When Billy Graham saved New York City (the first time)
When Billy Graham chose New York City for the site of his last public crusade in 2005, it was a fitting bookend to the minister’s preaching legacy. In anticipation of Graham's visit, our religion columnist, Gary Stern, reflected on the evangelist's first NYC Crusade, in 1957. The event lasted 16 weeks, reached millions, and solidified Graham as America's pastor and as a worldwide phenomenon. Stern is now Engagement Editor and leads the Editorial Board.
Graham died on Wednesday at age 99. Here’s the June 19, 2005 column that recounted his first New York City Crusade:
'Billy the Kid' came to save big city in 1957
Gary Stern
“I know that we are going to one of the strongholds of Satan.”
— Billy Graham, writing in his diary on May 9, 1957, six days before the start of his first crusade in New York City.
At the time, the odds seemed stacked against Billy the Kid.
The baby-faced evangelist with the tall wave of hair was already a nationally known preacher in 1957. His name had been made eight years before, in 1949, when he led a Los Angeles crusade that came out of nowhere and lasted eight weeks. It hadn't hurt that newspaper boss William Randolph Hearst was impressed with the young preacher and told his minions to "puff Graham."
In 1954, he preached for 12 weeks in London. The word was spreading.
But New York? Who was Billy Graham to think that he could save the big city from sin and temptation? The Apple, everyone knew, didn't want to be saved.
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The Graham team announced that he would take over Madison Square Garden for six weeks in 1957, while the Knicks and the Rangers used the off-season to heal. He would try to beat back the devil in the "World's Most Famous Arena," where hard-living fighters beat in one another's skulls.
In time, Billy Graham's New York stand would become the longest and most improbable revival in U.S. history, create "televangelism" as a force in the media age and cement Graham's reputation as America's preacher.
"Nobody in all history had conceived a crusade so mighty as this joint production of the evangelist, his team, the 1,500 churches that were his hosts, and Almighty God," wrote journalist Curtis Mitchell in his 1957 book about the crusade, "God in the Garden."
Before the first hymn was sung, opposition came from every direction.
Fundamentalists, from whose world Graham emerged, fumed that he would compromise the Gospel, rubbing shoulders with those liberal Protestants, papist Catholics and the other heathen. On the far side of the Protestant spectrum, New York's chief intellectual theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, dismissed Graham as simplistic and shallow, a diversion from the issues of the day.
Even Graham, 38 at the time, wrote in apocalyptic terms about the prospect of saving souls in the largely disbelieving city.
"Materialism, indifference and wickedness are apparent to even a casual Christian observer in New York," he wrote in his diary, which he shared with Mitchell. "This great united spiritual crusade is going to ignite the wrath of Satan. All the forces of hell will probably be turned on us."
The Ringling Bros. circus left the Garden. On the evening of May 15, 1957, Billy Graham opened. A bad first night could close the whole thing like a tuneless Broadway show.
"I remember the first night, seeing the Garden," said George Beverly Shea, now 96, Graham's vocal soloist since 1947. "I had to sing before the message. Billy teased me because the Garden was full. Then it stayed full, night after night. It confirmed for Billy that this was what he should continue doing."
The New York papers trumpeted a major event. "Graham in Biggest Triumph," The Journal-American said. "Billy Battles Devil at Garden," was The Mirror's take.
After Graham preached each night, he invited "inquirers" to walk up to the front and pledge their lives to Christ. During the first month, 575,000 people came to the Garden and 18,500 accepted Graham's invitation.
"About the fourth week, we knew that God was doing something that was out of our control," said Cliff Barrows, now 82, Graham's master of ceremonies since 1949. "Normally, attendance dwindles; there are peaks and valleys. But there was this momentum. People who had sneered at Billy the Kid knew that something was going on. There was evidence that we ought not to stop something that was the work of God."
Graham kept going. He went to Brooklyn and met a shy Mickey Mantle. He took the crusade to the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. He preached in Harlem and from the steps of the U.S. Treasury Building on Wall Street. He announced that he would preach in Yankee Stadium on July 20.
He also said the crusade at the Garden would be extended — ultimately to 16 full weeks, ending Sept. 1.
"I am willing to give my life, ready to die in New York, to see a true spiritual revival in New York and America," Graham preached in early July.
Another milestone had taken place on Saturday night, June 1. The crusade was televised, reaching an audience of more than 6 million. Mitchell described it this way: "The New York Crusade thrust outward among shrieking kilocycles to span this continent and give Billy Graham the largest audience in the history of man's quest for God."
Each Saturday revival would be given a national audience. Graham began receiving thousands of letters from viewers who accepted Christ from their living room sofas. A path was set for generations of televangelists to preach the Gospel and raise tons of money for both good and bad.
Night after night, Graham continued to preach in the great arena. He was most effective when he warned of God's impending judgment of every soul.
"Tonight I preached more on the love, mercy and grace of God, and the response is not nearly so good," he wrote one night. "Perhaps the message for New York is judgment."
Some 90,000 people came to the Yankee Stadium revival, filling every seat and covering much of the field, even though it was 97 degrees. Vice President Richard Nixon was close to Graham much of the night, publicly establishing what would become a long and controversial relationship.
The crusade also made history in another way. Graham called African-Americans onto his team and onto the Garden platform. He invited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to speak, even though many white preachers opposed the growing civil rights movement.
"And in these days of emotional tension," King prayed on July 18, "when the problems of the world are gigantic in extent and chaotic in detail, give us penetrating vision, broad understanding, power of endurance and abiding faith, and save us from the paralysis of crippling fear."
There was unease in the Garden. Graham received angry calls and letters, wrote Howard Jones, an African-American minister whom Graham invited to become part of the New York crusade team and who wound up staying with Graham for 40 years.
In his memoir, Jones said he received the same rough treatment, even though Graham always looked out for him.
"I remember sitting on the crusade platform on various occasions with empty seats next to me because some white crusade participants had decided to sit on the other side of the stage," Jones wrote in 2003's "Gospel Trailblazer." "At other times, I would go down to counsel new believers during the altar calls only to see white counselors move in the other direction."
Graham continued to face conflicting pressures when it came to race. Six years later, in 1963, he did not participate in the March on Washington. It was a decision he has said he regrets.
As the crusade came to a close, Graham needed a prominent finale. What better stage than Times Square? On the evening of Sept. 1, he climbed atop a platform at 42nd Street and Broadway. The crowd stretched down to 38th Street. Television cameras were prominent.
"Let us tell the whole world tonight that we Americans believe in God," the preacher said.
The final count: Almost 2 million people attended 100 days of revivals through 16 weeks. More than 56,000 pledged their lives to Christ, according to Graham's team.
Looking back, Billy Graham may have been in a unique position to stir the big city's soul, said William Lawrence, dean of theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who wrote a 1996 book, "Sundays in New York," about the prominence of the city's Protestant preachers through the mid-1950s.
"New York provided this marvelous combination of a strong Protestant establishment and all the kinds of personal sin that Graham was most effective attacking," Lawrence said. "Beyond that, New York was the media and entertainment capital of the country. Graham was a compelling speaker, dramatically effective in the spoken word, and had enormous credibility. He morphed easily across denominational lines. It was what we now call a perfect storm of possibility."
In his Times Square sermon, Graham had sprinkled movie titles from the bright lights of 42nd Street marquees. When it was over, he received an appropriate adieu from the electric ticker tape on the Times Tower: "Billy Graham Crusade ends in Times Square Rally."