Posted June 23, 2005

Graham's first N.Y. crusade ended in Times Square

By GARY STERN, The (Westchester, N.Y.) Journal News

At the time, the odds seemed stacked against Billy the Kid.

The baby-faced evangelist with the tall wave of hair was already a nationally known preacher in 1957. His name had been made eight years before when he led a Los Angeles crusade that came out of nowhere and lasted eight weeks.

In 1954, he preached for 12 weeks in London. The word was spreading.

But New York? Who was Billy Graham to think that he could save the big city from sin and temptation? The Apple, everyone knew, didn't want to be saved.

The Graham team announced that he would take over Madison Square Garden for six weeks in 1957 while the Knicks and the Rangers used the off-season to heal. He would try to beat back the devil in the "World's Most Famous Arena," where hard-living fighters beat in each others' brains.

In time, Billy Graham's New York stand would become the long-est and most improbable revival in U.S. history, create "televangelism" as a force in the media age and cement Graham's reputation as America's preacher.

"Nobody in all history had conceived a crusade so mighty as this joint production of the evangelist, his team, the 1,500 churches that were his hosts, and Almighty God," wrote the journalist Curtis Mitchell in his 1957 book about the crusade, "God in the Garden."

Before the first hymn was sung, opposition came from every direction.

Fundamentalists, from whose world Graham emerged, fumed that he would compromise the Gospel, rubbing shoulders with those liberal Protestants, papist Catholics and the others. On the far side of the Protestant spectrum, New York's chief intellectual theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, dismissed Graham as simplistic and shallow, a diversion from the issues of the day.

Even Graham, 38 at the time, wrote in apocalyptic terms about the prospect of saving souls in the largely disbelieving city.

"Materialism, indifference and wickedness are apparent to even a casual Christian observer in New York," he wrote in his diary, which he shared with Mitchell. "This great united spiritual crusade is going to ignite the wrath of Satan. All the forces of hell will probably be turned on us."

On the evening of May 15, 1957, Billy Graham opened.

"I remember the first night, seeing the Garden," said George Beverly Shea, now 96, Graham's vocal soloist since 1947. "I had to sing before the message. Billy teased me because the Garden was full. Then it stayed full, night after night. It confirmed for Billy that this was what he should continue doing."

The New York papers trumpeted a major event. "Graham in Biggest Triumph," The Journal-American said. "Billy Battles Devil at Garden," was The Mirror's take.

After Graham preached each night, he invited "inquirers" to walk up to the front and pledge their lives to Christ. During the first month, 575,000 people came to the Garden and 18,500 accepted Graham's invitation.

"About the fourth week, we knew that God was doing something that was out of our control," said Cliff Barrows, now 82, Graham's master of ceremonies since 1949.

Graham kept going. He went to Brooklyn and met a shy Mickey Mantle. He took the crusade to the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. He preached in Harlem and from the steps of the U.S. Treasury Building on Wall Street. He announced that he would preach in Yankee Stadium on July 20.

He also said the crusade at the Garden would be extended - ultimately to 16 full weeks, ending on Sept. 1.

Another milestone took place on Saturday night, June 1. The crusade was televised, reaching an audi-ence of more than 6 million. Mitchell described it this way: "The New York Crusade thrust outward among shrieking kilocycles to span this continent and give Billy Graham the largest audience in the history of man's quest for God."

Each Saturday revival would be given a national audience. Graham began receiving thousands of letters from viewers who accepted Christ from their living room sofas. A path was set for generations of televangelists to preach the Gospel and raise tons of money for both good and bad.

The crusade also made history in another way. Graham called African Americans onto his team and onto the Garden platform. He invited Martin Luther King Jr. to speak, even though many white preachers opposed the growing civil rights movement.

Graham continued to face conflicting pressures when it came to race. Six years later, in 1963, he did not participate in the March on Washington. It was a decision he has said he regrets.

As the crusade came to a close, Graham needed a prominent finale. What better stage than Times Square? On the evening of Sept. 1, he climbed atop a platform at 42nd Street and Broadway. The crowd stretched down to 38th Street. Television cameras were prominent.

In his sermon, Graham had sprinkled movie titles from the bright lights of 42nd Street marquees. When it was over, he re-ceived an appropriate adieu from the electric ticker-tape on the Times Tower: "Billy Graham Crusade ends in Times Square Rally."