Billy & the Theologians

Is ubiquitous Billy Graham good for Christianity? Though many will fail to understand how anyone who preaches the Bible could be bad for it, there are those who feel that where the gospel is concerned, half a loaf can be worse than no bread. The Billy Graham debate is waxing hot in the pages of the Protestant weekly Christian Century.

For the Negative. An articulate anti-Grahamite is Union Theological Seminary's Reinhold Niebuhr, who has done more than any man in the U.S. to hose away the froth of religious liberalism with the cold high-pressure stream of neo-orthodox polemic. The orthodoxy of Evangelist Graham, Niebuhr complains, is too naively orthodox. Liberal theology had one enormous asset: "The absolute honesty with which it encouraged the church to examine the scriptural foundations of its faith ... It is this distinct gain of liberal Christianity which is now imperiled, with the general loss of the prestige of liberalism and the general enhancement of orthodoxy."

Graham, Niebuhr thinks, is a throwback to the theological past. "Graham still thinks within the framework of pietistic moralism. He thinks the problem of the atom bomb could be solved by converting the people to Christ, which means that he does not recognize the serious perplexities of guilt and responsibility, and of guilt associated with responsibility, which Christians must face .

"The personal achievements of Graham as a Christian and as evangelist should be duly appreciated. But they do not materially alter the fact that an individualistic approach to faith and commitment, inevitable as it may be, is in danger both of obscuring the highly complex tasks of justice in the community and of making too sharp distinctions between the 'saved' and the 'unsaved.' "

For the Affirmative. To Graham's defense this week comes Dean Elmer George Homrighausen of Princeton Theological Seminary. Billy Graham, he writes, "does break through into human personality and seems to give thousands of Protestants a dynamic gospel which highly intellectualized and organized Christianity fails to give."

Says Homrighausen: the problem of the individual has been intensified in our time. "Many people have said that if the Christian faith does not begin with the individual, it does not begin. But if it ends there, it ends! Existentialism of all types has confronted us with the loneliness and the uniqueness of personal life. Unless this individual is brought into an encounter with God-in-Christ so that his very existence is placed before the absolute judgment and mercy of God, he has not heard the 'gospel.' Unless he is 'converted,' he has not been initiated into the new life of Christ . . . My contention is that we must not give up the emphasis on the individual in evangelism, but, rather, must come to a new understanding of its necessity . . ."

Neo-orthodoxy, says Homrighausen, may know more about the structure and background of the Gospels, may take into account the sinfulness of individuals and nations, may understand the radical newness of the man reborn in Christ, but it "is hesitant and weak in calling persons to a positive faith." Theologian Homrighausen asks: "Where are the new orthodox evangelists? I have, frankly, been disappointed in [neo-orthodoxy's] inability to lead the way in the revival or rebirth or restoration of a relevant Protestantism in the local church."

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