Evangelism in America

Report Outline
Recurring Revivals in American History
Revival Preaching to Fit the Times
Business Aspects of Later Day Revivalism
Fruits of Two Centuries of Evangelism

Recurring Revivals in American History

Periodic Emergence of Great Evangelists

Followers of the Rev. William Franklin Graham, better known as Billy Graham, view his current crusade in New York City as the supreme test of his powers as an evangelist. Like many of his predecessors whose vigorous summons to be saved have stirred the American people in the past, Graham regards the metropolis as the citadel of sin and the most difficult stronghold to conquer for Christ, In his own words, he “wept, prayed and agonized” before accepting the city's challenge. But the Christian Century, critical of Graham's methods, editorialized on the eve of the crusade that “It simply cannot fail …because canny, experienced engineers of human decision have laid the tracks, contracted for the passengers, and will now direct the traffic.”

The present crusade recalls another spiritual assault on the metropolis 40 years ago by Graham's best-known predecessor. As with Graham, Billy Sunday's New York revival climaxed a phenomenal career of soul-saving in smaller communities. Newspapers predicted that the 1917 campaign would be “Billy's Rubicon,” and described New York as “the graveyard of evangelists.” The Sunday revival, like the present Graham revival, was preceded by months of prayer, fund-raising, and planning down to the most minute detail. In each case delegations from churches and civic organizations in New York and elsewhere were recruited to occupy large blocks of seats, thus guaranteeing sizeable audiences in advance.

It remains to be seen whether Billy Graham can duplicate or excel the records chalked up in New York by Billy Sunday. Sunday preached to 1½million persons during his 10-week crusade, of whom 98,000 responded to his call to hit the sawdust trail. A more fundamental question, which bothers the Protestant clergy today as it did in Sunday's time, is whether conversion in the grip of revivalist emotion has any lasting effects on the morals and spiritual life of the convert.