. But I think I can say that there isn’t a person in the whole world that I don’t love, and I mean love sincerely. That in itself brings criticism, because I feel I can be friends with people with whom I disagree.

Do problems upset your family?

No, because they’re so strong. My daughters are three of the strongest Christians I know. All are Bible teachers, steeped in the Scriptures. They are a great support to me. My oldest son is a senior at the university, and he is a tremendous source of strength. My youngest son is just entering college. All the members of my family are marvelous Christians, including my sons-in-law.

If you had to live your life over again, what would you do differently?

One of my great regrets is that I have not studied enough. I wish I had studied more and preached less. People have pressured me into speaking to groups when I should have been studying and preparing. Donald Barnhouse said that if he knew the Lord was coming in three years he would spend two of them studying and one preaching. I’m trying to make it up.

Also, I did not spend enough time with my family when they were growing up. You cannot recapture those years. I might add here that through the years I have met many, many people. I feel terrible that I cannot keep up with all those friends and acquaintances.

I would not have encouraged the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and its affiliates to get so big. We have been trying to cut back here and there without affecting the ministry God has called us to.

You’re a great baseball fan. Who is going to be in the World Series this year? (This was asked when the Chicago teams were leading their divisions.)

I have had crusades in most of the cities that have teams. I’m a fan of all of them. I like baseball no matter who is playing. But I think it would be a tremendous thing, and probably good for baseball, to see it in Chicago. That city would go wild to see an all-Chicago series. I think the country would go wild. You would see a revived interest in baseball such as we have not seen in a long time.

Copyright © 2008 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

[pp. 80 – 88 of A Prophet With Honor by William Martin]

Theologically, Wheaton was a Lamb’s-blood relative of Bob Jones College and Florida Bible Institute, and the motto carved on the cornerstone of Blanchard Hall—For Christ and His Kingdom—clearly expressed the dominant ethos, but Wheaton embodied the broadest spirit of American Fundamentalism in the 1930s. As an accredited and academically respectable liberal arts college, it attracted the offspring of many of America’s most affluent and influential Fundamentalist families. Because Wheaton gave him almost no credit for his courses in Florida, Billy, now almost twenty-two, had to enroll as a freshman. If his bright clothes, Li’I Abner brogans, and North Carolina accent caused people to think him a naive country boy, his age and status as an ordained minister with real preaching experience gave him a jump on other neophytes, and he soon emerged as a well-known campus figure. He had not yet drawn many invitations to preach, and Frank Graham had stopped sending him money, so he found a job working for another student who hauled luggage and furniture in a battered old yellow pickup. The CEO of the Wheaton College Student Trucking Service was preparing for mission work in China and introduced his new assistant to Ruth Bell, a second-year student who, as the daughter of a Presbyterian medical missionary, had grown up in Tsingkiang, China. Ruth claims not to remember their first meeting with any real clarity. Billy fell in love with her immediately and informed his mother of that fact before he ever got up the courage to ask for a date.

In many respects, Ruth’s and Billy’s childhoods could hardly have differed more. He had pored over books about faraway lands; she lived about as far away from Charlotte as it was possible to get. He had heard sermons on the wickedness of card playing and swearing; her regular path to school took her alongside putrid streams where dogs ate the tiny carcasses of infants slain by their parents because they were female or deformed. She knew of children kidnapped by bandits and sold into slavery or prostitution, and of missionaries who had been murdered or who had killed themselves in despair over the wretchedness of their circ*mstances. Billy arose at 2:30 A.M. to milk cows; Ruth often still lay awake at that hour, unable to sleep because of the noise from gunfire and bombs, or from fear of rats and scorpions that even the strictest measures could not eliminate. In Mecklenburg County, the religiously peculiar were those who insisted on singing hymns without an organ or who kept the Sabbath as if they were Jews; Billy’s father had once warned him to be wary of Lutherans because they held “very strange beliefs.” In North Kiangsu province, nine thousand miles away, the heretics were the Christians, foreign devils with their peculiar belief in only one God, and that one a wrathful being who permitted the death of his only son.

Despite these differences, striking points of contact existed between the two young people. Ruth’s father, Dr. L. Nelson Bell, not only loved baseball but had signed a contract with a Baltimore Orioles farm team shortly before he got caught up in the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (inspired by D. L. Moody) and dedicated himself to medical missions. As head of the Tsingkiang General Hospital, founded in 1887 by Pearl Buck’s father, Dr. Bell proved to be a talented surgeon and, like Frank Graham, a resourceful provider. Also like the Grahams, the Bells steeped their brood in Presbyterian piety, rearing them on daily doses of private and family devotions and expecting them to commit large sections of Scripture to memory. Ruth’s religion, however, took a serious turn far earlier than did Billy’s. By the time she was twelve, she was pointing toward a career as an oldmaid missionary to Tibet and praying regularly for a martyr’s death. As another measure of her devotion, she loved to conduct animal funerals, complete with hymns and eulogies, before interring the dearly departed in her own pet cemetery. Of these leanings, Dr. Bell observed in a note to her teacher, “We feel Ruth has a slight tendency to revel in the sad side of things, letting her religion (which is exceedingly real and precious to her) take a slightly morbid turn.” As she matured, the darker side of her piety gave way to a spunky willingness to tackle the world head-on rather than look for avenues of escape, but she continued to cling to the vision of a solitary mission to nomadic Tibetan tribes, at least in part, because it seemed like the hardest challenge she could possibly undertake.

During 1935 and 1936, the Bells spent a furlough year in Montreat, North Carolina, a picturesque mountainside village that served as a conference center and retirement community for Southern Presbyterians. Both Ruth and her sister Rosa finished high school that year. Rosa entered Wheaton in the fall of 1936, and Ruth followed a year later. Though obviously of modest means—her dress wardrobe consisted of one good black dress, a blue tweed suit she had picked up at a street bazaar in Chicago, and some dime-store pearls—Ruth’s vivacious beauty, a young lifetime of unusual experiences that fascinated Christian youth who considered the mission field the highest of human callings, and her well-known piety (she rose regularly at 5:00 A.M., for prayer and Bible reading) made her the prize catch of her class.

Though Ruth felt no thunderbolt when she met Billy Graham during the fall semester of 1940, he impressed her a few days later by the fervor of his prayer at an informal church meeting. “I had never heard anyone pray like [that] before,” she said. “I sensed that here was a man that knew God in a very unusual way.” When he eventually summoned the courage to ask her to accompany him to a performance of Handel’s Messiah, she readily accepted. After the concert and a slow, snowy walk to a professor’s house for tea, he wrote home again, announcing that he planned to marry this new girl who reminded him so much of his mother. The Grahams took note but made no wedding plans. As younger sister jean recalls, “He had fallen in love so many times, we didn’t pay much attention to him.” Ruth, always more private, chose to let God alone know that “if you let me serve you with that man, I’d consider it the greatest privilege in my life.” Their courtship was a strange one. Well aware that a young woman might not return his affection in full measure, Billy seemed to doubt he deserved or could win Ruth’s love. Their next date came six weeks later, after she invited him, by mail, to a party at her boardinghouse. A week later, he asked her out again and clumsily sputtered that he had been reluctant to pursue his interest in her because he did not feel a definite call to the mission field, a revelation that seemed a bit premature for a third date. He followed this by asking her out, then ignoring her, then asking if he was embarrassing her by taking her out too frequently. He also told her that he had asked the Lord to give her to him if that was his will, but to keep him from loving her if that would be best for both of them. She was clearly intrigued and wrote to her parents about this “humble, thoughtful, unpretentious, courteous” young man with an uncommon determination to discern and do God’s will, but she found his courtship rituals a bit peculiar and began to date other students. This produced the desired result, and Billy delivered an ultimatum: “Either you date just me, or you can date everybody but me!” That also worked, and they began to go out on a regular basis, usually to some kind of preaching service. He impressed her with his “fearless, uncompromising presentation of the Gospel,” but she later confessed she thought his preaching was too loud and too fast, and it took her some time to get used to the fact that, almost invariably, it produced an impressive harvest at the invitation.

As Billy grew surer of their relationship, he began to assume the authoritarian, patriarchal manner he had learned at home. He told Ruth what to eat and sat across from her until she complied. He insisted she get more exercise and personally put her through a rigorous program of calisthenics. She confided to her parents that Bill (she never called him Billy) “isn’t awfully easy to love because of his sternness and unwavering stand on certain issues,” but his assurance that he did what he did because he loved her invariably melted her resistance. They talked of the future in terms of their respective “calls.” She still clung to her dream of evangelizing Tibet. He respected this noble aspiration but, since he felt no Himalayan call himself, tried to convince her that the highest role a woman could fill was that of wife and mother. Both agreed to read the Bible and pray for God’s leading. No burning light of revelation came, so Billy decided to proceed without it. At the end of the spring semester, just before they parted for the summer of 1941, he asked Ruth to marry him. She did not respond immediately, but a few weeks later, while he was filling in for John Minder in Tampa, she wrote that she believed their relationship was “of the Lord” and would be pleased to become his wife. On July 7, she acknowledged to her parents, “To be with Bill in [evangelistic] work won’t be easy. There will be little financial backing, lots of obstacles and criticism, and no earthly glory whatsoever,” but added, “I knew I wouldn’t have peace till I yielded my will to the Lord and decided to marry Bill.” At this point, they had yet to kiss.

That summer, Billy met the Bells, who had finally been forced out of China by the Japanese, and Ruth came to Charlotte to visit the Grahams. Both visits went well. At the end of the summer, Billy went to Montreat, North Carolina, where the Bells had settled permanently, and presented Ruth with an engagement ring. Then, just as she prepared to return to school, Ruth grew so ill that her parents feared she might have malaria and decided to put both her and Rosa, who was suffering from tuberculosis, into a Presbyterian sanatorium in New Mexico. The rest restored Ruth’s health—Rosa also recovered, though much more slowly—but the equanimity she experienced during the separation resurrected old doubts. Eventually, she wrote Billy that she had grown unsure of her love for him and thought it best to break their engagement. He was crushed but decided not to react hastily. When she returned to school in January 1942, he offered to take back the ring, but she hesitated, explaining that the real problem was that she still felt called to be a missionary. Sensing an opening, he used an approach whose efficacy he would not forget: He convinced her that not to do what he wanted would be to thwart God’s obvious will. “Do you or do you not think the Lord brought us together?” he asked. She admitted she thought that was indeed the case. He pointed out that the Bible says the husband is head of the wife and declared, with an authoritativeness probably grounded on shifting sand, “Then I’ll do the leading and you do the following.” Ruth Bell eventually surrendered her missionary vocation, but only the blindest of observers would conclude that she also surrendered her will or her independence.

Billy and Ruth set their wedding date for August 1943, still more than eighteen months away. In the meantime, they finished school. Ruth majored become pastor of the church upon graduation at a salary of forty-five dollars a week. Other churches had shown an interest in Billy, but with the prospect of having to support a wife looming large, he accepted the offer without consulting Ruth, an oversight that led to a spirited discussion of the distinction between authority and thoughtfulness. At least part of her irritation stemmed from her fear that a pastorate would deter Billy from evangelism. She need not have worried. He apparently never intended to stay in Western Springs for long. The war had stirred his patriotic fires, and he decided to enlist. When his professors persuaded him he could do more good as a minister, he applied for commission as an army chaplain, stating a preference for a battlefront assignment. Twice, the army rejected his application on the grounds that he lacked pastoral experience and was underweight.

After their wedding in Montreat on Friday the thirteenth of August, Ruth caught a chill on the trip back to Western Springs from their seven-day honeymoon at a tourist home in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Instead of calling to cancel a routine preaching engagement in Ohio so that he could stay at the bedside of his brand-new bride, a reason his hosts would surely have accepted graciously, Billy checked her into a local hospital and kept the appointment, sending her a telegram and a box of candy for consolation. She felt hurt at this apparent lack of concern for her condition and feelings but soon learned that nothing came before preaching on her husband’s list of priorities and that this would not be the last time he would leave a hospital bed (including his own) or miss key moments of sorrow or celebration because of a promise to preach.

Despite the brevity of the only eighteen months he would ever spend as a pastor, Billy displayed talents and received opportunities at Western Springs that proved crucial in his rise to national prominence. He had come to think of himself as a Baptist—indeed, he had stirred Ruth’s ire by suggesting that if Dr. Bell were a true Christian, he would also become a Baptist—but he was unwilling to draw lines that would limit his reach and persuaded the deacons to change the name of the Western Springs Baptist Church to the more inclusive Village Church. He launched a businessmen’s dinner series at which prominent Evangelical speakers addressed as many as five hundred men. He also helped the church begin a mission program, retire a long-standing mortgage, and make plans to add an above-ground sanctuary. He was not, however, particularly skilled at such staples of pastoral work as personal visitation and managing conflict within the congregation. “Billy’s not a pastor,” a close friend from this period observed. “This kind of thing was very difficult for him—not to do, but to like. He’d rather preach, and be in association with other men who were preaching.” One man who recognized this most clearly was Torrey Johnson, the enterprising and extraordinarily persuasive young pastor of Chicago’s thriving Midwest Bible Church. Johnson knew Graham through Wheaton and the National Association of Evangelicals. He had heard him preach on several occasions and was impressed with his prowess; in fact, he had countered Billy’s desire to get additional theological training with a classic soul winner’s admonition: “Get in there and preach. That’s the theological school you need.” Johnson produced a popular Sunday-evening radio program Songs in the Night, aired over the fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel station WCFL from Chicago. When the crush of his pastoral duties and another radio program proved too great a burden, he approached Billy about taking his place on Songs in the Night. Billy immediately recognized the possibilities and convinced the church to take up the challenge, even though the program’s weekly budget of nearly $150 would exceed the congregation’s pledged income.

Billy’s instincts proved correct. With a confidence bordering on gall, he persuaded bass-baritone George Beverly Shea, already well-known among Evangelicals in the Chicago area for a program on the Moody Bible Institute station (WMBI), to become the show’s primary musical performer. Beginning in January 1944, from ten thirty to quarter past eleven every Sunday evening, the program originated live from the basem*nt sanctuary of “the friendly church in the pleasant community of Western Springs.” Between Bev Shea’s unadorned yet rich renderings of hymns and gospel songs and the peppier trillings of a girls’ quartet known as The King’s Karrolers, Billy, sitting at a table outlined in colored lights to provide a dramatic aura for the live audience, offered brief meditations. Many of these pointed out the relevance of the Christian message to various contemporary problems and situations: the loneliness of families separated by war, the need for courage and confidence in the face of danger and fear, the perils of succumbing to the lures of alcohol and licentiousness, the relevance of biblical prophecy for understanding world events. Back in Charlotte, too far from Chicago for the Philco in the Grahams’ den to pick up the program unless the weather cooperated, Frank and Morrow sat in their car long past their regular bedtime, turned on the Plymouth’s stronger radio, and strained through the static to hear that familiar and increasingly distinctive voice. “Imagine,” they sometimes said. “That’s our Billy Frank.”

The program caught on quickly, and contributions from listeners relieved the church of any financial burden. Requests for sheet music of Bev Shea’s songs led Robert Van Kampen to launch the Van Kampen Press, which eventually grew into a major Evangelical publishing house whose substantial profits supported a variety of Evangelical missions. The program also boosted Billy’s reputation, generating more invitations to speak at churches throughout the region, a result that irritated parishioners who felt a pastor needed to be at home, tending the sheep. Ever his defender, Bob Van Kampen helped keep the criticism from getting out of hand. Once, after accompanying Billy on a two-week tour through the Midwest, he reported to the deacon’s meeting that “there is only one thing that I can say, and that is that God has laid upon Billy a special gift of evangelism and someday he could be another Billy Sunday or D. L. Moody.” Recalling this occasion decades later, Van Kampen observed, “That’s in the minutes the church. I wasn’t being prophetic. It was obvious.” For his part, Billy was beginning to understand that a free-lance ministry of the sort that med to fit his talent and ambition might flourish best when free of the ‘inevitable parochial concerns of a conventional congregation. While his parishioners chafed, he began to move in directions that would change the course of his career and, indeed, of Evangelical Christianity.

Meanwhile, Eevangelical Christianity was moving in new directions of its own. During the height of Billy Sunday’s popularity, Fundamentalism had appeared to be in reasonably good shape. It had a coherent view of Scripture to defend against Modernist critics, it was riding a crest of patriotism, and it had shared in what was ostensibly a stunning moral victory by helping to bring about Prohibition, which went into effect in 1920. Yet, within ten years, this formidable movement was devastated by defeat and dissension. At the Scopes trial in 1925, famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow failed to have his client acquitted for the crime of teaching evolution in the Dayton, Tennessee, high school, but he and the world press still managed to make Fundamentalists look like monkeys. On the heels of that embarrassment, Princeton Theological Seminary and several major denominations—most notably the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and the Northern Baptists—repelled the Fundamentalist challenge to modern biblical criticism and, in effect, drove most Fundamentalists from their midst. As a final symbolic blow, Prohibition was repealed in 1933. Fundamentalism, it appeared, had been defeated and relegated to a minor position in American culture. Its tendency toward intellectual rigidity, its propensity for attracting and lending support to anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and other nativist and right-wing political elements, and its often uncritical equation of Christianity and Americanism had all helped its decline, a decline many observers felt would continue inexorably until the last Fundamentalist had withered and died with a sour whimper.

Fundamentalism did indeed pass through a wilderness, but it did not enter the grave. It not only failed to disappear during the 1930s but underwent a transformation that left it in a reasonably strong position by the end of the decade. That transformation involved shifting, realigning, and reorganizing its base. Instead of trying to fight off liberals within mainstream denominations, Fundamentalists began to form themselves into large independent congregations, usually centered around a notable preacher, and to join alliances such as the World Christian Fundamentalist Association. An even more significant development was the substantial increase in the number of Bible colleges and institutes favoring impeccably orthodox teaching and practical instruction in Christian service over the liberal arts they felt had undermined commitment to truth more narrowly conceived. The model, of course, was Moody Bible Institute, which had trained more than sixty-nine-thousand students by 1930. The Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) enjoyed a similar status on the West Coast. By 1940 more than a hundred such institutions had sprung up all over America. Fundamentalists also made extraordinarily wide use of publications and radio; by 1943 BIOLA graduate Charles Fuller’s programs were carried by over a thousand stations, and generous donations from loyal listeners enabled him to found Fuller Theological Seminary, which would become one of the most respected and influential of Evangelical schools.

Not only had dozens of Fundamentalist editors and radio ministers kept Evangelical doctrines before the people but they had made it clear that unnumbered legions still built on the firm foundation, still walked on the ancient pathways, and would teach their children to do the same. In 1941 two new organizations were formed, representing the extreme and moderate branches of the movement. The American Council of Christian Churches, founded by the cantankerous archconservative, Carl McIntire, banned from its membership churches or denominations that had truck with Modernists or belonged to the liberal Federal Council of Churches. Reacting against this extreme separatist position, a more temperate coalition established the National Association of Evangelicals. A third organization, formed during this period to save young people from modernists, communists, and worldliness, called itself Youth for Christ International. Youth for Christ produced many new and dynamic leaders, but none of its young stars would outshine Billy Graham.

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This article is an abridgement of a much longer essay written at the request of the World Council of Churches. It was published in the July 21, 1967 issue of Christianity Today.

The word on the lips of the peoples of the world today is “revolution.” Every few days we read in our newspapers of another revolution somewhere in the world; an old regime has been overthrown and a new regime has taken over. Conversion is a revolution in the life of an individual. The old forces of sin, self-centeredness, and evil are overthrown from their place of supreme power. Jesus Christ is put on the throne.

No one can read the New Testament without recognizing that its message calls for conversion. Jesus said: “Except ye be converted … ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3). Paul encouraged men to “be … reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20) and insisted that God now “commandeth all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). Paul viewed his office as that of an ambassador for Christ “as though God did beseech you by us” (2 Cor. 5:20). It was James who said: “Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins” (Jas. 5:20), and Peter taught that we are “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever” (1 Pet. 1:23).

In reading the New Testament we are confronted with many incidents of men and women who encountered Christ either personally or through hearing the message preached. Something happened to them! None of their experiences were identical, but most of them experienced a change of mind and attitude and entered an entirely new dimension of living.

In my opinion there is no technical terminology for the biblical doctrine of conversion. Many words are used to describe or imply this experience; many biblical stories are used to illustrate it. However, I am convinced, after years of studying Scripture and observing conversions in the lives of thousands, that it is far more than a psychological phenomenon—it is the “turning” of the whole man to God.

I would suggest three elements which in combination I have found most effective in conversion. The first is the use of the Bible. The Bible needs more proclaiming than defending, and when proclaimed its message can be relied upon to bring men to conversion. But it must be preached with a sense of authority. This is not authoritarianism or even dogmatism; it is preaching with utter confidence in the reliability of the kerygma. A. M. Chirgwin observed that the Reformers “wanted everyone to have a chance to read the Bible because they believed profoundly in its converting power.” This could be said of every great era of evangelism. I know of no great forward movements of the Church of Jesus Christ that have not been closely bound up with the message of the Bible.

Recently my attention was called to one of the most thrilling stories I have ever heard about the power of the Word of God. In 1941 an old Tzeltal Indian of southern Mexico approached a young man by the name of Bill Bentley in the village of Bachajon and said: “When I was north I heard of a book that tells about God. Do you know of such a book?” Bill Bentley did. In fact, he had a copy, he said; and if the tribe would permit him to build a house and live among them, he would translate the book into their language.

In the meantime, Bill returned to the United States to marry his fiancée, Mary Anna Slocum. Together they planned to go to Mexico in the fall. But when fall came, Mary Anna returned to Mexico alone. Six days before the wedding Bill had died suddenly, and Mary Anna had requested that the Wycliffe Bible Translators let her carry on his work. When she reached the village of Bachajon, the Indians had been warned against the white missionary, and instead of welcoming her, they threatened her that if she settled among them they would bum her house down. Settling in another part of the tribe, she began patiently to learn the Tzeltal language, translating portions of the Word of God, and compiling a hymnbook in Tzeltal.

Six years passed and Mary Anna was joined by Florence Gerdel, a nurse. They started a clinic to which many Tzeltals came for treatment. Mary Anna had completed the translation of the Gospel of Mark and started on the Book of Acts. A small chapel was built by the Indians who had abandoned their idols for the living Christ. In the highland village of Corralito, a little nucleus of believers grew from five families to seventy Christians, and they sent for the missionary women to come teach them the Word of God. Mary Anna and Florence went and were warmly welcomed by all seventy, who stood outside their huts and very reverently sang most of the hymns in the Tzeltal hymnbook. In little over a year there were 400 believers. One of the most faithful was the former witch doctor, Thomas, who was among the first to throw his idols away.

By the end of the following year there were over 1,000 believers. Because of the pressure of the crowds, Mary Anna could make little progress in her translation work. Concerned, the Indians freed the president of the congregation to help Mary Anna with the translation while they themselves took turns helping in his cornfield. When unbelieving Indians burned down their new chapel, the Christian Indians knelt in the smoldering ruins and prayed for their enemies. In the months following, many of these enemies were soundly converted to Christ.

By the end of 1958 there were more than 5,000 Tzeltal believers in Corralito, Bachajon, and twenty other villages in the tribe. The New Testament in Tzeltal had been completed.

Mary Anna Slocum and another missionary moved to the Chol tribe, where there was a small group of believers who desperately needed the Word of God in their own language. Others came to help. Indians volunteered to build the much-needed airstrip for the mission plane. As the believers multiplied, chapels large and small appeared throughout the area.

When the Chol New Testament was completed, there were over 5,000 believers in that tribe and thirty congregations. One hundred young men had been trained to preach and teach, and a number had learned to do simple medical work. A missionary wrote:

Formerly these Indians were indebted to the Mexican ranchers who lived in the area holding large coffee plantations. They also sold liquor. The Indians, before conversion, were habitual drunkards, in debt to these landholders. To pay off their debts the landowners forced them to work on their plantations whenever they needed work. After the Indians became Christians, they stopped their drinking, paid off their debts and began to plant their own coffee plantations. The coffee of the ranchers was left unharvested. As a result, the Mexican ranchers have been forced to sell the land to the Indians and are moving out of the area.

What a tremendous illustration of the power of the Scriptures! I am more convinced than ever that the Scriptures do not need to be defended but proclaimed.

Secondly, there needs to be a clearly defined theology of evangelism—not so much a new theology but a special emphasis upon certain aspects of the theology that has been in the mainstream of the Church throughout its history, both Catholic and Protestant. It is the theology that focuses attention upon the person and work of Christ on behalf of the alienated in every generation, the theology that invites sinful men to be reconciled to God.

Dr. D. T. Niles has written: “No understanding of Christian evangelism is possible without an appreciation of the nature of Christian proclamation. It is not an affirmation of ideals which men must test and practice; it is not an explanation of life and its problems about which men may argue and which in, some form they must agree; it is rather the announcement of an event with which men must reckon. “God has made Him both Lord and Christ.” There is a finality about that pronouncement. It is independent of human opinion and human choice.”

Thirdly, there must be an awareness that conversion is a supernatural change brought about by the Holy Spirit, who himself communicates the truth. At every evangelistic conference we hear discussion of “how we can communicate the Gospel to our age.” We must always remember that the Holy Spirit is the communicating agent. Without the work of the Holy Spirit there would be no such thing as conversion. The Scriptures teach that this is a supernatural work of God. It is the Holy Spirit who convicts men of sin. Jesus said: “And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8). It is the Holy Spirit who gives new life. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Titus 3:5).

There is a mystery in one aspect of conversion that I have never been able to fathom, and I have never read a book of theology that satisfies me at this point—the relation between the sovereignty of God and man’s free will. It seems to me that both are taught in the Scriptures and both are involved. Certainly we are ordered to proclaim the Gospel, and man is urged to respond.

However, this one act is not the end of the matter. It is only the beginning! The Scriptures teach that the Holy Spirit comes to indwell each believing heart (1 Cor. 3:16). It is the Holy Spirit who produces the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22), such as love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. It is the Holy Spirit who guides us and enlightens us as we study the Scriptures (Luke 12:12). We are told that we can also be “filled” with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). The missionary expansion of the Church in the early centuries was a result of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19, 20) and no less of the joyful constraint created in believers’ hearts at Pentecost. They had been filled with the Spirit. This great event was such a transforming experience that they did not need to refer to a prior command for their missionary activities. They were spontaneously moved to proclaim the gospel.

While there is no doubt that certain persons have a charismatic endowment by the Holy Spirit for evangelism (Eph. 4:11), yet in a sense every Christian is to be an evangelist. In little more than ten years, Paul established churches in four provinces of the empire—Galatia, Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia. Before A.D. 47 there were no churches in these provinces. In A.D. 57 Paul could speak as if his work there was done and could plan extensive tours into the Far West without anxiety lest the churches he had founded perish in his absence for want of his guidance and support. Such speed and thoroughness in the establishment of churches cannot be explained apart from the operation of the Holy Spirit and a sense of responsibility for evangelism by every Christian.

The missionary responsibility was interwoven with the most important offices of the early Church. Each bishop was expected to be an evangelist and to encourage the evangelization of pagans in his own diocese. Some of the renowned missionaries of the post-apostolic period were Gregory Thaumaturgus of Pontus, who became bishop in 240 and carried on successful evangelistic work in his diocese; Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia, under whom a mass conversion took place; Ulfilas, who preached to the Goths; the enthusiastic Martin of Tours; Ambrose of Milan; and Augustine of Hippo. Almost all of these people were converts to Christianity and propagated their newly found faith with a Spirit-filled zeal reminiscent of the apostolic age.

I believe that if our clergy today were filled with the Spirit and out among the people, even on street corners, proclaiming the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit, a new day would dawn for the Church. Paul said that in Corinth he did not use clever words or persuasive language. He said: “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). He knew that in the Cross and Resurrection there was power to change an individual and a society.

Conversion is the impact of the kerygma upon the whole man, convincing his intellect, warming his emotions, and causing his will to act with decision! I have no doubt that if every Christian in the world suddenly began proclaiming the Gospel and winning others to an encounter with Jesus Christ, the effect upon our society would be revolutionary.

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