White Bread Gospel

Being raised outside of the Christian church – much less an evangelical church – I had very little knowledge of who Billy Graham was before reading Wacker’s account.  With my limited knowledge I expected Billy Graham to be a loud, conservative, Baptist mega-preacher.  My expectations were not entirely met by the man Wacker describes.  Wacker presents an American evangelist and Christian public figure who was relatively scandal free in his personal and public life.  Billy Graham is presented as being far enough ahead of changes in America’s culture to not be seen as retrograde or behind the times.  At the same time Billy Graham is never too far ahead of the culture to be seen as a radical.  Billy’s views on divisive issues seemed to mature just a little before the moment the American people were at a tipping point.

In all I’m left scratching my head a little.  How did Billy Graham become one of the most popular Christian figures during the second half of the 20^th century?  He wasn’t a radical and his preaching wasn’t all that spectacular.  Billy Graham is a glass of milk and white bread.  But, maybe that’s the secret.  With all the conflict and cultural upheaval of the late 20^th century the comforting, white bread gospel of Billy Graham is exactly what people wanted to hear.  Billy Graham brought his polished product to the American market at the right time, built a modern organization to support it, and tweaked his product over the years to meet America’s changing demands.

Billy Graham and Christian America

It seems as though we have come full circle this week from the beginning of the semester and the fiery revivals of Jonathan Edwards in the 18th century to the tamer, quiet fire of Billy Graham in a large span of the 20th century. Graham has been a subject of relentless criticism, yet his fame as a preacher gave him seemingly limitless power over many aspects of American life, especially politics. He has truly been “America’s pastor” meeting with Presidents from Kennedy to Obama, and also meeting with the people on the ground - soldiers, college students, and working class alike. His influence is truly felt in many aspects of daily American life, even now. 

I think Wacker gives Graham’s “many faces” a fair and insightful overview. I both like and dislike that the book doesn’t read like a typical chronological biography. On the one hand, I feel like I walked away from “America’s Pastor” with a concentrated knowledge of Billy Graham’s adult life and a straightforward interpretation of his work. However, I’m not so sure I now possess a concrete knowledge into what made Billy Graham so incredibly influential, other than the stereotypical sort of proposal of keen charisma and icon. Perhaps I’m interested in learning more what made a small town North Carolina man that could preach to over a million people internationally at once and be very deeply understood tick. This leads me to believe that the only question I can really ask is “What made Billy Graham… well, Billy Graham?” because there has truly not been, nor will there ever be again, another. 

As a side note about Graham’s family name in our current culture - as the patriarch, Billy, approaches 100, much of his ministry life has been “taken over” by his son, Franklin. However, Franklin has not even half the influence of his father. Part of me wants to believe that this is in part due to something Franklin has that Billy didn’t - a bitterness toward people that disagree with his political opinions. However, I’d also be interested in exploring the cultural shifts in America over the last 10 years - since Billy Graham “retired” in 2005, as a potential reason why the Grahams are losing popularity with the public. 

Reconciling the Grey Area

Aimee Semple McPherson is a challenging person for me to reconcile.  Her sermons are powerful, at times poetic, and extremely moving.  McPherson’s genius at theological ecumenism allows her sermons to be read by a large audience with little disagreement.  For example, there’s a passage in her sermon “What Shall I do with Jesus” where McPherson describes the passion of Christ in such a real way that I found myself needing to take breaks between words.  I couldn’t read straight through.  Though simply written, the language was beautiful and powerful.  This is the trend I saw across her sermons.  Beautiful sermons with light theology; a sort of paperback gospel.

As a Christian minister how am I to approach figures like McPherson?  She is theatrical, shallow in her institutional and theological commitments, and very much an anti-thesis to the ideal of a parish priest.  And yet, for all her warts and all my opinions of her personal motivations McPherson’s words prove useful.  I could see myself quoting her or pointing a parishioner to a section of her writings.  How does a minister on the traditional side of the mainline interact in the grey area shared by the Evangelical mainstream?  Can McPherson’s relatively successful traversal of the early Evangelical movement point to a way forward?

Righteous Entertainment/Old Time Religion

Sister Aimee, blessed child of the kingdom, hear our prayer. We know that it was Mary who bore Jesus onto this Earth, but it was you who ushered him into the hearts of all those you met. Sister Aimee, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen.


https://youtu.be/b9Kfiw9qM2g

I probably sound like a broken record by this point in the semester, but once again we're going to mention the theatre, dancing and fun. Sister Aimee as a weird mix of mainline, pentecostal, and fundamentalist had a cadre of seemingly contradictory points of view. However, like those good people before her she denounced all sorts of fun stuff, and yet she was a regular on radio broadcasts? My question now is what is this difference between the insightful, dramatic sermons preached at the revivals and the theater? The theater is denounced because it contains all sorts of worldly things in it, but the sermons of sister aimee are full of murder, blood, heaven, hell, brimstone, light, etc. and all of these things make for one hell of a good play/performance/movie. Is it fair that we can talk about Jesus in such a gory way and yet we can't watch a play with a little sex in it or have a drink from time to time? If I heard Sister Aimee speak, I would need a drink afterwards. Because when you get so high on Jesus, you might need a little help coming down. Like CeCe Winans, Sister Aimee denounced the secular film, tv, and radio industry, but continued to profit from it.

 On a different note. In Sutton's article he makes frequent usage of the quote "old time religion." Sutton does not describe in detail what this means, but he makes note that Sister Aimee wanted to return to the ways of the early methodists. Although in some cases it is not clear if she wishes to go all the way back to the earliest days of the church. This primitivism can be seen in various settings throughout history. Yet the term "old time religion" seems to denote a specific idea in the mind of Sister Aimee and others, but I'm not sure what it is. It is like when someone says "family values" or "staycation." It means something, but I don't know if it can be properly defined.

Wacker's Pentecostal Puzzle Pieces

In his book “Heaven Below” Grant Wacker outlines some aspects of the early Pentecostal movement in relationship to the culture the movement was immersed in. Specifically, Wacker draws attention to the Pentecostal reliance on primitivism and pragmatism as means of communication with God as well as means of acting on and spreading their religious convictions. These two concepts play out in a number of aspects in early Pentecostal experience, such as the phenomenon of tongues and the integrated aspects of the movement. Primitivism, specifically, defined by Wacker in the book as an immediateness of God to the individual or group’s action and the desire for this immediacy, also threaded into the early Pentecostal movement’s belief about eschatology. These aspects are not only convincingly presented by Wacker as the driving force of Pentecostalism (arguably, not just historically but even still.), but they are written about in “Heaven Below” even when they are not being directly dealt with and talked about. Not only do these concepts shape religious culture, but they also play into how early Pentecostals interacted with their cultural context, which is most strongly where the pragmatic side of his argument comes in. Wacker has me convinced that the desire for the nearness of God and the more practical, every day implications are what gave the Pentecostal movement what it needed to survive the first generation of converts and what paved the way to its’ thriving culture today.

Evangelical Liturgy

Nevin’s The Anxious Bench brought many valid points against the evangelical practice of the anxious bench and other “alter call” type forms within the church.  Nevin identifies the main issues with the anxious bench not with its newness in the church, but with how it cheapens the work of the minister and brings distraction – and possibly pride and vanity – into the conversion process.  Nevin points to a great hypocrisy of evangelicalism -- anxious bench type rituals have become their own liturgy.

            Though his misunderstanding of catholic, liturgical worship forms hurt his overall argument, on the whole I was happily surprised in the direction Nevin’s argumentation went.  I found myself agreeing with much of what he said, realizing that I had witnessed and experienced such things in the modern church.  I have seen a poorly planned worship service and light sermon followed by an alter call where several vulnerable people came to the alter to the praise and adoration of the congregation.  Early in my own religious journey I had doubts of my own sincerity because I had not “accepted Jesus” at the alter, but at home and in the pew.  With each of Nevin’s major points I was able to recall an experience from my own life that matched his argument against anxious bench like practices.

Connections?

“The Anxious Bench” was written in 1844 by John Williamson Nevin. He decried the “New Measures” being implemented by so-so preachers during revivals. One of those “New Measures” was the anxious bench, and Nevin had a lot to say about the lack of quality pertaining to its’ usage. In Nevin’s critique, the preacher’s inability to affect souls out of words alone often led to his decision to use tactics like the anxious bench.

Perhaps my favorite of his critiques is the idea that methods like the anxious bench do harm to souls that are not yet (or not yet really) saved. This led him to live under the conviction that ministers of the gospel should do no wrong, even if “to win a soul to Christ.” This quote alone sheds light on the fact that Nevin thought religious excitement based on new measures was not a thing that would stick, but rather “religious” would fade with “excitement”. 

Overall, this critique was helpful in framing Finney’s preaching methods in a contemporary but opposed light. Interestingly, the anxious bench is still being used in some churches today.

Conversely, the ways religion is invoked in the portion of the novel “Oldtown Folks” that we read for today has remnants of Anxious-Bench induced religion. (It was published in 1869. I’m not sure if Beecher would’ve been familiar with Nevin, though I am certain she likely knew of the anxious bench.) There are many theological undertones, including God’s all-powerfulness and literal interpretation of the Bible. I’d be interested in learning of any further connections between Harriet Beecher Stowe and preachers like Finney, since both Finney and her father were Presbyterian ministers.