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Billy Graham, the Jesus Generation, and the Idea of an Evangelical Youth Culture Author(S): Larry Eskridge Source: Church History, Vol

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Billy Graham, the Jesus Generation, and the Idea of an Evangelical Youth Culture Author(S): Larry Eskridge Source: Church History, Vol American Society of Church History "One Way": Billy Graham, the Jesus Generation, and the Idea of an Evangelical Youth Culture Author(s): Larry Eskridge Source: Church History, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 83-106 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3170772 . Accessed: 22/10/2014 16:53 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press and American Society of Church History are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Church History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 16:53:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions "OneWay": Billy Graham,the Jesus Generation,and the Ideaof an Evangelical YouthCulture LARRY ESKRIDGE On New Year's Day 1971 Pasadena, California, basked in its stan- dard smog-tinged sunshine as well over a million people lined the route for the annual Tournament of Roses Parade. That year's grand marshal was America's "Protestant Pope," evangelist Billy Graham. Consistently voted among America's most admired men and a highly visible spiritual counselor and friend of Richard Nixon, Graham may well have been at the zenith of his national influence. But, as he entered into the gala festivities surrounding the Tournament of Roses, Graham claimed that he was of two minds. Despite the "fanfare, the flag-waving," Graham wrote later that year, "I have seldom had such mixed emotions as I had that day in Pasadena." For he claimed he knew "that decadence had settled in. As I savored the grandeur of this great nation I also sensed its sickness." As the elements of the parade headed down the boulevard, Graham and his wife Ruth waved to the smiling crowds while he, as he said, "watch[ed] the horizon for a cloud of impending revival to restore [America's] spiritual greatness."l Further down the parade route on South Orange Grove, some of Graham's lesser-known evangelical brethren-including a Nazarene youth choir, a group of tract-passers from a coffeehouse in Fullerton, and an assorted band of "Street Christians" handing out nearly 200,000 copies of the HollywoodFree Paper-jockeyed with Zionists and members of the Orange County chapter of the National Organization of Women for position in front of the television cameras. At some point, Graham began to notice that a number of young people were holding up placards that contained messages such as "God is love" and standing "with raised index finger lifted upward," shouting "One Way!" "Suddenly," Graham remembered, "we were made dramati- cally aware that a brand-new spiritual awakening was on the way." 1. Billy Graham, TheJesus Generation(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1971), p. 13. Larry Eskridge is associate director of the Institute for the Study of Evangelicals at Wheaton College and is a doctoral candidate at the University of Stirling in Scotland. ? 1998,The American Society of ChurchHistory ChurchHistory 67:1 (March 1998) 83 This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 16:53:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 84 CHURCH HISTORY Suppressing an urge to "get into the street and identify with them," Graham returned the gesture to the crowd and began shouting back, "One Way-the Jesus way!" The scene duplicated itself all along the parade route as Graham held his finger aloft and thousands amid the throng responded in kind. At the end of the parade Graham com- mented that he and Ruth felt as if they had "been in a revival meeting."2 Just ahead of the secular press and the vast majority of his fellow evangelicals, Billy Graham discovered the "Jesus Movement" at the Rose Parade. To Graham, this seemingly miraculous revival within the counterculture evoked the possibility of a vast spiritual awakening among American youth that supplemented the impressive growth of organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which targeted "straight" middle-class youth. As a result, he would incorporate the "Jesus Revolution" as a central motif in his domestic Crusades in 1971 and 1972, tout the movement in other Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) ministries, and play a highly visible role in Explo '72, the evangelical "Woodstock" of the period. To the casual observer the episode might appear to be little more than an ephemeral strategic blip in Graham's long, varied, and multi- faceted career. But this period is instructive for understanding Gra- ham, the Jesus Movement's relationship to the times, and the evangeli- cal subculture itself. On a personal level, Graham's struggles at home with his rebellious teenage son during the late 1960s and early 1970s-a battle being played out in many American families-would cast the evangelist in the role of the loving, patient father of the prodigal. This experience carried over into his larger approach to the youth problem in his national ministry, a tolerant, openhanded response that was at variance with much of the hard-line rhetoric that secular and religious conservatives used in denouncing the younger generation in general, and the counterculture in particular. Indeed, Graham saw in the Jesus Movement a cadre of young prodigals who-rejecting the countercul- ture-had metaphorically come home to their parents' America via the bridge of an old American tradition: evangelical religion. 2. "1,300,000 Greet New Year at 'Biggest' Rose Parade," Van Nuys Valley News and Green Sheet, 3 January 1971, collection 360: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (hereinafter cited as BGEA) Scrapbooks, reel 33 (une 1970-December 1971), Archives of the Billy Graham Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill. (hereinafter cited as BGC Archives); tape transcript of Graham Press Conference, 28 February 1971, Greenville, S.C., collection 24: BGEA-Billy Graham Press Conferences, tape T9, BGC Archives; "U.S. Journal:Pasadena- Waiting for the Roses," The New Yorker,16 January 1971, pp. 85-88; Graham, Jesus Generation,pp. 13-14. This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 16:53:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions IDEA OF AN EVANGELICALYOUTH CULTURE 85 Graham's support of the Jesus Movement, although not singular, carried with it a valuable imprimatur that no other evangelical leader could match. The fact that America's leading evangelist could tolerate the movement's hippie eccentricities undoubtedly eased its acceptance in many evangelical quarters. Moreover, Graham's approval contrib- uted a sense of legitimization for those evangelicals-heads of para- church organizations, local youth workers, and the young people themselves-who eagerly adapted the styles, symbols, music, and rhetoric of the Jesus Movement to their own purposes. In supporting this uniquely evangelical spin on youth culture, Graham and the BGEA's efforts to legitimate the Jesus Movement were yet another example of evangelicalism's uncanny ability to harness popular forces and movements for the furtherance of its mission. Graham's self-described epiphany on the streets of Pasadena did not mark an altogether new phase in his career. Indeed, Graham's first major success after graduating from Wheaton College was as a travel- ling evangelist for Youth for Christ International (YFC). Founded in Chicago in 1941, YFC was an amalgamation of several fundamentalist youth ministries that sprouted up in the late 1930s in response to the growing American phenomenon of a distinct high-school-age culture.3 Graham, resplendent in the flashy suits, hand-painted ties and bright "glo-sox" that characterized the YFC style, was the star of the circuit from early 1945 through 1947, presiding at hundreds of rallies that catered to teenage audiences with snappy choruses, instrumental solos, magicians, and Bible trivia contests. During these YFC days Graham quickly absorbed a methodological rule of thumb that would stand him in good stead in the years ahead: "We used every modern means to catch the attention of the unconverted-and then we punched them right between the eyes with the gospel."4 In the years following his 1949 breakthrough as an independent evangelist in Los Angeles, Graham eagerly accepted the challenges that went along with being America's foremost evangelist. His promi- nence and the scope of his ministry-both nationally and as a symbol for the burgeoning new evangelical movement-demanded an empha- sis on "adult matters." Still, he would occasionally find time to reach out to a youthful audience with a sermon on a special youth night or a book like Billy GrahamTalks to Teen-Agers.5 3. Grace Palladino, Teenagers:An American History (New York: Basic Books, 1996), pp. 3-58. For a look at the early history and methodology of Youth for Christ, see Torrey Johnson and Robert Cook, Reaching YouthforChrist (Chicago: Moody Bible Institute, 1944). 4. William Martin, A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1991), pp. 90-94. 5. Billy Graham, Billy GrahamTalks to Teen-Agers(Wheaton, Ill.: Miracles Unlimited, 1958). This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 16:53:12 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 86 CHURCH HISTORY By the mid-1960s, however, Graham was clearly displaying a height- ened interest in the younger generation.
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