Billy in London

Singling out the city whose sinfulness most insistently demands repentance on a massive scale is a perplexing problem to Billy Graham; he has at one time or another handed the palm to New York, Berlin, Chicago, Los Angeles and even Boston. Clearly though, it is swinging London that rates the special concern of the glowing-eyed evangelist, and last week he was back there to begin a five-week crusade, his second in twelve years.

"The hour is late and the world is sick," he told 19,000 spellbound opening-night listeners at the Earl's Court arena. "The world is moving toward a rendezvous with a frightful destiny." From the hydrangea-festooned platform, Billy denounced the radical "Death of God" theologians, and shouted: "I fear that sex has become our goddess--and has that one-eyed thing in our living room become our God?" Moved by the fist-pounding sermon, 450 people--a leonine blackbeard, a Negro youth, a golden blonde, hand-holding lovers--came forward to make "decisions for Christ" almost precisely in the numbers foretold by the slide rules of Billy's knowledgeable aides.

"Threshold Visitations." Billy hopes that this year's rally will be even more successful spiritually than his 1954 Greater London Crusade, when in three months he spoke to 1,339,400 Britons and gained 38,447 decisions for Christ. The 1966 campaign to conquer London for God is the most carefully planned of the evangelist's career. Advance preparation began in earnest 18 months ago, when Graham assistants set up offices overlooking Piccadilly Circus. Billy's organizers sent letters asking for cooperation to every Protestant and Anglican clergyman within 40 miles of London. The Rev. Robert Ferm, head of the enlistment team, talked to more than 4,000 clerics; 2,000 churches agreed to help the project.

Dividing Greater London into postal zones, the Graham organizers found supervisors for each zone, who in turn commanded subzone lieutenants and block captains. In all, 20,000 laymen were recruited to make "threshold visitations" to 3,000,000 London homes during the crusade, inviting people to the nightly rallies at Earl's Court.

As the crusade neared, Billy's London headquarters grew to a full-time staff of 40, including twelve associate evangelists, a music director and a gospel singer. Graham's aides gave six weekly guidance lectures for 6,000 more volunteers, who will tactfully receive those stepping forward to make a decision for Christ, steer them to the nearest church of their chosen denomination --and make a follow-up phone call or house visit within 48 hours to find out if new believers are holding to their convictions.

During and after the crusade, Billy's associate evangelists will also conduct seminars for clergymen, advising them on how to receive and greet the new decision makers. An innovation for Graham crusades will be the use of closedcircuit television to broadcast the crusade to cities as far away as Glasgow and Edinburgh. All these techniques are designed to take dead aim on Britain's low rate (10%) of church attendance, on the huffy refusal of the average English cleric to proselytize, and on the acknowledged need of Graham's men to conserve the results of decisions for Christ better than they have in the past.

The budget for the London crusade is $840,000--or, as Billy put it, "about what Cassius Clay got for less than three minutes in the ring with Sonny Listen." About half the money will be raised by passing the plate and selling books during the crusade, with the rest anted up by British churches and businessmen. One Graham supporter offered the crusade $14,000 on the enigmatic condition that Billy would not stay at the London Hilton; assured that Graham had confirmed reservations at the Kensington Palace, the backer doubled his contribution.

Oratory Like Hitler's? So far, the Graham team has avoided the errors that marred the 1954 crusade, such as the promotional brochure that infuriated Labor Party leaders by declaring: "What Hitler's bombs could not do, socialism did." Billy now is on good terms with Prime Minister Wilson, but last week, without pinpointing the enemy specifically, he declared: "I feel greater opposition than ever before." The crusade has been ignored by both fundamentalists and progressive theologians; the Archbishop of York issued a lukewarm endorsement, while Canterbury made it publicly and pointedly clear that Billy did not have Anglican sponsorship. Humanists passed out leaflets with the warning headline: "DANGER--Psychologist at Work."

The sharpest attack on Graham's methods came when he appeared on a BBC-TV interview program. One questioner charged that his emotional oratory had the same kind of hypnotic effect on a mass audience as had Hitler's; another railed at the "sanctified lies" of his campaign team and the "engineered emotion" of his crusades. Coolly, Billy replied that Winston Churchill had also used all the tricks of popular oratory. "Jesus Christ himself, and the Apostle Paul, talked to great crowds of people," he added.

Before the crusade began, the British press had mostly been amusedly contemptuous of the venture, joshing Billy in editorial cartoons. After Billy's opening-night sermon, his notices improved somewhat. "Hellfire occupies the same discreet place in his theology as it does in most current versions of Christianity," marveled the Daily Telegraph. While the refined may shudder at Billy's lowbrow mass-appeal methods, declared the Times, "new and potent techniques of persuasion are there to be used for either good or ill. And a church which comprehends pop services and ton-up* parsons has no cause to be overnice about Mr. Graham's methods."

*British slang for swinging.

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