Did you hear? Evangelist Franklin Graham spoke at Coolidge Park Monday night as part of his Decision America Tour.
If you didn’t, we’re not surprised. Evangelical Christianity is disdained by an increasingly secular society in the days of Franklin Graham like sin was in the heyday of his father, Billy Graham.
Had Billy Graham come to Chattanooga in the salad days of his ministry, in the 1960s and 1970s, billboards months out would have trumpeted his coming. Newspapers for weeks ahead of the date would have advanced the story. The evangelist’s network would have organized churches and church members so attendance would be at a maximum.
Franklin Graham didn’t exactly show up under the radar, though. The word, though quiet, had been out. Local volunteers met last month for prayer and preparation.
The Times Free Press advanced the tour in its Thursday entertainment tab and in a feature story on Saturday.
The appearance was not quite the underground ministry the elder Graham used to speak of in communist countries when such gatherings of the faithful were not allowed and so were held in secret.
But this was nothing like the old days of the international ministry when buses were chartered from hundreds of miles away to haul in the spiritually sick and seeking. And after the elder Graham had given his message and the invitation, he counseled those who had made conversion decisions to come down front and told them, “Your buses will wait “
Franklin Graham’s appearance in Chattanooga last night kicked off a five-city Tennessee tour. He’ll do a similar one in Texas this fall. Last year, his Decision America Tour stopped in each of the nation’s 50 Capitals.
Though father Billy Graham confined most of his ministry to larger venues, he was no stranger to the Chattanooga area in the early years of his education and ministry.
He entered Bob Jones College (now Bob Jones University), then in Cleveland, Tenn., in 1936. He stayed for about six months, reportedly delivering his first sermon at Charleston (Tenn.) Methodist Church and his second at Antioch Baptist Church on Chattanooga Pike. It was said he sold shoes in downtown Cleveland, where today a street is named for him, at Parks-Belk.
“I believe his decision to leave Cleveland, transferring to a different college, expressed an attitude toward Christian ministry which played out in larger dimensions throughout his life,” Paul Conn, president of Lee University, said in 2012. “He left not merely for a warmer Florida climate [where he attended Florida Bible Institute, now Trinity College of Florida] but for a more open, inclusive view of the kingdom of God.”
After Graham completed his education, he established his ministry in the mid-1940s and appeared in Chattanooga for a single service at Engel Stadium on Oct. 22, 1950. He returned for a 29-day crusade, March 15-April 12, 1953. The Warner Park Field House was built for that crusade, nearly half of the money coming from private donations.
The field house in this mid-South city, Graham later wrote, was the location where he insisted “our meetings be purposely [racially] mixed.” It was still a year before the 1954 Supreme Court decision that integrated schools.
Franklin Graham, 64, president and chief executive officer of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of the international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, has not sought to mimic his father’s ministry. He does not do extended crusades, and he is not the quiet counselor to presidents his now 98-year-old father was.
His message is the same – “We are morally sinking,” he told this newspaper’s Lisa Denton. “The only hope for this country is God.” But he is more politically active, supporting the Iraqi war, calling out Islam, supporting North Carolina’s 2012 amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage and suggesting there was a “God-factor” in the 2016 presidential election.
Indeed, Graham’s tour is, in some ways, flavored with political themes. He wants to encourage citizens to run for public office. He wants to change the direction of the country. He wants men and women of God in politics. And, he said, neither Democrats or Republicans are going to save us.
It’s a bolder, more perilous stance than that of his father, who spoke about sin to a crowd whose members largely predated the if-it-feels-good-do-it days. And it comes in an era in which mavens of culture demand political correctness and truth-shrouding, and practice doublespeak.
Graham said he isn’t afraid.
He has only God to answer to, he said, and he’s “trying to be correct only as it relates to the word of God.”
Piercing the darkness never has been easy work, especially when the growing secular world is against you. We hope the crowd that came to Coolidge Park to hear Graham comprehends the difference between secular truth and actual truth.