RELG 330 - History of Christianity
Course Notes
Evangelists, Revivalists, and Healers
The text-book does not make it clear that there were many evangelists and evangelistic campaigns following the ministry of D.L.Moody, and that the ministry of Billy Graham was the culmination of this evangelistic period.
This page will list some of them, in roughly chronological order.
Billy Sunday (1862-1935) started his career as an athlete and baseball star in 1883 - he played the major leagues for 8 years. He was born in poverty, and after the age of ten was brought up in an orphanage. In 1886 he and some team-mates stopped to listen to a street preacher - Billy Sunday was reminded of the hymns his mother used to sing, and started attending a small mission church. Soon thereafter he became a committed Christian, stopped drinking, swearing, and gambling, and started to speak in churches and YMCAs
In 1886 Sunday met his future wife, and because she was a Presbyterian, he also became a Presbyterian - they were married in 1888
In 1891 Sunday turned down a baseball contract of $3,000 a year, for a position with the Chicago YMCA, at $83 per month - a post which he held for 3 years, and which was good preparation for ministry - he visited the sick, counseled the suicidal, prayed with the troubled, and visited saloons to invite patrons to evangelistic meetings.
In 1893 Sunday became the full-time assistant to Wilbur Chapman, who was one of the leading evangelists in the USA at that time - Sunday's job was to prepare the places where the evangelist was going to preach - he had to organize prayer meetings and choirs, even help to pitch the tents. In return, Chapman coached Billy - teaching him to how to prepare a sermon and stressing the need for prayer.
In 1896 Chapman left evangelistic missions to become a pastor, and Sunday started his own independent meetings, mainly in Iowa and Illinois, which continued for twelve years.
In 1903 Sunday was ordained by the Presbyterian Church, but his ministry continued to be non-denominational - even including Roman Catholics.
In 1908 Billy Sunday's wife Nell joined his ministry as campaign manager and started to transform the ministry on a national level, hiring new staff, Bible teachers for ancillary meetings, and musicians, Among the musicians was Homer Rodeheaver, who worked with them for the next twenty years. They also hired women to lead women's ministries, particularly among young working women. Sundays meetings developed into a characteristic style of a warm-up period of congregational singing led by Homer Rodeheaver and a choir, then Billy Sunday would enter on the stage and deliver a message in which he ran around the stage, smashed chairs ("taking on the devil") and performed other athletic feats. His language was raw and crude, and dealt with sex, booze, frivolous amusements, and depravity - even grown men fainted during some of his more graphic presentations. Although other religious leaders criticized the fear and damnation elements of Sunday's meetings, vast crowds still assembled for the entertainment as well as to get serious with God. The tabernacles which were built to house Sunday's meetings were of wood, with sawdust on the floor to control the dirt - it was from these meetings that the phrase "hitting the sawdust trail" came into prominence for those who came forward to dedicate their lives to Christ.
Billy Sunday's message was that commonly accepted by most Protestant churches at the turn of the twentieth century - the inerrancy of the Bible, the Virgin Birth of Christ and His bodily resurrection, the Atonement for sin accomplished by Christ, the imminent return of Christ, and a literal devil and a literal hell. Sunday never attended seminary, but he had a deep knowledge of the Bible. He referred to himself as "an old-fashioned preacher of the old-time religion" - a personal God, salvation through Jesus Christ, and following the moral teachings of the Bible. He supported temperance, Prohibition, and women's suffrage, spoke for urban reform and against racial prejudice and child labor, and tried to improve the conditions of the poor.
Katheryn Kuhlman (1907-1976) was an American evangelist and healer. She was ordained by the Evangelical Church Alliance. During the 1940s-1970s she traveled around the USA, and other countries, holding healing crusades, and became one of the most well-known ministers of healing in the world. She widened her outreach by starting a weekly TV program through the 1960s and 1970s, called 'I believe in miracles', and a radio ministry of Bible teaching. It is estimated that two million people were healed of a variety of illnesses during her meetings. She herself said that she did not believe that she was God's 'number one choice' to lead a healing ministry - for one thing, the schedule and the physical drain on her energy were such that she said it should have been a man who led the ministry. She believed that there were probably about five men whom God called before her - but it was her feeling that they all said 'No' when God called them, and that she was the first one who said 'Yes'.
I never had the opportunity to attend any of Katheryn Kuhlman's meetings - but I did know a medical doctor and psychiatrist who testified to being healed after attending one of her crusades. He and some friends had decided to take a lady with terminal cancer to a healing service, on the grounds that 'it can't hurt, and she's going to die anyway'. (Not much faith in any of them). He himself had broken his collar-bone shortly before the service, and was due for treatment the next week. Nothing special seemed to happen for the lady during the service, and he didn't bother asking for healing for his collar-bone, so they all went to their homes afterwards thinking 'Well, we tried.' During the night, he woke up and 'knew' that his collar-bone was healed. He went back to his own doctor, who ran more X-rays, found no break in the bone, and said 'There must have been a fault in the previous film.' A few days later, the lady woke up from sleep knowing that she was healed, which was also confirmed by her doctors.
Billy Graham (b. 1918) was raised in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, though he changed his denominational affiliation later. According to his autobiography, Billy Graham attended a series of revival meetings at the age of sixteen, and became a committed Christian. He preached his first sermon in 1937 while he was still a student at a Bible Institute. In 1939, though he was still a student, he was ordained as a Southern Baptist minister in Florida. In 1944 he raised financial support from his congregation to take on a radio program which was due to be canceled, called 'Songs in the Night', and recruited the musician George Beverly Shea as director of their radio ministry. George Beverly Shea remained with the Billy Graham organization as lead singer for many years.
In 1945 Billy Graham became the field representative for an evangelistic movement known as Youth for Christ international. and started to tour the USA and Europe teaching pastors how to organize youth rallies.
In 1947 Graham became president of Northwestern Bible College - at that time, at the age of 30, he was the youngest person to serve as president of any US college or university.
From 1947 until his retirement in 2005 Billy Graham hosted annual 'Billy Graham Crusades'. For instance, in 1949 he held a series of revival meetings in Los Angeles, for which he used circus tents in a parking lot - his revival meetings were planned to run for three weeks, but extended to eight weeks, and drew national attention.
Billy Graham held large rallies, preaching to thousands, and also broadcast his sermons on radio and television - he was host of the 'Hour of Decision' radio broadcast from 1950 to 1954
Billy Graham was outspokenly against racism - at a rally in Tennessee in 1953 he tore down the ropes which the organizers had put up to mark Black and White sections. He insisted on integration in his Crusades, and invited Martin Luther King Jr. to preach with him in 1957, and in 1963 he bailed Martin Luther King Jr. out of jail when King was arrested in a demonstration.
In 1974 Graham and the magazine 'Christianity Today' (which was funded by Billy Graham) organized the International Congress on World Evangelism, in Lausanne, Switzerland, with 2,400 delegates from 150 countries. Following that, Graham and the Church of England priest John Stott formulated the 'Lausanne Covenant' to unite Christians all over the world and to challenge them to engage in evangelism.
In 1978 Billy Graham managed to get permission to visit and preach in countries behind the Iron Curtain - no other churchman had had that privilege. Graham used his influence to preach, to encourage local Christians, and to meet with Communist leaders to try to influence them to relax their restrictions on religion in their countries.
Billy Graham is sometimes described as the most influential preacher of the twentieth century. He was an enormous influence on fundamentalists and evangelicals, in helping them to relate the Bible to contemporary secular viewpoints. In addition, he was a spiritual advisor to several Presidents of the USA, including Eisenhower, Nixon, and Lyndon B. Johnson. He turned down the offer of a 5-year $1 million contract with NBC so that he could continue his call to evangelism. For his Crusades, Billy Graham would rent a large venue such as a stadium or park, and arrange for counselors to meet with those who dedicated themselves to Jesus Christ - his message was to every individual person to accept Jesus Christ as their individual personal Savior. It is estimated that Graham has preached to more people in person than anyone else in the whole history of Christianity, and millions of people over the years responded to Billy Graham's message and became committed Christians.
Billy Graham worked with local churches of all denominations, to find those who would welcome new Christians during and after a Crusade.
The Billy Graham Organization made evangelistic training freely available to any other ministers who applied for it, and accepted students from all Christian denominations.
My husband and I attended a Billy Graham School for Evangelism in California - and because we were from a small mission church, the Billy Graham Organization paid our expenses and even a small stipend. Students at the Billy Graham School for Evangelism spent the day in Bible study, prayer, classes, and small group meetings, and worked with the Crusade in the evenings. The Billy Graham School for Evangelism was run concurrently with a Crusade, so that participants got hands-on experience of evangelistic work.
Billy Graham's message was simple, but direct - to ask Jesus to come into one's heart and be Lord and Savior of one's life.
Copyright © 2005 Shirley J. Rollinson, all Rights Reserved
