The Billy Graham New York Crusade, 1957

THE BILLY GRAHAM NEW YORK CRUSADE, 1957

Spectacular Revival

In the summer of 1957 the Billy Graham Crusade filled Madison Square Garden with the most spectacular revival meeting since the decline of Billy Sunday earlier in the century. After a series of highly publicized revivals in the United States, Great Britain, and Western Europe, Graham and his associates were willing to tackle the city even Billy Sunday had been unable to tame.

Planning

By 1957 the Graham team, organized as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, had fully polished their system. A huge budget, amounting to six hundred thousand dollars, was set and guaranteed by a group of wealthy backers. A significant percentage of the Protestant churches in the city were brought in as supporters of the crusade, as Graham's revivals were called. (The support Graham received from more-liberal Protestants brought a rift between him and more-conservative fundamentalists.) In the weeks before the crusade began, prayer teams around the world prayed for the success of the effort and ministers in the area encouraged their parishioners to support the effort. The city was saturated with pictures and flyers calling attention to the approaching event.

Media Coverage

By 15 May, when the crusade opened in Madison Square Garden, few in Protestant circles were unaware of the event. The city's newspapers, still the dominant medium of information, gave extensive coverage to the crusade. Graham was even given the opportunity to write a front-page column during the crusade for the New York Herald Tribune, But the growing medium of television was enlisted to broadcast a thirty-minute program scheduled for 11:30 P.M. on one of the city's stations. As the crusade built in strength, ABC, the weakest of the three national television networks, agreed to sell time to broadcast the Saturday evening services. That program proved an enormous success, and more viewers followed the crusade on television than viewed the crusade in person. Graham was quoted as saying "St. Paul didn't have television. We can reach more people by TV probably than the population of the world was then." The television programs brought in between fifty thousand and seventy-five thousand letters per week, and Graham estimated that contributions from those viewers amounted to more than $2.5 million, money which Graham's association used for future work.

Celebrities and Crowds

By mid June more than five hundred thousand people had crowded into Madison Square Garden, and Graham extended the crusade again and again until its final close Labor Day weekend. The crusade attracted many celebrities. Vice-president Richard Nixon brought greetings from President Dwight D. Eisenhower to the more than 100,000 people who filled Yankee Stadium on 20 July. The overflow crowd was the largest at Yankee Stadium up until that time and bested the previous record—88,150 at the 1935 Max Baer-Joe Louis fight—by almost 20,000.

Appearance by King

Graham worked to include the entire mosaic of New York life. Martin Luther King, Jr., the country's best-known civil-rights leader, joined Graham on the stage on 18 July. Graham introduced King by saying, "A great social revolution is going on in the United States today. Dr. King is one of its leaders, and we appreciate his taking time out from his busy schedule to come and share this service with us." Graham did not relish the controversy that welcoming the civil-rights leader would bring among conservative whites. He down-played King's appearance, so much so that it garnered just four lines in the New York Times. But his willingness to appear onstage with King brought increased acceptance from the black community. One observer estimated that by the end of the crusade almost 20 percent of the audience was black.

Closing Rally

The crusade closed 2 September with a giant rally in Times Square. It was estimated more than one hundred thousand people packed the streets in the area as Graham brought his effort to a close. Graham's association claimed that two million people had attended the services and fifty-five thousand decisions for Christ had been registered. Over 1.5 million letters were received.

Limited Effect

But Graham himself conceded that all the enthusiasm and excitement he had generated did not affect the general public life of the great city. Bible sales and new church memberships were not much increased during the months of the crusade. He consoled himself by reminding people that he was interested in changing individuals. Only that way could society itself be changed, and his crusades played a role in that battle. The Reverend Dr. John Ellis Large of the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest, while not cooperating with the Graham organization, defended Graham's ministry:

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.

DENOMINATIONS, 1951 AND 1959

1951

Roman Catholic 28,635,000

Methodist 9,066,000

Southern Baptist 7,373,000

Jewish 5,000,000

Episcopal 2,643,000

Presbyterian 2,360,000

1959

Roman Catholic 39,505,000

Methodist 9,815,000

Southern Baptist 9,485,000

Jewish 5,500,000

Episcopal 3,359,000

Presbyterian 3,210,000

Source:

U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the UnitedStates (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1975), p. 391.

Sources:

"Billy Graham Opens His Crusade Here," New York Times, 16 May 1957, pp. 1, 24;

"Crusade's Budget Totals $1,300,000," New York Times, 16 May 1957, p. 24;

"Crusade's Impact," Time (8 July 1957): 57-58;

"Held Over," Time (29 July 1957): 48;

E. J. Kahn, "The Wayward Press: Billy and Benny," New Yorker (8 June 1957): 117-123; '

William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: Morrow, 1991).