I think the first time I ever was confronted with hyper-Calvinism was as a young child, it was while I was watching a Billy Graham crusade. I remember seeing men outside of the stadium where the crusade was being held holding sandwich boards with the words ‘free will’ written out within a circle with a line through it. They were protesting the idea that they believed Graham’s mode of evangelism was contingent upon; the idea that human beings have the capacity to say a deliberative yes or no to the offer of eternal life, the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ. This struck me as strange, even as a young child (I loved Jesus even then); I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to protest the idea that Jesus loves humanity and wants to have a personal and intimate relationship with them. I felt, as I saw that, a kind of oppression come over me; what now I might call the ‘spirit of anti-Christ.’

But did Billy’s proclamation of the Gospel message require the type of theology that these protesters were presuming? Even for the hyper-Calvinist they were required to ‘respond’ in faith to the offer of salvation in Christ. It’s as if these guys conflated the mechanics of salvation, the inner-workings and logic of salvation, with the prima facie offer of salvation; an offer that itself required no understanding of the theological anthropological categories, how election and reprobation might function, how God may or may not work through decrees and theories of causation to actualize salvation one way or the other, so on and so forth. Graham was committed, I would suggest, not to a depth dimension and articulation of the theology of salvation, instead he was committed to simply pointing people to Jesus. As I have highlighted in another post on Billy Graham and Karl Barth, there is certainly space to engage with the theology of Graham, and how that got expressed in his mode of evangelization, but it would be in error, I would argue, to critique the message that Graham was somehow able to get into the public just because there might have been some deeper theological misgivings going on in the in-formative area of his theology, respectively. I don’t think Graham was trying to do anything else, but point people to the door of God’s Kingdom in Christ; as you peruse his writings, and other venues of communication, you rarely get much deeper than the consistent message of Gospel proclamation that we heard over and again in his ‘crusades.’ As I recently wrote on my Facebook wall: “Theologically if we were to pick Billy apart I’m sure his method had some flaws. But ultimately what came through in Graham’s message is the same thing that Barth elevated so highly as indicated by his favorite painting the Isenheim Altarpiece and the bony finger of John the Baptist pointing to Jesus Christ. I see BG in his own day and way accomplishing the same sort of witness bearing.” This in a nutshell is, I think, the primary basis upon which we ought to think of Graham.

Now, one could argue that Graham, just like other Western missionaries, had an effect upon the culture of Christianity precisely because of his mode of presenting the Gospel through grand-scale ‘crusade’ venues. Indeed an Indian Christian has noted just this when he wrote this about Graham visiting his country years ago:

.[1]

But this seems over-wrought to me. I am not sure this offers anything more than an anecdotal account of Graham’s impact on India in general. Maybe Graham did have this sort of negative impact, but I think this would be despite Graham’s intentions. While Graham could contribute to the sort of superficial Christianity this Indian brother is suggesting that he did, I don’t really think Graham necessarily led to this result. In other words, not only did Graham provide an altar call in good revivalist fashion to those in his meetings and crusades, but in the follow up literature and counseling he always emphasized that people get involved in a good church where they could be discipled and built up in the faith of Christ. My guess is that thousands upon thousands of people did precisely that; indeed to the point that they might later feel compelled to critique Graham along the lines of this Indian brother. But this is to the point: Graham was simply a John the Baptist pointing with his bony finger to the One who has reconciled the world to God in Christ; how growth progressed from there was just as much of a function of God’s providence, as was the message delivered.

As I have noted, there is room to critique Graham’s theology, most likely; there is room to critique the possible impact he has had upon a generation of Christians and the way a theology of culture was debased, potentially, from there (and continues to be). But I don’t ultimately think this is the measure of Billy Graham. I see Graham, as just noted, as something like a John the Baptist with a singular message and focus; I think Graham maintained that course through his life over, and as such should be commended. Can we draw back and maybe critique the theopolitics that developed contemporary with Graham’s life span? Yes, I think so; but most likely at that point we will only be critiquing our own theologies, and our own irresponsibility’s as we attempt to negotiate with the socio-cultural moment we find ourselves ensconced within.

Billy, requiescant in pace; in pace Christi

[1] h/t. John Flett, Twitter.