Billy Graham - A Personal Reminiscence

I was one of those who went forward at a Billy Graham Crusade. It was the early summer of 1966, at the Earl's Court Arena. He preached there for a month. Close on a million people must have heard him. I was one of about forty thousand who responded to the "altar call" (though I don't think that phrase was being used any more in the 1960s).

There. I've come out and admitted it. I won't say it changed my life. I'd consciously become a Christian earlier that year, thanks to friends in the school's Christian Union. Before that I'd been a chorister. I hadn't been brought up in a church going family. My parents told me on my first day as a chorister not to bring any of "that religion" back home with me. It was for the music that they were encouraging me, that alone. So they were not best pleased when I announced my conversion, though they did come to my baptism and confirmation a few months later.

So yes, 1966 was an annus mirabilis, a year of joyful wonder, no doubt about that. And Billy Graham was part of it. I went with friends to hear him several times. I didn't care for the musical style of Cliff Barrows and George Beverley Shea - I'd have preferred O worship the King and There's a wideness in God's mercy to Blessed assurance and To God be the glory (still do). But I remember admiring the sheer professionalism with which these vast events were managed. I also recall being impressed by the diversity of people sitting on the platform - Anglican bishops, civic leaders, some black faces I didn't recognise. All in all, it was great theatre. You couldn't but be impressed.

He was a master of rhetorical technique. Where had he learned it, I wonder - from the study of classical Greek and Roman rhetors, or from American politicians or the great preachers of previous ages? Maybe he was one of those natively gifted people who come to realise they have power to sway human minds and hearts. He knew how to work a crowd. And he knew exactly how to speak in such a way that you would think it was directly and personally meant for you. To achieve that calls for charism of a high order.

But most of all, I was drawn to the man. It wasn't so much the content of his addresses (none of which I can now remember), but the way he gave them, the kind of human he came across as being. (I wonder if this is true of all of us preachers most of the time?) What struck me more than anything was the sense he conveyed of a profound personal integrity. He seemed to have no "side". It was hard to suspect hidden agendas or imagine ulterior motives, though the cynics tried hard enough. He believed every word of his own message, and as far as we the audience could tell, lived by it. All the obituaries I have read confirm the impression that he was a genuinely humble man who "loved his Lord", as Donald Coggan would have said, who never regretted giving his life to the gospel.

I think, looking back, that it was his essential goodness that impelled me to go forward that evening. I craved innocent, unselfconscious goodness (and still do), that singleness of mind and purpose that Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount calls "purity of heart". I was already aware as a teenager that I fell well short of it myself. I wanted, so to speak, to nail my colours to that mast. It was an aspiration. Perhaps I knew in some obscure way that this would be a life task, that conversio is never a once-for-all decision, but a lifelong turning away from what is destructive or corrupting or evil towards all that is good and true and beautiful. "Think on these things" says St Paul. I believe Billy Graham was one of those rare people for whom this was a daily habit.

I met him once, briefly. This was in May or June 1984 when he came to the original Sunderland FC ground at Roker Park to preach to the North East. Nearly twenty years older than when I'd last seen him, he had not lost his good looks. I'd been sent to report the event for a newspaper. By then I'd moved away from conservative evangelicalism into a more catholic and sacramental spirituality. So I perhaps went to Sunderland prepared to be critical. The stadium was only half full: maybe it was the keen wind blowing off the North Sea that night, or maybe the people of County Durham and Northumberland were just worn down by the miners' strike that had begun a few months earlier.

I went to the press conference. You could tell that Billy Graham understood how to engage with, if not a hostile, then a suspicious media. (The press mostly don't care much for religion until a significant exemplar of it dies - today's obituaries strike a very different, and far more positive, tone from the press commentary of thirty years ago.) He was courteous, direct and shrewd in his answers. He wouldn't get drawn into debates about American politics, what he thought about Viet Nam, Watergate and so on. I asked him a question, possibly about race relations in US; or was it about Nicaragua? I don't think it was the miners, though that would have been interesting. I was probably trying to be clever. But he played a straight bat, and you couldn't quarrel with that. He looked me directly in the eye as he spoke. His gaze was piercing, questioning, placing me under scrutiny. I thought: here is a man who deserves to be taken seriously.

So why didn't the Billy Graham brand of evangelicalism "stick"? I was asked a similar question by George Carey once, when he was Archbishop and came to preach at Sheffield Cathedral. "You were on course to be an evangelical leader, Michael. What went wrong?" I said I didn't accept the premise that anything went wrong. But it would take a long series of blogs to explain. Maybe I don't entirely understand it myself, though as I get older and look back on my life, things gradually fall into place, even if gathering the fragments is always a work in progress.

I suppose that as the prophets said to Elisha, "the place where we live is too small for us". I don't mean this unkindly. We all move home many times in our lives, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally. I have good evangelical friends whom I honour for their faithfulness to Christ and their loyal witness to the gospel. But I found the evangelicalism of those days too talkative, too busy, too extraverted. There was not enough silence in it, not enough space to contemplate, not enough imagination or playfulness, not enough awareness of the place of beauty in religion. And it didn't seem to reach into the complexities of the human heart (well, mine, anyway). No doubt a lot of it comes down to temperament. But I have to say that I became increasingly at odds intellectually with the way conservative evangelicalism did theology.

But I want to think (and pray) that I haven't lost what has been most precious in my evangelical formation: a love of the scriptures and a belief that they must be central to Christian life and thought; a conviction that personal relationship with God is the essence of all religion if it is to mean anything; and not least, a spirituality that is ardently focused on Jesus' cross and passion. As a student (at Trinity College Bristol!) my tutors told me to read the radical New Testament critics and John Henry Newman's Apologia. Oh, and to try to grasp the principles of liturgical prayer. I realised how much bigger the Christian world was than I'd imagined. That's it, really. The rest is history.

There are many mansions in our Father's house. God not only moves in mysterious ways himself, but moves us in ways that are just as mysterious when we try to make sense of them. I know that on many matters, Billy Graham and I would not have agreed since those heady days of the 1960s. He probably wouldn't have been comfortable in my liberal catholic, inclusive-church world, nor I in his. Except for this. I have no doubt whatsoever that he would have honoured my stumbling attempts to walk my Christian faith journey with integrity, just as I want to honour his. For what matters most is the same, to "turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ" as the Ash Wednesday words put it. Discipleship is as simple as that, purity of heart. Billy Graham helped me to start out on that path. For that, I'm grateful and glad.

Farewell to a great Christian man. RIP.

Happy Birthday to the European Union!

Today is Lady Day, the Feast of the Annunciation. The day falls exactly nine months before Christmas, and commemorates the message the Angel Gabriel brought to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would give birth to Jesus. So the day heralds good news, deliverance, salvation.
 
Was it by design that on this very day sixty years ago, the leaders of six European countries bound themselves together in a treaty that would bring into being the European Economc Community, what we now call the European Union? Those who originated the European project after the devastation of war were largely Christian politicians and statesmen. They fervently believed that such a treaty was the only way to save the continent from future wars and ensure that nations would flourish together by working together. They were deeply influenced by the insights of Catholic social teaching. Hopes were high as they signed the Treaty of Rome on Lady Day 1957.

So for those of us who still believe that it can only be good when nations and peoples grow closer to one another, the EU’s sixtieth birthday is a milestone to celebrate. And today's pro-Europe march in London will be one way in which this country’s Europeans want to shout it loud and clear. Happy Birthday to the European Union! We want to recognise the lasting benefits that the EU has brought, not only to the members of its own family of nations but far beyond through its capacity to influence the whole of humanity for good.

What are our reasons for celebrating today?

The economy and our global trading relationships overwhelmingly dominated the rhetoric of both sides of the EU Referendum campaign and indeed the debate since the nation voted to leave. These will be the big themes of the Brexit negotiations that are shortly to begin. We have heard far less about what I think are the best of all reasons to celebrate the achievements of the EU. These are about raising the capacity of nations to think geopolitically - which means realising that there are global threats that we can only address by working together. The founding vision of a Europe that would for the first time in centuries be spared the attrition of war was based on a pragmatic assumption about how nations tend to behave in their own interests. How to make self-interest enlightened and constructive rather than competitive and destructive was the question the Six set out to solve in 1957. They thought that if nations like France and Germany needed to trade iron, steel and coal with each other, they would be less likely to find themselves dragged into conflicts that risked destroying each other as had happened in the past.

So I want to put the tasks of peace-making and peace-keeping at the top of my list of reasons for being thankful for the EU's achievements in the past sixty years. In a world where resurgent nationalisms threaten to pull apart the delicate threads that bind peoples together for their own safety and the world's good, the EU has taught (I should say, is teaching) its member nations to transcend narrow self-interest and look beyond their own borders. And this applies to the other huge global challenges we know we must either face together through partnerships and treaty obligations, or we do not face them effectively at all. On their own, nation-states are severely limited in the difference they can make in the areas of climate change, poverty, health care, literacy, migration, inequality, human rights, corruption and all the other ways in which social justice must always be at the heart of our perspective on the world of which we are a part.

It's a bitter thought that just a few days after this diamond jubilee birthday, our Prime Minister will have written the Article 50 letter that will trigger the formal process by which the United Kingdom will leave the European Union. At least she did our partner nations the courtesy of not dating it 25 March, though it is a great pity that she and other UK leaders declined to attend the celebrations in Rome tomorrow. Had we joined the party, it would have helped in a small way to create a positive environment in which to begin the vastly complex Brexit negotiations. This lack of imagination (not to say courtesy) is disappointing when the UK is going to need all the friends it can get in the next two years among the other twenty seven EU nations.

I am not naïve about the EU as it has evolved over sixty years. Its lofty ideals have not yet been fully realised, and the febrile atmosphere among many of its member states makes me wonder whether they ever can be in the foreseeable future. Brexit is both a symptom of this malaise, and is also helping to fuel it. The damage caused by the Euro crisis has not only been economic but reputational too. There is a real crisis of "ownership" across the Union: hearts and minds need to be won, or won back. That, as much as Brexit, may mute today's celebrations.

There is also substance to the arguments of Brexiters that there is democratic deficit in the architecture of the EU's decision-making, with not enough power belonging to the Union's elected representatives in the European Parliament. But these are not arguments against the idea of the European Union. The challenge is to make it more accountable and transparent. I'd hoped David Cameron's promise to negotiate the goal of a "reformed EU" would focus on these systemic difficulties. Instead, all that seemed to concern him was special pleading based on "what's best for Britain" - hardly a slogan that is in the spirit of Europeanism.

By contrast, Pope Francis yesterday outlined his own concept of a union of nations. At a special audience of EU leaders to mark the anniversary, he pleaded with them to place humanity, not mammon, at the heart of their vision. He told them he believed that a generous, outward-looking solidarity among peoples and nations was the only antidote to self-serving populism. And he left his guests in no doubt about their task. "Solidarity is expressed in concrete actions and steps that draw us closer to our neighbours. This is your duty: identify the path of hope."

And this is indeed a day to be upbeat and hopeful. On the day after the EU Referendum, I blogged these words on the Christians For Europe website:

During the campaign, "Christians for Europe" has tried to help frame the referendum as a matter not simply of pragmatic politics ("what's best for Britain") but also of social ethics and a theology of society. We've emphasised the central tenets of our faith: loving our neighbour, standing in solidarity with the disadvantaged, seeking the common good, promoting life together rather than apart. We've wanted to argue that the European project is based on a fundamentally Christian vision of nationhood and common life.

All this still stands. So even if, to our immense sadness, the UK will soon be walking away from the EU, it mustn't stop us from being good Europeans who will continue to work closely with the peoples of our continent who are our natural allies and friends. We must go on taking a global view of our place in the world and not draw in our horizons as if we were some insignificant offshore island. We must continue to work away at trying to create a more wholesome politics of respect and compassion both internationally and in our own country.

In that spirit we shall go on seeking the welfare of the human family and playing our part as good citizens of our nation and our world. That will involve the healing of the divisions that opened up during the Referendum campaign, and we are committed to this too in both word and action. And it goes without saying: we must now, more than ever, say our prayers. 

The Christian gospel of Jesus's death and resurrection makes us people of hope. We do not lose heart.

That was nine months ago precisely. On this Feast of the Annunciation, those words still stand, I believe. Today's party is a celebration of what it means to be good Europeans and to work together as friends and allies. The good news that the Angel Gabriel brought to Mary was about keeping hope alive for the transformation of the human family. So as we wish the EU a happy birthday, we can look back with gratitude for our own part in it, wish it well for the future and pledge that we shall go on being loyal friends and neighbours in this continent that we share together.