AS the 19th century drew to a close, its most important social theorists – the likes of Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx and Max Weber – forecast the advent of a new secular age. In the 20th century, ever-increasing technological advancement and material prosperity were expected to cause a near universal loss of interest in religion. From our 21st century viewpoint, of course, those predictions seem to have fallen flat: a cluster of local exceptions in the secular West aside, the world remains a fervently religious place.
The life and work of the evangelical Christian preacher Billy Graham (1918-2018) forms a striking demonstration of the secularisation thesis’ failure – and particularly so in our Western context. Graham’s ministry encompassed the second half of the 20th century, a time expected by Marx et al to be acutely unreceptive to such a simple, uncompromising gospel message. In reality, however, an estimated 215 million people – the children of the 20th century from Celtic Park to Pyongyang – came to hear Billy Graham preach. By the time his work had begun, Christianity’s crumbling cultural hegemony in the West had left institutionalised religion in mid-collapse. And yet even in those circumstances, Billy Graham’s revival campaigns across Europe and North America filled sports stadiums, lecture halls and big tents. Despite the 19th century’s bleak projections, the 20th century would produce the most widely heard preacher in history.
Why did the 20th century, in all its modern finery, provide this conservative evangelical preacher with a captive global audience? The content of Graham’s preaching – heaven and hell, sin and grace, cross and resurrection, forgiveness and new birth in Jesus – was not historically novel. If anything, his theology set him against the materialistic spirit of the age. His novelty lay, rather, in the thoroughly modern way in which he viewed his hearers.
Compare Billy Graham’s preaching with that of the 16th century Protestant reformer Martin Luther. As with Graham, Luther emerged from obscurity to become a preacher whose message would have an astonishingly wide reach. As an orthodox Protestant of an earlier vintage, Luther shared many of the basic theological commitments heard in Graham’s gospel. However, Luther inhabited a culture that pre-dated a modern invention that would be key to Graham’s ministry: the notion of universal human dignity. In Luther’s late medieval world, inter-personal exchanges assumed either the honour or shame, but not the dignity, of those involved. Like Billy Graham, Martin Luther preached a message of God’s saving grace for sinners. Unlike Billy Graham, Martin Luther was quite willing to shame those who disagreed with his gospel, gladly lambasting them as ‘idiots and swine’. In his era, Luther’s effectiveness as a communicator depended on his ability to deploy insults to superb effect. Had he been nicer to his detractors, Luther may well have struggled to win over a 16th century audience.
Billy Graham was born into a different world. His was an age that longed for a basic equality shared by all people, but that struggled to reconcile this longing with the realities of a starkly unequal social order. Against that modern backdrop, Graham stood out – and met the needs of the day – precisely because of his evangelicalism. The same man who befriended presidents, spoke of North Koreans as his friends, and counselled notorious criminals, was coming to your city because of his desire to share the same message with you. In so doing, he assumed that his hearers were equal before God both in dignity and in their need of salvation. Curiously, a Billy Graham rally offered the modern heart what the modern world could not: hopeful equality.
Dr James Eglinton is Meldrum Lecturer in Reformed Theology at the University of Edinburgh
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