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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Billy Graham's last crusade, at Shea Stadium, was a lot tamer than the fire-breathing revivals of my youth -- but the crowd was a lot more interesting.
Jun 27, 2005 | Brothers and sisters: This weekend, the good and holy reverend who is called Billy Graham came to Queens, N.Y., and yea, I was there. The reverend descended upon Flushing Meadows Corona Park and I beared witness whilst a few miles away my roommate Mario threweth a Gay Pride party in our West Village apartment. And, lo, the incongruity of the two events didst not surprise me out as much as I thought it wouldth. But everything else did.
-- Book of Me, Chapter 2, Verse 23
When I hopped on the No. 7 train to Shea Stadium to join several thousand people to hear what was ostensibly the 86-year-old Billy Graham's last series of sermons, I was expecting an old-time Christian revival, but that wasn't what I got. I was also expecting the fiery orator I grew up with as a Southern Baptist evangelical in small-town Alabama, but I didn't exactly get that, either.
To be fair, Graham had warned me. On June 24, on the first night of what the Billy Graham Evangelical Organization was calling the "Greater New York Crusade," Graham began his first sermon by saying that "after all we'd heard and seen" -- the newspaper accounts, the TV appearances, the enormous building-size banners with large, steely-eyed Graham heads staring off into what one presumes can only be eternity -- "I'm probably an anticlimax." And he was. That's not to say that parts of him were not impressive. Graham is, after all, the "respectable" evangelical. He's not the guy who declared a SpongeBob Squarepants video "pro-homosexual." (That was James Dobson, who, full disclosure, employs one of my cousins.) He's not the guy who said "abortionists" were responsible for 9/11. (That was Jerry Falwell.) And he's certainly not the guy who routinely whacks people on the head with his palm, "slaying them in the spirit" and "curing" them of terminal diseases, broken bones and, it would seem, the capacity for rational thought. (That would be Benny Hinn.)
Graham has been preaching for over 60 years to audiences large and small, is comparatively moderate and has earned the respect of people on both sides of the conservative-liberal divide, some of the more prominent names of which appeared in between the three short sermons he delivered during the weekend revival. Bill Clinton introduced Graham's Saturday sermon with a story about hearing Graham in Little Rock, Ark., as a boy. "All the powerful white people wanted him to speak to a segregated audience," Clinton said to the mostly nonwhite crowd. "And he said, 'Jesus doesn't want me to speak to a segregated audience.'" (The crowd cheered.)
And Graham himself, with his wild flames of titanium hair and bass voice that can only be characterized as "booming," provided constant reminders of his respectability, liberally interspersing references to his recent media appearances in his sermons and even preceding the name of the A-list journalist who conducted an interview with the phrase "my good friend." If I weren't conditioned to believe the man behind the podium was above such things, I'd almost swear he was name-dropping.
Graham's sermons, for the most part, followed a narrative style in which he recounted a joke or anecdote and used the punch line to segue into an important lesson -- which, in my experience as a sermon consumer (forced and voluntary), is the standard formula. But there was something strange about them, in that they offered little of substance. The revivals of my childhood and adolescence, in contrast, were raucous affairs, with blistering 45-minute sermons designed to break you down and convince you that the only way you'd ever put yourself back together again was with the aid of your lord Jesus Christ -- and probably not even then.
The visiting pastors were the most effective because they were on the revival circuit most of the year and had the technique perfected. They might have only one story to tell, but it was always a heart-rending tale of a spiraling descent into the pits of hell involving illegal narcotics, near-death experiences and torrid affairs with wayward women whose temptations made Odysseus' sirens seem quite manageable. And if those sins were not likely to be on your list of confessions anytime soon -- if, say, your biggest problem was not turning off the TV when "Dynasty" got a little too risquié and the kids were still up -- it didn't matter because it was just a matter of time before one thing would lead to another. Sin was a slippery slope and you'd be snorting cocaine off the linoleum at a swingers party in no time.
There was none of that at this weekend's revival. The mission was love, tolerance and pandering to New Yorkers -- none of which is inconsistent with my value system. The pandering fell along predictable, if a bit surreal, lines. First there was the obligatory Yankees reference. ("Did you watch the Yankees vs. Tampa Bay? ... They and the Mets both need your prayers.") Then there was his expressed happiness to be in the melting-est of melting pots, with his acknowledgment that he had seen "some Koreans" praying only minutes before. And perhaps remembering some regrettable anti-Semitic comments he made during the Nixon era that were later be mentioned in the New York Times (a paper he reads "every day"), he gave a special shout-out to New York Jews. "It is here [in Queens] that the U.N. met for the first five years," said Graham in his first sermon. "It was also here that the U.N. voted to establish the state of Israel. Now more Jewish people live in New York than all of Jerusalem." If the cheering was any indication, the pandering went over well.
And when the Graham crusade wasn't pandering to New Yorkers, it was pandering to the kids of today. There was a "Star Wars" reference ("in the new 'Star Wars' movie, you see a young man who made a wrong decision ... The young man was searching, and he was looking for something that was missing") and a discussion about what young people want ("to be loved and recognized as individuals"). And at one point, Graham explored the profundity of Rolling Stones lyrics. "I can't get no satisfaction," he said in a monotone voice with no discernible rhythmic cadence, "though I try ... I try ... I try ... And I try." (Christ is capable of providing the satisfaction the spiritually bereft Mick Jagger couldn't get, he later pointed out.) For the 10-and-under set, there was a superhero named "Bibleman," who, I imagine, will inevitably be deemed gayer than the Teletubbies, SpongeBob and Bert and Ernie put together by one of Graham's contemporaries.
And for the teenagers, there was an assortment of Christian contemporary bands and singers. Mercy Me, fronted by a fresh-faced and slightly pudgy young guy named Bart Miller, kicked off their first set with a fist in the air and a rallying cry: "How many came to worship?" The band members had hip but tasteful and unobjectionably short haircuts and dressed mostly in black, one with an upturned polo shirt collar. "We're dark, brooding ... Christian ... uh ... preppies," the band's look seemed to say. Hesitantly. The music, however, was very popular -- engendering more raised hands and singing along than any of the traditional choir-led hymns that split up the program segments. Other crowd pleasers included Jars of Clay and Michael W. Smith, a composer who resembles a more wholesome version of George Michael (and whose music, full disclosure, I used to listen to religiously -- in both senses of the word).
For the older crowd, there was the Bill Gaither Trio -- a country-cum-gospel-cum-folk group responsible for what I find to be some of the worst Christian contemporary music in existence. The Gaithers wore three-piece suits in breezeless 80-degree weather, so you had give them credit, if only for showing up and not passing out in the heat.
