Billy in New York

"Although he has played to SRO in London (twelve weeks) and in Glasgow (eight weeks) and has never laid an egg anywhere, there is some apprehension among his supporters about New York City. Praying circles all over the world will pray all night, opening night, like actors in Sardi's after a premiere."

That is how the show biz weekly Variety good-humoredly told its readers about an extraordinary show that opens in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden this week: Evangelist Billy Graham's crusade for New York, a city he has sometimes regarded as a kind of Gomorrah-on-Hudson. Variety noted admiringly that "for sheer activity, traffic and buzz," his advance office in Manhattan "compares with the William Morris Agency," predicted that the crusade would be the biggest "full-chorus, hallelujah, oldtime religion, monster revival" since Billy Sunday's invasion of New York in 1917. Figures supplied by Graham's advance men and those on Sunday's setup printed in the Nation, suggest that, except for vastly-higher costs today, the two evangelists' campaigns are similar in organization.

GRAHAM SUNDAY

Experts and Specialists 25 25

Choirs two (1,500 each) three (1,500 each)

Volunteer Counselors 4,200 3,000

Volunteer Ushers 1,200 2,000

Publicity and Advertising (est.) $255,000 $5,732

Total Cost (est.) $900,000 (excluding salaries) $320,659 (including salaries)

Total Attendance ? 1,250,000

Total Decisions for Christ ? 98,254

More than 500 billboards, thousands of orange-and-black bumper tags and regular TV and radio announcements proclaimed Graham's advent. In Madison Square Garden, still flavored with the tang of the recently departed circus, huge, fragrant vanloads of flowers were unloaded. For Billy, who calls himself "the Lord's master of ceremonies," carpenters hoisted a towering pulpit. "Every seat will be a good seat . . . There'll be nothing between him and you," a crusade official explained. "We always design it that way."

Religious Juggernaut? Meanwhile, the Christian Century reached its 40,000 subscribers with one of the sharpest attacks on Billy yet made anywhere--far rougher than the criticism from Roman Catholics three weeks ago (TIME, May 6). With well-bred disdain, the Century regarded Billy as a sinister and strange "new junction of Madison Avenue and the Bible Belt . . . Radio and television will be carrying the voice and image of blond sincerity into homes long conditioned to recognize packaged virtue and desperate now for almost any kind of sincerity. It simply cannot fail. With trainloads of well-saved out-of-town supporters coming from as far away as Texas, the campaign will obviously be railroaded to success."

What, asks the Century rhetorically, is wrong with Billy? "Here is something hugely religious, and everybody is religious like everybody else, so why not go to the Garden? They all read Norman Vincent Peale and they all watch Bishop Sheen and they all go to the big Easter showing of The Ten Commandments, so why not go to the Garden?

"Prayerful and humble as Billy Graham is," the Century answers itself, "his plans and his methods show no faith in the caprice of the Holy Spirit . . . There is something horrifying in this monstrous juggernaut rolling over every sensitivity to its sure triumph . . . The most worrisome aspect of the whole Graham phenomenon, perhaps, has been the failure of nerve in men who know better, the atrophy of critical faculties. Worst of all has been the drive to smother opposition, to engulf critics, to surround criticism. In the good name of unity, Billy and his friends have pressed for a dangerously anti-Protestant uniformity and conformity."

So What? The Century's attack angered many New York ministers of the 1,500 churches that are cooperating with Billy Graham's crusade. From Dr. John Sutherland Bonnell, pastor of Manhattan's prestigious Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, came a reply: "Such attacks cause me no excitement or consternation. The decisions for Christ at Graham's meetings are not just an emotional experience. People who make decisions will be taken immediately into the care of the churches, and we very definitely expect to gather the fruits of the Billy Graham campaign by permanent organization, by teaching discipline. To commit your life to Christ, as these people will do, is to surrender to Christ, but the important growth follows after that. It is not the end but the beginning. I say 'So what?' to such attacks."

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