New Evangelicals, Old Fundamentalists
As the scope of his ministry expanded, Graham’s supporting nucleus swelled proportionately. When the Minneapolis staff grew to more than 125, prompting a move to larger quarters, BGEA purchased a plain but roomy Standard Oil building that provided twice as much space at less cost than the previous annual rent. Negotiations for the building reveal a telling aspect of Graham’s leadership style, a style that enabled him to husband his energies and concentrate on matters more directly related to ministry. After resigning from the Northwestern Schools, he spent little time in Minneapolis, content to leave the day-to-day operation to George Wilson. He liked the arrangement and saw no reason to alter it, even for something as important as choosing the ministry’s basic administrative facility. When Wilson called repeatedly to laud the advantages of the building, he was both astonished and gratified to hear his boss say, “Man, if you need a building, go ahead and buy it. Don’t bother me with details.”
Graham was, however, willing to take a stronger hand in augmenting his personal circle. Throughout his ministry, when he needed someone to fill a particular role, instead of launching a formal or informal search for a person with appropriate credentials, he has selected someone he liked and trusted, whatever the shape or content of his portfolio. He has done whatever it took to persuade that person to join him, then endued him with confidence to accomplish the task for which he had been chosen. As he moved more and more in circles of strangers, new friends, and high-powered casual acquaintances, he felt the need for the reassurance that only old friends can provide. And as he had done while in YFC and at Northwestern, he called on one of his oldest and most trusted friends, T. W. Wilson.
After leaving Northwestern along with Graham, T. W. had gone back into an evangelistic ministry and was achieving considerable success with his own team. He had felt like a misfit at Northwestern and admitted he suspected it was Billy Graham, not God, who had called him to that particular position. When Graham invited him to join his crusade team in 1956, he resisted. Wilson was flourishing financially, a pleasant experience for a man reared in poverty, and admitted that “for me to be willing to take a big cut in salary was my big problem.” Instead of offering to match his current income, Graham used a bit of spiritual jujitsu on Wilson. “T,” he said, “why don’t you come [with me] and just take a salary. I know what kind of offerings you get, but I believe your ministry would be more constructive, more helpful, more edifying, and freer from criticism.” Wilson struggled with the decision but finally gave in. “In a sense, it was a selfish thing,” he acknowledged, “and yet, I wanted to do what was honorable and right. I took a salary of just about one third of what I had been accustomed to, but I was happy about it, and it made me feel more like a gentleman.” Over the next thirty years, no one, including Ruth, would spend more time at Billy’s side than T. W. Wilson.
A second major addition came with the recruitment of Leighton Ford, an impressive young Canadian whose life Graham had already touched in important ways. Ford, an able preacher and youth leader while in high school, met Graham at a YFC conference at Winona Lake. Their paths crossed again in January 1949, when Billy spoke at a Canadian Youth Fellowship meeting at Ford’s invitation. When only one young woman came forward at the close of Graham’s sermon, Leighton was crushed, apparently feeling he was somehow responsible for not having produced a more receptive audience. After the service, as he stood by the side of the platform, tears of disappointment streaming down his face, he felt the presence of the tall young evangelist he so admired standing beside him. Graham recognized, of course, that Leighton was in no way responsible for the meager response, but he took his young friend’s concern seriously. “Billy put his arms around me,” Ford recalled, “and said, ‘Leighton, God has given you a burden, and He always blesses somebody with a burden.” Graham perceived that Leighton Ford had exceptional promise as a preacher and Christian leader, and he determined to see it realized.
Shortly afterward, he contacted President Edman of Wheaton and got him to accept Ford as a student. Then, not content with the role of college recruiter, he decided to become a matchmaker. In his subsequent letters to Leighton and even in a carbon copy of a letter he sent to Edman, he managed to mention that his younger sister, Jean, would also be enrolling at Wheaton in the fall. If Ford understood this simply to be incidental news, his mother did not. Throughout the spring and summer, whenever he dated a girl, she would remind him that he should not get serious, because “you haven’t met Billy Graham’s sister yet.” On the home front, Graham was telling Jean about Leighton. Perhaps sensing that once Billy decided what people ought to do with their lives, the chances of getting him to relent were minimal, the two young people accepted their fate and were married in December 1953; the bride’s older brother performed the ceremony. During the summer of 1952, Ford worked for BGEA as a representative of the film ministry, arranging screenings for Mr. Texas in churches and rented halls throughout the Midwest. In 1955 he was a student at Columbia (Presbyterian) Theological Seminary in Georgia and spent the summer in Scotland holding one-night meetings aimed at keeping Graham’s Kelvin Hall inquirers plugged into local churches. He proved so effective that Graham persuaded him to return to Toronto in the fall to help with a three-week crusade in his home city. Soon afterward, he became a full-time associate evangelist with the team, a position he would hold for thirty years.
That Graham was able to summon men to his side attested to his status as a key leader and the most prominent public figure in a movement that had assumed definite shape and called itself the New Evangelicalism. The term, coined by Harold John Ockenga, signified a form of conservative Christianity that consciously marked itself off from old-line Fundamentalism in several crucial respects. Its adherents clung loyally to such basic tenets of Fundamentalism as the inspired and fully reliable nature of Scripture, the Virgin Birth, the sinfulness of humanity, the substitutionary atonement, the Resurrection, and the Second Coming, but tended to be rather tolerant of minor theological differences among themselves. Upward mobility, education, travel, and the associations they afforded helped them understand that good and sincere people could look at the world quite differently and that these differences need not always be threatening. They tended to feel more comfortable in Evangelical congregations, denominations, and parachurch organizations but did not insist these were the only bodies in which one could serve God. If an Evangelical believer chose to remain affiliated with a mainline denomination, as had Nelson Bell and Harold Ockenga, that was acceptable, perhaps even desirable, since they might counteract tendencies toward liberalism in those bodies. Most were skeptical of the tongue speaking and healing that occurred in Pentecostal denominations, but they hesitated to define the work of the Holy Spirit too narrowly, and they regarded the Pentecostals who belonged to the National Association of Evangelicals as brothers and sisters in Christ. Similarly, though they deemed Modernist theology to be both erroneous and threatening to true Christianity, their opposition lacked the hysterical brittleness manifested by Carl McIntire and men of his ilk. To the New Evangelicals, it was far more important to proclaim the gospel than to defend it.
Despite their conviction that theological disputation should take second place to evangelism, the New Evangelicals were by no means anti-intellectual. On the contrary, Ockenga and Bell and Carl F. H. Henry, as well as other leaders of the movement, had high regard for serious intellectual work and devoutly believed that Evangelical convictions could and should be set forth and defended according to the same rigorous canons of scholarship observed in liberal and secular universities and seminaries. For true Christianity to commend itself to modern men and women, it had to be intellectually respectable. It could announce that “the Bible says,” but it had to show why that announcement deserved special notice. It might ultimately reject evolution, but it would address the same evidence secular scientists considered and not simply declare that evolution could not be true because it differed from the Genesis account of creation.
As part of their willingness to take a hard look at positions long held, many New Evangelicals began to reexamine some of their distinctive and cherished beliefs, including that hallmark of Fundamentalist doctrine, dispensationalism. Few surrendered their conviction that Christ would one day return to bring human history to a divinely ordained consummation, probably including a glorious millennial reign. Some key leaders, however, rejected the dispensationalist notion that history is following a blueprint so detailed and immutable that human attempts to affect its course are futile, a belief that underlay Fundamentalism’s notorious lack of concern for social reform. Speaking directly to this issue, Ockenga asserted that the New (and true) Evangelical “intends that Christianity will be the mainspring in many of the reforms of the societal order. It is wrong to abdicate responsibility for society under the impetus of a theology which overemphasizes the eschatological.” By the mid-1950s, they had not only rejected the narrowness of the Fundamentalist vision but had begun to believe they might have an outside chance to regain a kind of cultural hegemony Evangelicals had not known, outside the South at least, since the Civil War. Modernist faith in the inherent goodness of humanity and the inevitability of progress had taken a terrible pounding in the previous two decades, making the biblical view of a tragically flawed humanity seem quite plausible and the offer of radical transformation quite attractive. In apparent response to this circum stance, America was experiencing unmistakable religious revival, evinced in part by the growing popularity of Billy Graham. Many New Evangelicals dared hope that with God’s help and Billy Graham’s connections, they might revitalize Evangelical Christianity, and through it, America and the world.
Graham and President Eisenhower had regular, if not particularly frequent, contact. The evangelist visited at Gettysburg, where the former general gave him a private tour of the battlefield where Morrow Graham’s father had been wounded. Before his foreign trips, Graham tried to drop by the White House to let Eisenhower know where he would be going and to learn if he needed to watch for any special diplomatic opportunities or pitfalls. When he returned he typically sent a long report on what he had observed or requested the opportunity to discuss “an urgent matter” or to deliver “extremely vital information” to the Commander-in-Chief. After major crusades he routinely dropped the President a line, letting him know the size of the crowds and assuring him that most of the people he had met in the crusade city admired and prayed regularly for him. Graham made no attempt to mask either his delight at their relationship or his political leanings. Once, after Eisenhower gave him a ride in the presidential limousine, he called the brief excursion “an unforgettable experience that I shall cherish the rest of my life.” In the same letter, he noted that he had recently heard Republican congressman Walter Judd speak in Asheville. “I told him afterward,” he noted, “that if he could give that same address on all the television networks, we wouldn’t have to worry about Congress remaining GOP-controlled this fall.” Like any politician interested in reelection, the President kept up his end of the exchanges, but the tone and content of his letters suggest that genuine affection nourished the friendship at least as much as perfunctory, pragmatic politics. By the summer of 1955, Graham, who signed his letters with such effusive tributes as “still thinking you are the greatest President in American history, I am cordially yours,” was comparing Ike to Lincoln and urging him to seek reelection in 1956. “You have,” he pledged, “my unqualified support.”
Contact with the White House led naturally to further exposure to Nixon, whose fervent anticommunism and Evangelical associations (though a Quaker, Nixon had been converted by evangelist Paul Rader, and his parents were active in California Evangelical circles) attracted Graham to him. Their similarity in age also made it easy to develop what would become a long and fateful friendship. While many found it difficult to admire or even to trust the Vice-President, Graham quickly became an enthusiastic booster and solicitous counselor. In the summer of 1955 he observed that “[Nixon’s] sincerity, strong convictions, and humility are evident and catching. Your speech is also sparked with a sense of humor that is all-important.” These winsome qualities, he thought, bode well for the Republican ticket in the 1956 election, and he revealed that he was suggesting to friends in “high ecclesiastical circles” that Nixon be invited to address various religious assemblies during the following year. He also hoped he might benefit firsthand from the Vice-President’s charm and wit. “Anytime that you have a few days this winter,” he volunteered, in an uncommon show of scheduling flexibility and willingness to travel, “we can take a swim or play a game of golf in Florida or, better still, in Hawaii.”
By October, when Nixon was standing in for Eisenhower, who had suffered a heart attack, Graham had already begun to envision him as a candidate for president, if not in 1956, then certainly in 1960. Given that likelihood, he felt the Vice-President needed to pay close attention to his public image. “Governor Dewey said to me a few weeks ago,” he confided, “that you were the most able man in the Republican party. He has great confidence in you but seems to be a little fearful that you may be taken over unwittingly by some of the extreme right-wingers. He feels that in order to be elected President of the United States, a man is going to have to take a middle-of-the-road position. I think he is right!” He then cautioned Nixon against drawing too heavily on his anti-Communist credentials. “In my opinion, there is so much goodwill bubbling out of Moscow that the issue of Communism is no longer as potent as it was politically in the U.S.” The Reds were still a menace, he conceded, but it might not be wise to harp on it too loudly. That said, he promised, “You will have my constant prayers and I will put in a word here and there and use my influence to show people that you are a man of moral integrity and Christian principles.” In his reply a short time later, Nixon indicated he had taken the evangelist’s counsel to heart. “I think your political advice was right on the beam,” he said, “and, as you probably have noted, I have been trying to follow the course of action you recommended during the past few weeks.”
The frequency and informality of these exchanges grew as the election approached. The evangelist called the Vice-President “Dick” and remained “Cordially yours, Billy.” Nixon reciprocated the familiarity, and the two men cemented their friendship with further notes and golf games and gifts. Once, after Nixon sent a set of three “Mr. Vice-President” golf balls, Billy gushed in gratitude that prompted a non sequitur “How thoughtful of you. No wonder you are one of the youngest Vice-Presidents in history.” Graham did not restrict his praises and favors to private communication. He told U.S. News & World Report that Nixon was “very respected around the world as a man of the people” and arranged to have the Vice-President, whom he characterized as “a splendid churchman,” speak at major Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian conferences in North Carolina during the summer, even supplying him with an unsolicited speech he thought Nixon might want to use. He also offered to invite several key religious leaders, including a Methodist and an Episcopal bishop, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (South), to have lunch with the Vice-President at the Graham home in Montreat. Graham felt exposure to these and other religious leaders would help Nixon immensely. “Very frankly,” he said, “you are in need of a boost in Protestant religious circles. I am asked about you almost everywhere I go in religious circles. I think it is time that you move among some of these men and let them know you. There is nothing like personal contact. They will become completely sold on your sincerity and ability, just as I have been.” He assured Nixon, however, that the trip would not be a weekend of sackcloth and ashes. In addition to promising him “three air-conditioned rooms with a king-sized double bed,” Billy offered to be his host at “the exclusive Biltmore Club in Asheville, where General Eichelberger and I have lockers side by side.”
After the Republican convention in San Francisco in August, Graham wrote Eisenhower that he was “absolutely convinced” that the contrast between the decorum at the GOP gathering and the raucous disorder at the Democratic convention in Chicago “won millions of thoughtful Americans. As you, Mrs. Eisenhower and the Nixons were bowing in prayer, all of us seemed to sense that here were dedicated people to a cause that cannot lose. I shall do all in my power during the coming campaign to gain friends and supporters for your cause. As always, you have my complete devotion and personal affection.” On the same day, he told Nixon, “There is no doubt about it that the Democrats are going to use every trick in the bag, but in my opinion, you do not have to stoop to the gutter with them to win.” Once again, Graham made no official public endorsement, but such pointed comments as his lament that divorce no longer seemed to disqualify a person from being a presidential candidate—Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee was divorced—left little doubt where he stood. After the election Graham wrote not only to congratulate Nixon on the victory and commend him for “adhering to highest moral and spiritual principles” but also to note, in easy-to-decipher code, that “this campaign has lifted your prestige higher than ever. I think some of the possibilities we talked about concerning the future are definitely in the making.” Then, in a reference that made it clear that at least some of his political views were grounded in his understanding of the Bible, he added, “Some of the things that are now happening in the Middle East are highly significant from the Bible point of view. I hope the U.S. does not make a serious mistake at this crucial hour of history.” In a subsequent letter, he raised a similar point, observing that “it is amazing how these scriptures are being fulfilled before our very eyes. Sometimes, perhaps we will have opportunity to go over these again privately, because it may help you in determining future courses of action, in case added responsibilities are yours.”
Graham was not alone in his efforts to inject Evangelical Christianity into the veins of the body politic. In Washington a seldom-publicized organization, International Christian Leadership (ICL), set up a “Christian embassy” under the low-key but effective direction of Abraham Vereide, known in Evangelical circles as Mr. Christian of Washington. Vereide’s primary strategy was to organize breakfast prayer groups for government leaders and workers and, more dramatically, to conduct “spiritual installations” for government officials entering new positions or feeling the need for a spiritual booster shot. In 1953 Vereide also organized the first annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast. These breakfasts brought leading Evangelicals together with some of the nation’s most powerful figures. At the 1954 edition, which doubled as the opening meeting of ICL’s annual conference, Eisenhower, several cabinet members, and a flock of influential senators and congressmen attended; featured speakers included hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, Richard Nixon, and Chief Justice Earl Warren. Billy Graham did not speak, but he was prominently present, and at the close of the session, George Beverly Shea led the six hundred guests in singing President Eisenhower’s favorite hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”
While Graham and Vereide and others worked the corridors of political power, Harold Ockenga, Carl Henry, and a small cadre of men more oriented to scholarship tended a new young sapling in the groves of academe. When Charles Fuller first spoke to Ockenga about using his radio ministry to generate income to found an undergraduate school of evangelism and missions, Ockenga (who held a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh) countered with a vision of a first-rate graduate seminary to fill the gap created when Princeton moved into the liberal camp and to equip Evangelicals for the formidable task of articulating and defending conservative Christianity in the face of liberal theology and secular materialism. The idea captured Fuller’s imagination, and in 1947 Fuller Theological Seminary welcomed an inaugural class of thirty-nine members—an impressive number in itself, and all the more so because it included students from Harvard, Dartmouth, Berkeley, and USC—to its Pasadena campus, a lovely facility acquired by Fuller at a good price from a millionaire’s estate. Its founding fathers expansively predicted it would soon achieve a status comparable to that of another Pasadena institution, making it “a Cal Tech of the Evangelical World.” A decade would pass before Billy Graham established a formal tie with Fuller Seminary as a member of its board of trustees, but his admiration for its founder and faculty translated easily into unabashed enthusiasm for the new school and its mission. He liked being plugged into a serious academic institution, and the men at Fuller relished the visibility their ties with him provided their little school.
Despite his confidence in the faculty and students at Fuller, Graham worried that their impact would be too long in coming and began to dream of a way to present the beliefs and concerns of the New Evangelicalism to America’s pastors, who could, in turn, communicate them to their parishioners. In the service of that dream, in 1956 he established what would quickly become the most widely read serious religious journal in the nation, Christianity Today. Early in 1951, Fuller professor Wilbur Smith, whom he greatly respected, wrote to him of the need for “a periodical so important that it would be absolutely indispensable for every serious-minded Christian minister in America.” Such a publication would, in Smith’s vision, contain exposition of Scripture, explication of biblical prophecy and its application to current affairs, reviews of important books, and religious news. It would also, he insisted, pay “no attention to trash.” At that hectic point in his career, when he was trying to hold crusades, run the Northwestern Schools by telephone, keep BGEA afloat, and prepare a weekly radio broadcast, Graham had been in no position to act on Smith’s suggestion, and it is not clear he gave it much consideration. As he became more solidly established, however, and began to be criticized by liberal churchmen, particularly in the Christian Century, which the secular media seemed to regard as a kind of semiofficial voice of Protestant Christianity, he began to reflect on the need for a comparable publication to represent an Evangelical perspective. Late in 1953, as he told it, he got out of bed in the middle of the night, went to his desk, and started writing down ideas for an Evangelical publication, similar in format to Christian Century, that “would give theological respectability to Evangelicals.” He made a list of the various departments the magazine should have, decided to call it Christianity Today, and even drew up a tentative budget. The next morning, he shared his ideas with Ruth, who suggested they “make it a matter of prayer.” When prayer produced no negative indicators, Graham took the matter to Dr. Bell, who had founded the Presbyterian Journal; his father-in-law was enthusiastically receptive. Billy’s crusade experience had convinced him that many ministers in mainline denominations held Evangelical convictions but were timid about expressing them lest more liberal colleagues hold them up to scorn. Also, the fragmentation so characteristic of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals often left them isolated and unconnected to those sharing their beliefs and values. “Evangelicals needed a rallying point,” Graham recognized; “perhaps a dynamic magazine could help.”
A full schedule of crusades, including Harringay, moved the project to Graham’s back burner during 1954, but with BGEA’s underwriting the cost of his travel and correspondence, Nelson Bell diligently contacted hundreds of Evangelical leaders to gauge the interest in such a magazine and to identify potential editors, writers, and financial supporters. With few exceptions, he found generous encouragement. By 1955, Graham was ready to move, and it was clear he had been thinking about the character of the publication. In a letter to Fuller professor Harold Lindsell, he elaborated on his plans. The magazine would, he wrote, “plant the Evangelical flag in the middle of the road, taking a conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to social problems.” It would be critical of both the National and World Council of Churches when that was appropriate but would also commend them for their good work rather than align itself in unvarying opposition, in the manner of Carl McIntire’s journal, the Christian Beacon. It would, of course, promulgate a high view of biblical authority, but “its view of inspiration would be somewhat along the line of [The Christian View of Science and Scripture] by Bernard Ramm,” an Evangelical scholar’s book that challenged the belief that the Bible could be taken as authoritative on scientific matters and left open the possibility that a divinely guided form of evolution might have played a role in the origin of species and the development of humankind. Graham’s positive assessment of Ramm’s controversial book was significant in that despite his unshakable confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture, he was wary of making stronger claims for the Bible than the Bible makes for itself and was opting for an approach sure to draw fire from many Fundamentalists. Graham felt it was crucially important to “present a positive and constructive program” rather than to use “the stick of denunciation and criticism. . . . We would attempt to lead and love rather than vilify, criticize, and beat. Fundamentalism has failed miserably with the big stick approach; now it is time to take the big love approach.”
As part of its mission to influence national policy, the magazine would emanate from Washington, D.C. Graham had seriously considered moving BGEA’s offices to Washington—he thought it would be impressive to tell his radio listeners to write to “Billy Graham, Washington, D.C. That’s all the address you need.” It was even more important, he believed, for the capital to serve as the new journal’s home base. “I felt a magazine coming from Washington would carry with it an unusual authority. We also wanted our editor to mingle with congressmen, senators, and government leaders so he could speak with firsthand knowledge on the issues of the day.” Certainly, the editors must have felt they were at the center; from their tenth-floor offices at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street, they looked down on the White House lawn and the Treasury building.
Graham felt confident that tens of thousands of pastors would welcome such a publication, but he realized it would take years to build a substantial subscription list, and Evangelicals did not have years to spare. In one of the boldest aspects of the entire enterprise, he resolved to send the magazine free of charge for two full years to every minister and ministerial student in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as to English-speaking missionaries on foreign fields—a total of nearly 200,000 unpaid subscribers, the largest list of Protestant ministers ever assembled for any purpose. He was prepared to throw his weight behind the new venture and expected to be part of “a silent non-published group of men who actually control the paper,” but he did not think it should be a BGEA house organ, and his association would not be able to foot the entire bill. He persuaded old friends Howard Butt and John Bolten to pledge sizable sums, and he wrung substantial amounts from such newer supporters as shoe magnate Maxey Jarman and advertising executive Carl Fleming, but the angel whose wings would cast the largest shadow over the publication was J. Howard Pew, the president of Sun Oil Company and an active Presbyterian layman whom Billy had met through Nelson Bell. Despite his admiration for and self-proclaimed expertise in the theology of John Calvin, who advocated a theocratic state, Pew was an ardent conservative who virtually identified Christianity with his own version of pure laissez-faire economic individualism and who insisted the church should keep itself strictly free of entanglement in controversial social issues. He was also a fervent anti-Communist and had recently severed long-standing and close ties with the National Council of Churches because he felt its policies would “inevitably lead us into Communism.” He believed the ministry of liberal denominations contained “a few Communists, a larger percentage of Socialists, and a still larger percentage of what I might term fellow travelers.” Pew was far more of an ideologue than Billy Graham—he believed the United States should break off diplomatic relations with all Communist countries and drive them from the United Nations—but he approved of Graham’s anticommunism and of a magazine that would attempt to raise the level of scholarship in the ministry, on the apparent assumption that when people truly understood the Bible and classical Reformation theology, they would come to agree with him. Even Pew’s critics conceded the sincerity of his convictions, but the near fanaticism with which he held them was bound to create problems for an enterprise committed to standing in the middle of the road. Still, CT, as the magazine soon came to be known in Evangelical circles, would probably never have seen the light of day had it not been for Pew’s confidence in Billy Graham and his willingness to plow large sums of money into virtually anything the evangelist recommended. When Graham assured him in April 1955 that “I am determined to see this vision that I believe is from God carried out and properly controlled,” Pew agreed to stand in the gap for whatever amount might be needed to get the magazine started and to keep it in operation for its first several years. He pledged $150,000 for each of the first two years and continued to provide major support of the magazine for several additional years.
CT’s first board of trustees illustrated once again that a small number of men, most with close ties to Billy Graham, were at the center of the major developments in Evangelical Christianity during the 1950s. In addition to Graham and Howard Pew, the founding board included Nelson Bell, Jerry Beavan, John Bolten, Walter Bennett, Maxey Jarman, Howard Butt, and National Association of Evangelicals president Paul Rees. The first president was Harold Ockenga. Graham tried to persuade Wilbur Smith to leave Fuller to serve as the magazine’s first editor. When Smith declined after a period of longing indecision, the job went to Carl Henry. Interestingly, though he admired Henry’s administrative ability and intellect, Graham had reservations about his suitability for the post. His primary fear was that Henry, a man not inclined to undervalue his own positions, might show insufficient tolerance toward both Fundamentalists and liberals. He asked Lindsell, “Would Carl be ready to take a certain amount of criticism from typical Fundamentalist leaders? Would he be ready to come out in the middle, recognizing that even among American Baptists and U.S.A. Presbyterians there are good elements, God-fearing people, and devout ministers?” Along the same line, Graham feared that Henry’s writings had made him “too well known as a Fundamentalist,” so that his name on the mast head might generate a negative response among liberals, no matter how irenic the magazine’s tone. To offset that problem, Billy even raised the possibility of having Henry edit the magazine under an assumed name for a year or two until readers grew accustomed to its approach. Graham also wondered whether Henry would be able to produce the type of journalism the magazine needed. “The journalism that I envision for this magazine,” he told a friend, “must be intellectual but popular. . . . To put my thought at this point rather bluntly, Carl’s writing has a tendency to be rather heavy. I have read most of his writings, and though I am a minister of average intelligence, it has been very difficult for me to follow.”
Graham was not the only one with reservations. Henry himself wondered if he was right for the job. On the one hand, he felt the middle of the road might be a dangerous place to stand. Though he agreed that a charitable spirit would be necessary, he insisted on theological integrity. “Liberalism and Evangelicalism,” he said, “do not have equal rights and dignity in the true church.” On the other hand, despite his staunch anticommunism and Republican confidence in the superiority of capitalism to other economic systems, he believed that “capitalism is not beyond Christian criticism” and thought it a mistake to assume that “American capitalism [is] the ideal economic form of the Kingdom of God.” If Howard Pew’s underwriting of the magazine meant such sentiments must be stifled, then perhaps Graham should seek another editor. This insistence on independence worried Graham, and he asked if Henry would consider soft-pedaling his differences with liberals for two years, stressing instead the beliefs and practices Evangelicals held in common with the so-called mainline denominations. Henry would not. “The truth,” he snapped, “is still the indispensable human factor in Christian apologetics; truth without love will be usually ignored, but love without the truth is not even real love.” If they wanted to come back to him after two years of shading their true colors, he might be interested, but he could not agree to hide his light under a bushel, even on a temporary basis. Because Henry was not only the best man available but objectively a quite good choice, Graham and the board finally offered him the editorship, which he accepted. Nelson Bell gave up his surgical practice to become the magazine’s full-time executive editor, and Marcellus Kik, a Reformed Church minister who had helped Bell lay the groundwork for the magazine, became associate editor.
Not everything went smoothly. Pew’s experience with the National Council of Churches and other ventures he had supported had made him wary of relinquishing control. He decided, and got Ockenga to agree, that the editors should submit all articles to the board for approval before publication. Henry bridled immediately, telling Bell that were such a measure implemented, he would have no choice but to resign. In a notable, if reluctant, show of courage, both Bell and Graham sided with Henry, even though they realized doing so might undermine the entire venture. Bell informed the board that “none of us is willing to have Christianity Today bought by any interests. . . . If this position entails a loss of certain financial support, we will seek it elsewhere.” Graham then called Pew, whose support he desperately wanted to retain, to tell him his efforts to assert control over CT would destroy the magazine. A board has the right to fire an editor, he argued, but “if it hires him, it should trust and support him.” Pew never admitted his impulse was wrong, but he did drop his demands.
The fortnightly journal made its first appearance in mid-October 1956. Paul Harvey mentioned it on his national radio program, Newsweek made it the lead article in its religion section, and AP religion writer George Cornell gave it generous coverage. The Christian Century did not acknowledge its existence for four months. The inaugural forty-page issue demonstrated its founders’ aspirations to bridge the gap between serious theological discussion and practical preaching. Dutch theologian G. C. Berkouwer discussed the “Changing Climate of European Theology.” This was followed by Billy Graham’s ringing affirmation of the role of “Biblical Authority in Evangelism,” Carl Henry’s reflections on “The Fragility of Freedom in the West,” a mélange of other articles, editorials, news, and book reviews, a bit of strained humor under the heading, “Eutychus and His Kin” (named for a man who fell asleep while listening to the Apostle Paul preach), and nearly ten pages of advertising—an encouraging sign for a new publication. The masthead listed forty-nine contributing editors and seventy-three correspondents, a virtual roll call of Evangelical elites. A few days after the first issue went out, Graham sent Henry a six-page critique in which he judged it “not strikingly good, considering the terrific roster of editors and correspondents.” He reported that several people had indicated his own article contained “a bit too much spinning dust and purple prose” and several misleading and ineffective illustrations. As for Henry’s contribution, Graham said his informants had thought it was “too verbose” and gave the impression of “obscurity reaching for profundity.” Noting that these and most other criticisms had been voiced by others—“Personally, I was delighted with the magazine . . . for the first issue, I thought it was great”—and urging “beloved Carl” not to become discouraged, Graham said, “I felt that you would like to know the hard, cold facts, because it will help us in the future.”
Like most new magazines, CT got off to a shaky start. No one on the too-small staff had any previous experience in advertising or circulation, and it showed. Eager for revenue, they ran an early series of ads for Vita Safe and Supra Vite, nostrums designed to bring “fun and excitement” back into marriages whose female members were complaining about their husband’s “age.” Medically dubious and therefore particularly embarrassing to Dr. Bell, these ads were dropped as soon as the term of the contract expired. Both staff and board were naive about circulation. Graham, for example, felt confident he could generate 25,000 subscriptions by an appeal to his mailing list; he received 3,622 positive responses. With counsel from U.S. News & World Report editor David Lawrence, who admired the evangelist and gave his crusades extensive coverage, the staff trimmed expectations to match probability, exchanged lists with other conservative publications, and made good use of its institutional friends, as when it arranged to have Fuller Seminary’s mailing operation address thousands of envelopes to send to prospective subscribers. All these measures helped. By the time the ninth issue appeared in February 1957, the paid subscription list stood at 35,000, equal to that of the Christian Century, and Christianity Today assumed an apparently permanent position as the nation’s most widely read serious religious publication.
Financial and personnel problems notwithstanding, most of those associated with the new magazine delighted in its early success. Graham’s decision to send it to all the nation’s Protestant ministers had instantly given it an audience no other serious religious journal could match, and that audience was beginning to respond positively. Positive response meant a great deal to Billy Graham and his friends at CT. They looked backed yearningly to a time a hundred years earlier when Evangelical and Christian and American had been virtual synonyms. They also looked back (and around) at a time when Evangelical and Fundamentalist had come to mean “obscurantist” and “marginal.” Now, some dared hope they might look forward to a time, perhaps not far away, when Evangelicals would once again move to and stand at the center of the culture, defining and shaping its ethos. They understood that their little magazine was only part of the effort and that it was far from perfect, but they clearly saw it as a key weapon in their struggle to regain respectability. Look magazine declared that “among the so-called think magazines, Christianity Today is most stimulating.” The World Council of Churches invited Carl Henry to attend a conference at Oberlin College, Catholic scholar Gustave Weigel asked him to address a group of three hundred priests at the Jesuit seminary in Woodstock, Maryland, and the secular press began to refer to him as “the thinking man’s Billy Graham,” a sobriquet that caused some embarrassment within the Evangelical network but signaled awareness that Graham and CT were closely related elements of the same movement. An excellent news department drew such attention to the magazine that it soon became one of the nation’s most frequently quoted religious publications. Perhaps most important of all to the folk at CT, their magazine was giving the Christian Century, the loudest voice of liberal ecumenical Protestantism, more than a run for its money.
When the New Evangelical founders and shapers of Christianity Today declared their intention to fashion a new umbrella under which Christians of many denominations could unite, they found themselves arrayed against a formidable foe: the old Fundamentalists. Their differences, often hardly comprehensible to those who stood outside both camps but nevertheless real and significant, had been papered over to some extent by their mutual admiration for Billy Graham. It was therefore fitting, or at least historically symmetrical, that when they finally separated into distinct and often warring camps, Billy Graham stood at the center of the fray.
Evangelicals differed little from Fundamentalists on matters of doctrine. What distinguished them was their strategy regarding what to do with that doctrine. They saw their task as twofold: First, they felt it imperative to proclaim the gospel to as wide an audience as ability, opportunity, resources, and technology allowed; second, they sought to regain a hearing and respectability for orthodox belief within mainline denominations. Fundamentalists paid lip service to evangelism, but proclaiming their faith was never as important to them as protecting it and themselves from error. Their strategy of protection involved meticulous attention to the jots and tittles of Christian teaching and obsessive concern with contamination by those who were not pure. They believed in the Great Commission—“Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15)—but felt it should be interpreted in light of the Apostle Paul’s equally binding directive, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? . . . Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate” (II Corinthians 6:14–17) [Emphasis added]. Any attempt to preach the gospel, they insisted, would be undermined and ultimately turned into a victory for Satan if it involved fellowship with those whose minds had been clouded by Modernism, whose hearts had been cooled by compromise. Some thought it sufficient merely to separate themselves from unbelievers and liberals and ecumenists; a more extreme group thought purity also required separation from those who chose not to separate.
Billy Graham found it difficult to repudiate people who appeared to be sincere, professed to believe in at least some of the same things he believed, and treated him with courtesy and kindness. He doubtless intended to keep himself and his crusades free from Modernist contamination, but success weakened his resolve. As non-Evangelicals watched the streams of people who responded to his invitation, they wanted to channel at least a trickle of them into their own churches. As they saw it was possible to cooperate with his crusades without having him attack their beliefs from the pulpit, they began to join in the invitations, and when he agreed to come to their cities, to volunteer for committees. At first Graham was uneasy with non-Evangelical support but soon convinced himself that as long as no one tried to tell him what he could or could not preach, there could be no real harm in accepting the assistance and encouragement of people whose beliefs differed from his own at some points. After all, a key part of New Evangelical strategy was to gain a hearing for Evangelical doctrine in mainline denominations; might not his crusades be the perfect instrument of that strategy? Increasingly, and particularly after extensive cooperation with liberal state churches in England, Scotland, and on the continent, Graham came to accept, then to welcome, then virtually to require, the cooperation of all but the most flagrantly Modernist Protestant groups, such as Unitarians, or such bodies as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose teachings excluded them from both Evangelical and mainline circles and who seldom showed any interest in taking part in his crusades.
The strictest of the separatists opposed Billy Graham from the beginning. Carl McIntire, who had never cooperated long with any person or organization he could not control, disliked the evangelist because of his close ties with the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), which McIntire regarded as little better than the National Council of Churches. He also resented Graham’s friendship with Harold Ockenga, his chief rival within conservative circles. Others shared McIntire’s distrust of the New Evangelicals but were so proud of Graham’s accomplishments that they supported him as long as their convictions would allow. Bob Jones had been forced to renounce his prediction that Billy Graham would never amount to anything, and their relationship had been cordial while Graham was with YFC and at Northwestern. But when Jones withdrew from the NAE over what he regarded as excessive ecumenism, he soon fixed his gimlet eye on Graham, accusing him of peddling a “discount type of religion” and “sacrificing the cause of evangelism on the altar of temporary convenience.” Genuine doctrinal convictions doubtless played a role in Dr. Bob’s criticisms of Billy Graham, but the old tyrant’s legendary ego may well have been the decisive factor in creating an irreparable breach between the two men. For years Jones had repeatedly boasted that he had preached to more people than any person in history except Billy Sunday, that he was the highest-paid evangelist in America, and that “his boys”—students trained at Bob Jones College—had a corner on effective evangelism. Then, rather suddenly and wearing neither his mantle nor his blessing, Billy Graham had eclipsed him. “And the more well-known Billy got,” one observer said, “the more Dr. Bob turned against him.”
Some of the most thoroughgoing and sustained criticism of Graham’s ministry came from a third prominent Fundamentalist, John R. Rice, a man who stood by his side long after others had written him off as an apostle of the Antichrist. In 1934, the same year Billy Graham hit the sawdust trail in Mordecai Ham’s tent, Rice founded the Sword of the Lord, a militant journal whose masthead identified it as “An Independent Christian Weekly, Standing for the Verbal Inspiration of the Bible, the Deity of Christ, His Blood Atonement, Salvation by Faith, New Testament Soul Winning and the Premillennial Return of Christ. Opposes Modernism, Worldliness and Formalism.” By mid-century it was the most popular and influential journal in the Fundamentalist orbit. Rice was fully as willing as McIntire and Jones to draw a circle and shut others out, but even as the Sword slashed at the ties that bind true Christians to dupes and pretenders, he supported Billy Graham and gave his campaigns extensive coverage, fiercely proud that conservative Christianity once again had a world-famous evangelist in its ranks.
Graham appreciated Rice’s goodwill and encouragement but did not make his admirer’s job an easy one. When the National Council of Churches published the new Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible in 1952, Carl McIntire led a vitriolic Fundamentalist attack against it, charging that it was part of an ecumenical, possibly Communist, plot to undermine sound doctrine. Fundamentalists ferreted out numerous alleged inaccuracies in the RSV, but none so egregious as its translation of Isaiah 7:14, cited in Matthew 1:23 as a prophecy foretelling the birth of Jesus. In the King James Version, the verse read, “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son.” The RSV correctly translated the Hebrew phrase to read, “a young woman shall conceive.” Even though the new translation retained virgin in Matthew’s quotation and clearly depicted Mary as a virgin in the gospel accounts, many Fundamentalists viewed the translation as a Modernist assault on one of the cardinal affirmations of their faith. Acceptance or rejection of the RSV soon became a litmus test in Fundamentalist circles. Most professors at Fuller Seminary held positive views toward the new book, a fact that reportedly cost Charles Fuller thousands of supporters. In this climate Graham might easily have chosen to stand apart from the fray, since he had more to lose than to gain, but he did not. Instead, asserting that he favored making the Bible easier to read and understand, he issued a statement endorsing the new version and encouraging his supporters to give it a try.
As a further sign he was veering to the left, Graham began to accept invitations to speak at liberal seminaries. At Colgate Rochester Divinity School, he attempted to bridge the differences between his own theology and that of the eminent neoorthodox theologian and social critic, Reinhold Niebuhr. When he spoke of “the central need for a personal experience of Jesus Christ,” he added, as if they were synonymous conceptions, “or what Niebuhr would call an encounter with the living God.” A Fundamentalist reporting on this event objected that “no one in his right mind would believe for a moment that what the neo-orthodox Niebuhr means by ‘an encounter with the living God’ and what Jesus Christ defined as being ‘born again’ are one and the same.” At New York’s Union Theological Seminary, Graham had the temerity to say kind words about “known liberals,” including his old friend Chuck Templeton, who was then serving as an evangelist for the National Council of Churches. His hobnobbing with Anglicans in Great Britain and with Church of Scotland pastors in Glasgow added fuel to the fire. To make matters worse, he had invited some prominent American ministers, including New York pastor John Sutherland Bonnell, whose stated views on heaven and hell, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, and the inerrancy of Scripture struck fundamentalists as suspiciously liberal, to sit on the platform with him during some of the services at Kelvin Hall. When Scottish reporters tried to pin down Graham’s location on the contemporary spectrum, he declared, in a statement that mightily offended his conservative critics, “I am neither a fundamentalist nor a modernist.” To make matters worse, he told another reporter, “The ecumenical movement has broadened my viewpoint and I recognize now that God has his people in all churches.”
Such statements drew a storm of protest from Carl McIntire and a host of minor-league detractors, but John R. Rice remained loyal for as long as he could. In the late spring of 1955, he came to Graham’s defense in two long articles, “Questions Answered About Billy Graham” and “Billy Graham at Union Seminary.” He admitted that some of the things Billy had done troubled him but insisted that “no one could possibly say that Billy Graham is a modernist or tending toward modernism.” Rice conceded that Graham sometimes drifted into treacherous waters and “unwisely had fellowship with modernists on some occasions” but affirmed that “I believe he is God’s anointed man, being used tremendously in great revivals, and that every Christian in the world ought to rejoice in these revivals.”
Rice’s defense helped maintain a fragile accord for a while. Carl McIntire continued to fire his loose cannon at anything that moved even slightly to the left, but Bob Jones, probably at Rice’s behest, refrained from criticizing the evangelist by name in his weekly column in the Sword, and men like Jack Wyrtzen fretted more in private than in public, continuing to hope that Graham’s flirtation with Modernists would pass and that he would return to the Fundamentalist fold a chastened and wiser man. But about the same time he took the first steps to found CT, Graham dashed those hopes and severed whatever threads of unity remained between the New Evangelicals and old Fundamentalists by accepting an invitation from the Protestant Council of the City of New York, an affiliate of the liberal National Council of Churches, to hold a crusade in Madison Square Garden during the late spring of 1957.
Graham had turned down invitations to come to New York in 1951 and 1954, both times because he felt the group offering the invitation was too heavily weighted with Fundamentalists and therefore did not represent the broad spectrum of the city’s Protestant churches. The Protestant Council represented 1,700 churches, 94 percent of all Protestant bodies in the metropolitan area. In fact, the council’s leadership was less than enthusiastic about a Billy Graham crusade, but the idea received strong support from some wealthy and influential constituents, including Chase Manhattan Bank chairman George Champion, a southern Evangelical layman who chaired the council’s Department of Evangelism, and Mrs. Cleveland Dodge, a wealthy laywoman whose family had backed Finney, Moody, and Sunday, as well as some of the city’s leading clergymen, including Norman Vincent Peale.
In April Rice argued that Modernist opposition to the crusade proved the evangelist was preaching the truth, but over the next seven months, except for two mildly negative articles by nonregular contributors, neither Graham’s name nor face appeared in the pages of the magazine that had featured him and his ministry on virtually a weekly basis. When Rice finally broke his silence in November, it was clear Graham had lost the last major Fundamentalist in his camp. The title of Rice’s editorial, “Which Way, Billy Graham?” suggested ambiguity, but he had made up his mind where Graham’s ministry was headed. Apparently, Graham had also made up his mind to worry no longer about pleasing the Fundamentalists. In an interview published in the June issue of Christian Life he said that “the fighting, feuding and controversies among God’s people . . . is a very poor example” and charged that a key reason true revival had not come to America was the “name-calling and mudslinging” so prevalent among Evangelicals. As for his coming to New York under the aegis of the Protestant Council, he asked, “What difference does it make who sponsors a meeting?” Paul had preached at Mars’ hill at the invitation of Greek philosophers, and George Whitefield had said that if invited, he would gladly preach to the pope.
Always eager to spot any sign of weakness, Fundamentalist wolves pounced on Graham’s exposed neck. Yes, they conceded, Paul had permitted Athenian philosophers to “sponsor” him, but he did not give the names of his converts to the priests of pagan temples. Graham’s appeal to peace and harmony, they hooted, was just the sort of thing to expect from a man who had gone soft on doctrine. Graham resisted lashing back but made little attempt to change his course. However much he wanted the support of Fundamentalists, for both strategic and emotional reasons, he realized he could do without them. Their numbers were relatively small, and their obstreperous exclusiveness would always keep them out of the cultural mainstream where he was determined to swim. He was ready to make the break. When John R. Rice asked him to indicate in writing that he still held to the Sword’s statement of faith, Graham not only declined but asked to be dropped from the magazine’s board. The break was final. In his editorial, which took the form of an open letter to Graham, Rice sadly conceded that the constellation of true believers had lost one of its brightest stars. “I understand that you are generally sound in doctrine,” he wrote, “but I know now that the Sword of the Lord does not speak for you when it defends fundamentalists, [because] you do not claim to be a fundamentalist.”
In an April 1957 article entitled “Billy Graham’s New York Crusade,” Rice announced he would trace the “breaking down of convictions” in the “new Evangelicalism” and the unfortunate changes in Billy Graham’s policies and evangelistic program. Over the next several months, almost every issue of the Sword of the Lord contained a long article or editorial detailing the danger Graham and his Modernist New York crusade posed to Bible-based Christianity. In a notable shift in tactics, Rice began to criticize not only Graham’s misguided behavior but also his motives. Billy had rejected the invitation of faithful Fundamentalists, he charged, because he wanted “the prestige, the financial backing, and worldly influence” of the liberal council. In an unusually explicit defense offered at a meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals, Graham called his critics “extremists,” and said flatly, “I would like to make myself clear. I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ if there are no strings attached to my message. I am sponsored by civic clubs, universities, ministerial associations, and councils of churches all over the world. I intend to continue.” As a consequence of this tolerance for impurity, Rice solemnly intoned, “Dr. Graham is one of the spokesmen, and perhaps the principal spark plug of a great drift away from strict Bible fundamentalism and strict defense of the faith.”
The Fundamentalists’ rage increased as plans for the New York crusade moved forward. As the committees took shape, it became clear that Graham did indeed plan to hold an ecumenical crusade. One critic charged that of the 140 people on the General Crusade Committee, at least 120 were “reputed to be modernists, liberals, infidels, or something other than fundamental.” When Carl McIntire heard Graham refer to such men as National Council of Churches leader Jesse Bader and noted preacher Ralph Sockman as “godly men,” it was “almost too hard to swallow! . . . They are not godly men.” Graham further manifested his ostensible lack of concern for sound doctrine not only by such statements as “the one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy, but love,” but also by his apparent willingness to send decision cards to Catholic and Jewish clergy. Given the choice, the follow-up committee would always send an inquirer’s card to a Protestant congregation, but if an inquirer specifically asked to be referred to a Catholic church or Jewish synagogue, that request would be honored. “After all,” he explained, “I have no quarrel with the Catholic Church. Christians are not limited to any church. The only question is: Are you committed to Christ?” This justification did not seem to apply to Jews, but Graham was quoted by several newspapers as having explicitly said that “we’ll send them to their own churches—Roman Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish. . . . The rest will be up to God.”
Not all of Graham’s Fundamentalist critics saw him as a willing tool of Satan, sent forth to do the work of the Antichrist. Some concluded that he wanted to be faithful to God’s commands, but his desire for acceptance and his lamentable tendency to see the best in others short-circuited his ability to recognize error and excise it from the body of Christ. One prominent Fundamentalist observed that “those who know Billy best say that it is his amiable personality that makes him believe that he can become a sort of pontiff—or bridge builder—between Bible-believing Christians and those attractive personalities who are the proponents of the non-redemptive gospel. [At a recent breakfast], he pleaded with us to recognize that many of the liberals were good men, loved the Lord, and perhaps could be won over to the conservative position—Billy spreads himself too thin; he tries not to offend anybody in any way—[B]y not making war on some things he has gone to the other extreme, and made peace, not with the doctrines of apostasy, but with those who preach the doctrines of apostasy. This, I believe, is deadly and will one day defeat the whole cause for which this man of God is laboring.”
This furor upset Graham, not only because it threatened the crusade but also because it pained him to lose the confidence and affection of men who had worked at his side. He decided, however, not to respond to their criticisms directly. Years earlier, when his sudden rise to national prominence had made him an inviting target for both religious and secular detractors, he had told his radio audience that “the devil starts many deliberate lies about God’s servants, and thousands of Christians grasp them, believe them, and pass them on in ugly gossip. . . . I make it a policy never to answer critics, but to go on in the center of God’s will, preaching the everlasting Gospel of Christ. Satan would like nothing better than to have us stop our ministry and start answering critics, tracking down wretched lies and malicious stories.” Fundamentalists whose orthodoxy “knows nothing of the spirit of God or the love for their own brethren” and the dissension they stir, he charged, are “a stench in the nostrils of God” and thwart revival in the church. “By God’s grace,” he pledged, “I shall continue to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and not stoop to mudslinging, name-calling, and petty little fights over nonessentials.” That approach had served him well on three continents, and he decided to stick with it. Stephen Olford, who had come from England to help with the crusade, remembered reading some of the letters the evangelist received from his Fundamentalist critics—“They were vitriolic, sarcastic, devastating.” But Billy decided to turn the other cheek. “Stephen,” he said, “I’ve prayed this through. All I’m going to do is write them little love notes—‘I’ll weigh what you say, but I love you.’”
Graham’s refusal to respond directly did not mean he was unwilling to have others fight in his stead. Nelson Bell wrote a long and widely circulated letter to Bob Jones offering point-by-point response to the charges Jones had made against his son-in-law. Carl Henry also wrote a series of articles in CT, charging Fundamentalism with “a harsh temperament, a spirit of lovelessness and strife contributed by much of its leadership in the recent past,” and declaring that “in this contemporary expression [it] stands discredited as a perversion of the biblical spirit.” He called on readers to repudiate this disposition and adopt the more open attitude represented by the New Evangelicalism. And Robert O. Ferm, who had joined BGEA as a researcher and all-purpose intellectual, wrote an entire book, Cooperative Evangelism, in which he contended that all the great evangelists—Wesley, Whitefield, Finney, Moody, Sunday, and others, including Bob Jones and John R. Rice themselves in earlier years—had willingly cooperated with a wide range of churchmen in order to fulfill the Great Commission to preach the gospel to all humankind. “No major evangelist in history,” Ferm asserted, “has ever too closely analyzed the orthodoxy of his sponsors.”
The New York crusade did not cause the division between the old Fundamentalists and the New Evangelicals; that had been signaled by the nearly simultaneous founding of the National Association of Evangelicals and McIntire’s American Council of Christian Churches fifteen years earlier. But it did provide an event around which the two groups were forced to define themselves. Many outsiders would be unaware of what was happening within the ranks of this segment of conservative Christianity, and many would never fully recognize or understand their differences, but during the struggle that came to a head in 1957, the mask of Evangelical unity was lifted, and the terms Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism came to refer to two different movements.