If you don't know much about Billy Graham, you're not alone.
But to understand why Evangelicals aren't scary people, it might be good to get to know about him before he's gone. He was one who had a knack for unifying the Evangelical movement in the late twentieth century. But if there are others like him in years to come, they will look and sound significantly different.
For those who don't know, Billy Graham's a preacher. A good one. A simple one. And simplicity, any ad or marketing expert will tell you, is power.
Graham's simple message has been in three parts: The first is sin (a word we all know in American pop culture but won't admit isn't all that good for us.) The second is confession (which psychologists have confirmed is good for us.) The third is peace with God through Jesus Christ. (This is what will turn some people away from this blog and from Graham — but it's a key to understanding who he is.)
Graham's basic message has been that we all know we need God, that we'll never really be at peace with ourselves until we deal with what separates us from God, (our sin and God's holiness don't mix) and that when we accept Christ's death in our place on the cross (Christ paid the penalty our sin deserved), we begin a relationship with our Creator that changes us forever.
Because Billy Graham's voice can be heard on the radio, and some of his preaching has been televised, some would call him a televangelist. But they'd be getting it wrong. The label doesn't fit Graham. Televangelism has become a tawdry, nearly shameful appendage to American Protestant faith in the United States.
No, Graham's a preacher — in the Southern Baptist style, but with an insight into people that has made his preaching a riveting listen for decades (in person, on the page, and through media.)
To really understand Graham's ministry one can't do it without knowing media. Graham tapped media power from his earliest days. He recounts, in "Just as I Am," how he once pleaded with a radio announcer named George Beverly Shea to sing for a program Graham had been roped into doing in Chicago. It was the beginning of a preaching-and-music combination that hit home with millions of listeners for decades.
Graham burst on the American scene at a time when the nation was going through a period of soul-searching after World War II. It's been said that some of the same raw energy that produced Elvis Presley in the music industry produced Graham (some photos of Graham crouched next his pulpit, hand thrust forward at his listeners, suggests he could have moved like Elvis had that been his choice.) But the energy within Graham (Time magazine remarked on the power of his lungs) made him a stadium phenomenon who transformed the face of American Evangelicalism.
One of the bigger differences between Presley and Graham is that the latter is still with us and has an ongoing influence over those who will replace him (if anyone really can.) The living have a way of guiding the path of their legacy in ways the dead never can.
To their credit, many publications — both Christian and secular — are doing tributes to Billy Graham. They should be. But with any outpouring of media attention, some will invariably get it wrong. Those looking for clones are the worst of the bunch. Book-length analyses of Graham's ministry and influence on this country, mostly, do the best at avoiding the skimming that so misses who Graham really is and was.
There are enough books about Graham (some, like "Just As I Am," written by Graham) to fill shelves of libraries. Wheaton College, where Graham did part of his undergraduate studies, has an entire building dedicated to Graham (complete with an archives and multi-media museum.) John Pollock's "Billy Graham: Evangelist to the World" takes one of the more flattering approaches to this preacher's life, but there are others more critical. David Frost's "Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man: 30 years of Conversations" is an interesting glimpse into Graham's mind.(What's notable is this book's length — or lack thereof. At 173 pages, it's a fraction of "Just As I Am" which weighs in at 742 pages.)
I'm not the first to point this out, but the longevity of Billy Graham as a public figure largely devoid of the stain of sexual or financial scandal — after such an enduring time in the American popular-culture spotlight is nothing less than astounding.
The shock value comes from the nearly direct proportion between the popular profile of American Evangelicals — particularly when they make close contact to the American presidency and Washington politics — and their loud and disastrous downfall. The recently departed Jerry Falwell stands as an exception.
To his credit, Billy Graham is not making any public attempts to muscle any one person into position as the carrier of his mantle. His son, Franklin Graham has in some ways stepped in on his own. Other evangelists and Evangelical leaders like Luis Palau, T.D. Jakes, Rick Warren, Tony Evans and Greg Laurie have also picked up on the Billy Graham evangelism mandate. They are a kind of 21st century face of Evangelicalism launched by Billy Graham.
Are they him? No. Do they need to be? No.
In fact, the very question, suggested by the cover of "Today's Christian" in June is misguided.
That cover, with a photo of Graham taken recently, says "In Search of the Next Billy Graham: As the Great Evangelist Steps Down From Ministry, Many Christians are Looking for a New National Preacher. Meet the Top Candidates."
They list Franklin Graham (only after Graham's daughter, Ann Graham Lotz — a fine preacher in her own right). They also note Palau, Jakes, and Rob Bell (a Michigan pastor and author), Joyce Meyer (a prominent speaker, teacher, evangelical media personality and author), and Joel Osteen, another prominent speaker, televised preacher and best-selling author.
But the compiling of lists doesn't get at the enormity of what it meant, and means, to be Billy Graham. The success we see in this man's life is more than the sum of its parts.
Billy Graham, as a preacher and Evangelical leader, was an outgrowth of a national movement that had roots in something that was once a phenomenon in this country (and others) called revival. Many preachers over the years have been part of these grassroots events from Jonathan Edwards to Dwight Lyman Moody to Charles Finney to Billy Sunday (a former pro baseball player in the early 1900s). Revival, at its core, is an overwhelming awareness by a group of people of their need for God. It's a kind of soul-hunger. It begins with being apalled at one's wretchedness before God's holiness, and ends with confession of sin to God, and acceptance of His forgiveness.
The willingness of God's people to pray and seek his face, as Scripture says, is the formula for the movement of God in revival. The people involved in it aren't the point, though some become memorable after the fact.
Billy Graham, as a twenty-something preacher attending a Christian liberal arts college in the Midwest in the 1940s, simply said "yes" to God's call. That was for preaching, as well as for Christian journalism and other initiatives aimed at taking Christ into all the world. Graham's call also involved the pastorate, a college presidency, newspaper advice columns, devotional writing, radio ministry, feature film production, and evangelistic preaching to crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands on every continent (in-person and by television).
But for every Billy Graham there are hundreds or thousands who have made a difference in smaller ways, away from the cameras.
Graham knew this. And one of his bigger initiatives away from the pulpit was the training and encouragement of evangelists in countries other than the U.S. The Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (1974) was a history-making moment that Graham helped orchestrate. The event had an uncanny prescience.
And what we need to understand is that the fire that once burned within American Evangelicalism is now a fire burning in South Korea, in Latin America, and in parts of Africa. Within the next few decades — unless birth and conversion demographics change — the United States will be a nation more in need of evangelization than one that does the evangelizing.
And the next Billy Graham, if there can be another quite like him, will be a native speaker of another language.
We shouldn't be surprised. It's all about God and His work anyway. And God, C.S. Lewis has said in more places than one, is not what we would expect.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Benefits of Hindsight: Virginia Tech All Over
The report is in.
A panel of eight people, one of whom is Tom Ridge the former U.S. Homeland Security director, has told the world that Virginia Tech got blind-sided by Seung-Hui Cho.
Medical personnel on the university campus could have paid better attention.
The campus security people could have treated the initial two shootings as a signal to cancel classes and send out alerts.
But that's now.
On that wintry morning, nobody knew how bad things could be.
This was college, after all. Morning classes, commuters scrambling to find parking, residential students deciding whether to cut that morning or skip breakfast to be in their desk on time.
And somebody in the mix was angry. Really angry. Maybe sick, too.
But even if Seung-Hui Cho was a mentally deranged young man, the dark fury within him was something that didn't develop overnight. One of his professors at Tech refused to have him in class because she sensed how sinister the darkness was in this young man.
And though there were danger signs, no one intervened.
The problem was not entirely with Virginia Tech.
The problem is partly a mistaken belief in mass education found within too many colleges and universities in the United States and the Western world. Henry Perkinson spoke of it in "The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865-1940." So did Lawrence Cremin in his 1965 Horace Mann Lecture.
It's a belief in education apart from a concern for students as people with souls.
Done at the scale found at Virginia Tech, it can leave students lonely and detached — set apart to find their way in a landscape of ego-driven survival. In a Social-Darwinist perspective, this is as it should be. The strong survive, the weak get shoved out of the way. And what emerges are the brightest, the strongest, the most capable of leading our nation (if we believe Plato's theories of scholar-statesmen leaders.)
But this is education that misses the point.
Arthur Chickering, in the 1970s, argued that education must be tied to a sense of identity. A student who doesn't know who he is will become a person chasing a dream. Fulfillment of that dream will be impossible. Educators who ignore a student's relationship to God in the quest to learn are doing that student a grave disservice.
The capstone course in Moral Philosophy, a mainstay of early nineteenth century American higher education (secular and parochial) was important for many reasons. It was often an interaction between the college or university president and senior students — a life-to-life mentoring that, if done well, could have enormous formative benefits for students. It was also a reminder to young people that the world outside academe was one that had implications far beyond the hubris of intellectual achievement. Right and wrong were crucial. At many schools, even state universities, God was acknowledged a judge of what was right or wrong in life.
The separation between the moral life and the life of the mind in American education is an ongoing tragedy of the American experience. Other nations look at the decay of the United States as a world leader and look to our schools as a symptom of the larger crumbling of our foundations.
A panel of eight people, one of whom is Tom Ridge the former U.S. Homeland Security director, has told the world that Virginia Tech got blind-sided by Seung-Hui Cho.
Medical personnel on the university campus could have paid better attention.
The campus security people could have treated the initial two shootings as a signal to cancel classes and send out alerts.
But that's now.
On that wintry morning, nobody knew how bad things could be.
This was college, after all. Morning classes, commuters scrambling to find parking, residential students deciding whether to cut that morning or skip breakfast to be in their desk on time.
And somebody in the mix was angry. Really angry. Maybe sick, too.
But even if Seung-Hui Cho was a mentally deranged young man, the dark fury within him was something that didn't develop overnight. One of his professors at Tech refused to have him in class because she sensed how sinister the darkness was in this young man.
And though there were danger signs, no one intervened.
The problem was not entirely with Virginia Tech.
The problem is partly a mistaken belief in mass education found within too many colleges and universities in the United States and the Western world. Henry Perkinson spoke of it in "The Imperfect Panacea: American Faith in Education, 1865-1940." So did Lawrence Cremin in his 1965 Horace Mann Lecture.
It's a belief in education apart from a concern for students as people with souls.
Done at the scale found at Virginia Tech, it can leave students lonely and detached — set apart to find their way in a landscape of ego-driven survival. In a Social-Darwinist perspective, this is as it should be. The strong survive, the weak get shoved out of the way. And what emerges are the brightest, the strongest, the most capable of leading our nation (if we believe Plato's theories of scholar-statesmen leaders.)
But this is education that misses the point.
Arthur Chickering, in the 1970s, argued that education must be tied to a sense of identity. A student who doesn't know who he is will become a person chasing a dream. Fulfillment of that dream will be impossible. Educators who ignore a student's relationship to God in the quest to learn are doing that student a grave disservice.
The capstone course in Moral Philosophy, a mainstay of early nineteenth century American higher education (secular and parochial) was important for many reasons. It was often an interaction between the college or university president and senior students — a life-to-life mentoring that, if done well, could have enormous formative benefits for students. It was also a reminder to young people that the world outside academe was one that had implications far beyond the hubris of intellectual achievement. Right and wrong were crucial. At many schools, even state universities, God was acknowledged a judge of what was right or wrong in life.
The separation between the moral life and the life of the mind in American education is an ongoing tragedy of the American experience. Other nations look at the decay of the United States as a world leader and look to our schools as a symptom of the larger crumbling of our foundations.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Talk about the weather and the Utah mine deaths
The news of Findlay, Ohio has the attention of our nation's news media (and some overseas bureaus in the Midwest.)The Thursday, Aug. 23 edition of the Los Angeles Times ran a color photo by AP photographer Madalyn Ruggiero of four rescuers guiding an inflatable raft through an intersection of the city. No pavement, just water.
Rain? So how is that news?
Well, when it doesn't stop, we have problems.
We also have problems when we dig holes in the ground and the earth burps.
One lesson we learn from Findlay and from Huntington, Utah, is that we are not in control. Not Doppler radar, not the National Weather Service, not the most sophisticated measuring equipment can completely prepare us for what this planet will do either in the swirling atmosphere or in the ground under our feet.
Newscasters like to leave us with a sense of hope —— the encouragement that we're okay. The problem is, we're not. (And we don't hear that much in today's news. Makes for bad ratings.)
It's said the only sure thing in life is that there's no sure thing.
But that's only partially true.
There's a song about this. (There usually are.)
This one was written by a group of musicians called the Sons of Korah thousands of years ago. They wrote it in the mountainous regions of what is now Israel or Syria.
Unpredictable as the sky or the very ground under us (or over us) can be, they said, "God is our refuge, an ever-present help in trouble."
Things will change. That we can count on.
But in all life's uncertainties, we have the assurance that God is constant.
And He is there for us when we call on Him.
Does that make all the suffering easier? No.
But it gives us peace inside — where no external reality can touch us.
Rain? So how is that news?
Well, when it doesn't stop, we have problems.
We also have problems when we dig holes in the ground and the earth burps.
One lesson we learn from Findlay and from Huntington, Utah, is that we are not in control. Not Doppler radar, not the National Weather Service, not the most sophisticated measuring equipment can completely prepare us for what this planet will do either in the swirling atmosphere or in the ground under our feet.
Newscasters like to leave us with a sense of hope —— the encouragement that we're okay. The problem is, we're not. (And we don't hear that much in today's news. Makes for bad ratings.)
It's said the only sure thing in life is that there's no sure thing.
But that's only partially true.
There's a song about this. (There usually are.)
This one was written by a group of musicians called the Sons of Korah thousands of years ago. They wrote it in the mountainous regions of what is now Israel or Syria.
Unpredictable as the sky or the very ground under us (or over us) can be, they said, "God is our refuge, an ever-present help in trouble."
Things will change. That we can count on.
But in all life's uncertainties, we have the assurance that God is constant.
And He is there for us when we call on Him.
Does that make all the suffering easier? No.
But it gives us peace inside — where no external reality can touch us.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Kentucky Creation Museum
Funny how we fight over the speculative.
The opening of the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky (not far from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky airport) is going to include a protest by a group calling itself DefCon. That's not a cold war-era relic group. It's a group of people who claim that what's going on inside this little museum is really scary for the rest of us thinking people (Check out a Kentucky version of the story at www.kentucky.com/181/story/78875.html, but don't miss the New York Times' version of it last week.)
What's at stake is the right to believe.
Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis — the non-profit group that built the museum, notes the irony of those who attack what's in his museum under the notion that it's a threat to popular conceptions of pre-historic life on this planet.
The museum is getting it wrong, says Lawrence Krauss, a faculty member in physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In an interview with the Lexington Herald-Leader, Krauss said DefCon, which he's part of, fears that impressionable young people will come out of this museum and need re-education.
Last I heard the jury was still out on what the national curriculum should be on anything in this country — including the origins of human or any other life.
Fact is, scientists begin their research with hypotheses that — though based on some elements of fact — are essentially faith premises. If they're intellectually honest, they admit this and approach their research (and that of others doing inquiry in their field) with humility. They're ready to admit that their results are flawed and trace those flaws all the way back to their hypotheses, if necessary.
Ken Ham and those in his group have built a sanctuary for their point of view as to how life began on the earth. The basis for their scientifict scrutiny — and before Krauss and his group dismiss it as unscientific they're obliged to ask honest questions — happens to be a predisposition that forces beyond human reason or established empirical evidence were behind it all.
To shut Ken Ham and his group down smacks of the kind of treatment Galileo faced long ago when he dared ask questions that stepped outside the bounds of established thought.
The opening of the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky (not far from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky airport) is going to include a protest by a group calling itself DefCon. That's not a cold war-era relic group. It's a group of people who claim that what's going on inside this little museum is really scary for the rest of us thinking people (Check out a Kentucky version of the story at www.kentucky.com/181/story/78875.html, but don't miss the New York Times' version of it last week.)
What's at stake is the right to believe.
Ken Ham, founder of Answers in Genesis — the non-profit group that built the museum, notes the irony of those who attack what's in his museum under the notion that it's a threat to popular conceptions of pre-historic life on this planet.
The museum is getting it wrong, says Lawrence Krauss, a faculty member in physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. In an interview with the Lexington Herald-Leader, Krauss said DefCon, which he's part of, fears that impressionable young people will come out of this museum and need re-education.
Last I heard the jury was still out on what the national curriculum should be on anything in this country — including the origins of human or any other life.
Fact is, scientists begin their research with hypotheses that — though based on some elements of fact — are essentially faith premises. If they're intellectually honest, they admit this and approach their research (and that of others doing inquiry in their field) with humility. They're ready to admit that their results are flawed and trace those flaws all the way back to their hypotheses, if necessary.
Ken Ham and those in his group have built a sanctuary for their point of view as to how life began on the earth. The basis for their scientifict scrutiny — and before Krauss and his group dismiss it as unscientific they're obliged to ask honest questions — happens to be a predisposition that forces beyond human reason or established empirical evidence were behind it all.
To shut Ken Ham and his group down smacks of the kind of treatment Galileo faced long ago when he dared ask questions that stepped outside the bounds of established thought.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
music and media
We did it.
The issue that nobody is talking much about — at least not directly — finally slid under the spotlight in Southern California a few weeks ago.
The issue is whether Christian artists, to really make it professionally, have to shed their Christian label and become "mainstream."
The discussion happend at Biola University.
Don't look for that school's name in the Chronicle of Higher Education unless you're looking for sardonic humor. American higher education generally looks at schools like Biola with arched eyebrows and a veiled grin — maybe a chortle.
But it's a school that matters in the grand scheme of a Christian subculture within the United States. It's also a school that takes seriously its interaction with popular culture. Nestled in the lower end of Los Angeles County and within an easy drive's distance from Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm and some fairly serious surfing, this campus is a place where students come for a Bible-based education from faculty who play Peter, Paul and Mary during exams and dissect films like "Pulp Fiction" for glimmers of God's face.
The event where the music conversation happened was the 2007 Biola Journalism Conference. An event organized by Biola Public Relations students and aimed at the entire campus of about 5,300 students.
During the two-day event, speakers from Entertainment Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, and promotions agencies across the Los Angeles region talked about the ways Christian music has moved from Jesus Freak stuff in the 1970s to a YouTube, MySpace, touring band phenomenon that packs out stadiums and has created a new breed of 21st century circuit-riding preachers.
So is Christian music dead? No. Is it derivative stuff? Some of it, yes. Is this Christian vs. non-Christian controversy new? Not really. There's been conflict for centuries between artists who were Christians over the real motivation for their work and its meaning(s). Christians who write really innovative stuff and play it with artistry that knocks the socks off anyone else are scattered all across the world and don't all show up in the music racks at Christian book stores. Some have never been to the Gospel Music Association Awards — or even know what it is.
What was worth looking at in this conference was the "emperor has no clothes" analysis of the contemporary Christian music franchise.
Chritian song writer and author John Fischer, lead speaker in the event, thundered at the gathered crowds about how Christians have made an adjective out of what should be a noun. Christian music is like other Christian stuff — a commodity bought and sold inside the safe walls of the castle we know as evangelical Christian culture. It's a castle with its own language and slang, its own clothing (even a dress code), its own books, films, kiddy toys, knick-knacks, jewelry, greeting cards, car and home keys, even home furnishings.
It's a multi-million dollar industry.
And the ugly little question that this conference raised is whether all that is a good idea and how Christians studying journalism and public relations should be thinking about it all.
The conference ended with questions rather than firm answers. And that's not a bad thing.
The issue that nobody is talking much about — at least not directly — finally slid under the spotlight in Southern California a few weeks ago.
The issue is whether Christian artists, to really make it professionally, have to shed their Christian label and become "mainstream."
The discussion happend at Biola University.
Don't look for that school's name in the Chronicle of Higher Education unless you're looking for sardonic humor. American higher education generally looks at schools like Biola with arched eyebrows and a veiled grin — maybe a chortle.
But it's a school that matters in the grand scheme of a Christian subculture within the United States. It's also a school that takes seriously its interaction with popular culture. Nestled in the lower end of Los Angeles County and within an easy drive's distance from Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm and some fairly serious surfing, this campus is a place where students come for a Bible-based education from faculty who play Peter, Paul and Mary during exams and dissect films like "Pulp Fiction" for glimmers of God's face.
The event where the music conversation happened was the 2007 Biola Journalism Conference. An event organized by Biola Public Relations students and aimed at the entire campus of about 5,300 students.
During the two-day event, speakers from Entertainment Weekly, the Chicago Tribune, and promotions agencies across the Los Angeles region talked about the ways Christian music has moved from Jesus Freak stuff in the 1970s to a YouTube, MySpace, touring band phenomenon that packs out stadiums and has created a new breed of 21st century circuit-riding preachers.
So is Christian music dead? No. Is it derivative stuff? Some of it, yes. Is this Christian vs. non-Christian controversy new? Not really. There's been conflict for centuries between artists who were Christians over the real motivation for their work and its meaning(s). Christians who write really innovative stuff and play it with artistry that knocks the socks off anyone else are scattered all across the world and don't all show up in the music racks at Christian book stores. Some have never been to the Gospel Music Association Awards — or even know what it is.
What was worth looking at in this conference was the "emperor has no clothes" analysis of the contemporary Christian music franchise.
Chritian song writer and author John Fischer, lead speaker in the event, thundered at the gathered crowds about how Christians have made an adjective out of what should be a noun. Christian music is like other Christian stuff — a commodity bought and sold inside the safe walls of the castle we know as evangelical Christian culture. It's a castle with its own language and slang, its own clothing (even a dress code), its own books, films, kiddy toys, knick-knacks, jewelry, greeting cards, car and home keys, even home furnishings.
It's a multi-million dollar industry.
And the ugly little question that this conference raised is whether all that is a good idea and how Christians studying journalism and public relations should be thinking about it all.
The conference ended with questions rather than firm answers. And that's not a bad thing.
Monday, May 07, 2007
The New Journalism?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Death and the fear of it brings us together. Terror has a way of opening doors that had been closed in the humdrum routine of life togehter.
Perhaps the only thing worse than the threat of violent death is misinformation about its possibility. So when students at Virginia Tech, in fear of what early seemed to be multiple attackers on their campus, were confined, terrified and alone despite being together, they reached out. They used their phones, email, and their Facebook and Myspace pages. Are we surprised by this? We shouldn't be. It's not the tools that are important. It's what people were saying to each other.
Is what we saw happening between those students journalism? I don't think so. Was it communication? Of course. Will the journalism in the coming decades combine what we saw on that campus? Most definitely.
Death and the fear of it brings us together. Terror has a way of opening doors that had been closed in the humdrum routine of life togehter.
Perhaps the only thing worse than the threat of violent death is misinformation about its possibility. So when students at Virginia Tech, in fear of what early seemed to be multiple attackers on their campus, were confined, terrified and alone despite being together, they reached out. They used their phones, email, and their Facebook and Myspace pages. Are we surprised by this? We shouldn't be. It's not the tools that are important. It's what people were saying to each other.
Is what we saw happening between those students journalism? I don't think so. Was it communication? Of course. Will the journalism in the coming decades combine what we saw on that campus? Most definitely.
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