Crusade's Impact

It was i o'clock of a steamy hot morning, and the bums and drunks on Manhattan's Bowery were sitting in the doorways, just staring. The neat young stranger approached an unshaven old one. "Hello there," he said. "I'm Billy Graham."

"Beat it."

"You have a problem," Billy said. "You won't accept God."

"Gimme a dime, will you? I'm hungry."

Billy Graham gave him a dime, and the Rev. Dan Potter, executive director of the New York City Protestant Council, suggested that Graham move on to another group of derelicts. "I'm going to pray that you'll find God," Graham called back. "You'll never regret it." The old man nodded, got up from the sidewalk and walked away.

TV & Decisions. Revivalist Billy Graham, not one to wait for New York City's sinners to come to him at Madison Square Garden, is going to them. Already he has moved through the Bowery, The Bronx and Harlem; he plans sorties to Brooklyn and Wall Street--talking with people as he finds them, and praying with them. Slightly more than halfway through his New York crusade, six-footer Graham is twelve pounds lighter (172 Ibs.) than before he started out, and his world is some 23.000 souls brighter--the number who have made "decisions for Christ." But what impact has he really made on what he called "the most sinful city in the world"?

Billy himself is exuberant. "The biggest crusade we have ever had," he told a press conference. "Not the deepest, of course, or the one with the most lasting effect. Just the biggest in terms of people. St.

Paul didn't have television. We can reach more people by TV probably than the population of the world was then." Billy is reaching them by TV (the Trendex for the first live telecast of his New York crusade was 8.1 or 18% of the total audience, as compared to Perry Como with 20 and Jackie Gleason with 12.5). More "decisions for Christ," his headquarters reports, come in from televiewers than from the live audience in the Garden. The live audience is alive too: about 58% of the Garden decisions have been first-time public conversions, but only 7%-8% were made by people who were previously unaffiliated with any church. The average nightly audience at the Garden is an impressive 17,690 (about 1,000 short of capacity).

Bibles & Attendance. Outside the Garden, the impact of the crusade is harder to assess. One index--Bible sales--is inconclusive; a few bookstores (Morehouse-Gorham, religious booksellers whom Graham recommends; Calvary Bookstore, near the Garden; and Doubleday) report a small increase, others none at all.

Are the churches more crowded, or have they gained new members? The tourist-attracting Marble Collegiate Church of the Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale finds its attendance up and notes a rise in new members referred from Crusade headquarters. But a random check of churches around town turns up little to indicate that New York City's permanent population of Protestants (7.5% of 8,000,000) is being significantly affected. In a representative sample of 37 of the city's 1;7OO Protestant churches, three churches report a total of eight new members, two report a slight increase in attendance.

Protestants are a minority in Manhattan, and the city's Roman Catholics (27%) and Jews (10.6%) do not seem to be importantly affected by the campaign. (More than half of all New Yorkers are unaffiliated with any faith.) Negro attendance at the Garden is sparse; the lack of Negroes on Graham's headquarters staff (one was hired last week) and the absence of what some Negro leaders call "social content" in Graham's sermons are cited as the chief reasons. Slum districts are likewise unrepresented. Explained one Henry Street pastor: "The crusade format would not touch our people."

Glamour & Continuity. Says the Rev. Dr. John Ellis Large of the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest at Fifth Avenue and goth Street (congregation 1,000): "We're not what they call a 'cooperating church'--working with the Graham organization--but we have received three cards: one from a dear old lady who lasn't been to church in 50 years, one from a total stranger whom we can't reach and who won't call back, and one from a devout 15-year-old girl who faithfully attends Sunday school every week here. I've been criticized by some for not cooperating; ten of my parishioners have spoken to me about it. People are bewitched by the aura of Madison Square Garden, they are lifted by the general upsurge; then they come to the local church and find it drab--it has only the faith, and it's dull stuff after the glamour of their big moment.

"Some ministers have used bad taste in criticizing Graham, and one said the Holy Spirit couldn't exist in the Garden. But what started in the Garden of Eden and reached its finest moment in the Garden of Gethsemane should be brought out of those gardens and into the present. Madison Square Garden is as good a place as any for that. We are fearful simply that the effort has no continuity."

But pro-Graham enthusiasts maintain that the results of Graham's other big-city crusades have been tangible, if hard to measure. Says Presbyterian Minister and Author Dan Poling: "What about the entire history of Christianity since St. Peter preached at Pentecost? ... Is not Christianity itself the direct result of evangelism, mass evangelism included?"

No spiritual event can ever be wholly represented in statistics or evaluated at the time it happens. The impact of Graham's preaching may bear immeasurable fruit months and years hence, in unforeseen ways. But at present, in concrete, reportable terms, Crusader Graham's effect on the big city is negligible.

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