The New Provincialism
Labor Day, in election years, is supposed to be the beginning of the campaign season. But in the non-stop campaign cycle that federal elections have become, Labor Day is more accurately the beginning of the “final stretch” of the political season. After Labor Day is when most of the money gets spent, and most of the public activity takes place. It’s when most of the campaigns go into high gear.
But it’s possible that by Labor Day 2004 the presidential race was already over, though no one knew it then. It is also possible that this weekend may end up becoming the “high water mark” for the impact of American Evangelicalism on the political process.
Just a few days earlier, Christian music star Michael W. Smith had played a prominent role as a performer at the Republican National Convention in New York City. Indeed, one of his songs was played just as President George W. Bush himself came out to deliver his acceptance speech, which was the climax of the convention. In the minds of many evangelicals, it was a symbolic moment. The pop band Fleetwood Mac – known for a long string of “Top 40” hits, but also for drug use, songs that suggested the occult, and the bedhopping of its members – had provided the musical soundtrack for the Bill Clinton presidency. To have Michael W. Smith on the podium symbolized for many how far evangelical Christianity had come.
But by Labor Day weekend, the president’s convention bounce was beginning to fade. And, in fact, George W. Bush’s ties to the “religious right” was energizing the Kerry campaign. Liberal Democrats, for good reasons or not, feared the evangelical movement.
The only real question was: who would turn out to vote when it actually came Election Day?
Dr. James Dobson, the president of Focus on the Family, wanted to make sure that Christians turned out, and he wanted to make sure that if that did happen Christian voters got the credit they deserved. So he decided that Labor Day, the “official” beginning of a campaign season that had already been two years long, would be the right weekend to flex his political muscle, the muscle of his organization, and the muscle of the evangelical church. Through an organization he had just created, Focus on the Family Action, he organized two Stand For The Family rallies in North Carolina. They would be the first of six such rallies he would hold between Labor Day and Election Day.
On the other side of the political battle line, the John Kerry campaign was in disarray. On the Saturday before Labor Day, things were so disorganized inside the Kerry campaign that senior aides to the Democrat’s campaign forced the candidate to speak with ex-President Clinton, who was in a hospital room in New York awaiting heart surgery. Clinton proceeded to lecture Kerry, with campaign aides listening in, on what he needed to do to get back in the presidential race. On Labor Day Monday, a brutal account of that phone call made the front page of The New York Times, demoralizing Democrats and making Kerry look desperate.
That very evening, more than 6000 people gathered in Cricket Arena in Charlotte, N.C., for the first Stand For The Family rally. The next night, with no competition from the Labor Day holiday, more than 12,000 gathered in Raleigh. Dr. James Dobson, Bishop Wellington Boone, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins told both crowds to “vote their values.” In part because of these rallies, Republican Richard Burr came from behind to defeat former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles for the seat in the United States Senate previously held by John Edwards. The success of these North Carolina rallies encouraged Dr. Dobson to hold similar rallies in South Dakota, where John Thune would defeat incumbent Democratic Senator Tom Daschle in the most watched Senate race in the nation.
These rallies were barely mentioned in the mainstream media on the days they occurred, but after the election they were cited in a U.S. News and World Report profile on James Dobson as both an indication of Dobson’s ability to draw a crowd of evangelicals and as an early sign that this year’s election would be defined by what came to be known as the “values voter.” And within two years they were recognized as being defining moments in at least two books highly critical of the evangelical movement’s close ties with the political process. (1)
The expression “values voter” got traction on Election Day 2004 because exit polling suggested that the candidate’s values mattered most to the voter. (2) But in reality, the expression had been carefully crafted and marketed by Dobson and those in his camp for months. Everyone who attended the six Stand For The Rallies in North Carolina, Louisiana, and South Dakota received plastic bags full of “swag” or goodies, just as you would at a boat show or corporate trade show. And one of those goodies was an ink pen with the phrase iVoteValues.org emblazoned on it. The values voter, like much associated with the modern evangelical movement, was a carefully crafted brand, now extended with great effectiveness to a new “point of purchase”: the voting booth.
Two Years Later
These Stand for the Family rallies were believed to be so successful in the 2004 election cycle, that Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and allied groups began to plan them for the 2006 cycle. But things were changing in the political world. Republicans, with whom Dobson, Perkins and others had aligned their political fortunes, were having big problems. After 12 years in power (3), Republican congressional leaders were once again proving the adage that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
This corruption and the subsequent fall from power were embodied by Jack Abramoff. Though Jack Abramoff is even now a relatively young man – he was born in 1958 – he has been active in conservative politics for more than two decades, and – though Abramoff himself claimed to be an orthodox Jew -- has been closely aligned with the Religious Right for much of that time.
In fact, “Atlanta Weekly” magazine did a 1985 profile of a number of young conservatives called “Right Turn On Campus” that was in some ways prophetic. (4) It featured Abramoff most prominently, who by then had become a national figure as the chairman of the College Republican National Committee. Abramoff had risen to power in part because of the help of Ralph Reed. Reed had moved to Washington in 1981 to intern for Abramoff. The two became close friends. Reed even introduced Abramoff to the young woman who would eventually become Abramoff’s wife.
Reed had a conversion to Christianity while interning for Abramoff in Washington, D.C. That conversion experience changed the course of Reed’s life in many ways. Reed’s political ardor did not cool, exactly, but for a few years it re-channelled itself. He left Washington and received a Ph.D. in history from Emory University. He became a pro-life activist, even getting himself arrested outside an abortion facility in Raleigh, N.C. He ultimately became the driving force behind the Christian Coalition. During the peak years of the Christian Coalition, the organization had an annual budget of $25-million and was responsible for supporting strong state chapters that in some cases – especially in the South – changed the shape of local and statewide politics. In 1995, Reed was on the cover of “Time” Magazine.
Reed and Abramoff were often identified with Grover Norquist in what some called a triumvirate that had great influence throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Though they were all three in their 20s when they met, they quickly commanded the attention of much older and more seasoned politicians because between the three of them they were able to turn out both money and votes.
Reed’s association with the Christian Coalition brought the voters of the “religious right” to the table. Norquist became executive director of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization that became known for a plan to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government. Norquist’s ideas appealed to libertarians and social conservatives who were becoming skeptical of the social engineering inherent in “New Deal” and “Great Society” programs. And Norquist’s star would shine even brighter when it became known that he was a key strategist and co-author of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America.” Norquist was also a key figure in what came to be known as the “K Street Project,” founded in 1995. (5)
The K Street Project, depending on who is describing it, was either an evil, shadowy plot to “buy” access and control, or a heroic effort to make sure that conservatives and Republicans are heard on matters of public policy. Norquist defended the K Street Project as a necessary antidote to 40 years of Democratic control of most of the major institutions of Washington – including the White House and Congress.
But the machine would fall apart without money, and Abramoff was the “money guy.” He seemed to have a knack for money. He could raise it, and he could make it – even taking a turn in Hollywood as a producer of low-budget but financially successful action movies with anti-communist themes.
The relationship between Abramoff, Reed, and Norquist was perfect for all three. Reed and Norquist could remain ideologically “pure,” above the fund-raising fray. Reed building the “values voter” base, and Norquist bringing the libertarians and small-government conservatives to the table. Together, they were a large and powerful bloc of voters. So throughout the 80s, 90s, and into the new century, Reed and Norquist could go to Abramoff for money, and Abramoff could go to Reed for votes, and Norquist for strategy and ideas.
Ralph Reed always had the highest profile of the three, eventually landing on the cover of “Time” Magazine in May of 1995, under the headline “The Right Hand of God.” So it was no surprise to anyone when he decided that he wanted to run for office himself. Not long afterwards, in December of 1997, Reed resigned from the Christian Coalition, moved back to Georgia, and began to lay the groundwork for his own political career. He formed Century Strategies, which became known for a series of highly controversial and mostly unsuccessful political campaigns in both the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, but one success covered a multitude of sins – and that success was becoming a key strategist in George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.
When John McCain won the 2000 New Hampshire primary, he immediately moved to frontrunner status. The next major proving ground would be in South Carolina. McCain had momentum, and if he could win in South Carolina, conventional wisdom was that he would sweep to the Republican nomination. Many religious conservatives had not committed to either Bush or McCain because of the presence of both Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes in the race. The picture was further complicated when Bauer dropped out of the race and surprised many by endorsing McCain. Reed masterminded a Bush victory in South Carolina victory, which put the brakes on the McCain campaign and caused Bush to emerge as the candidate of choice for the Religious Right. (6)
It was a defining moment for both the Bush campaign and for Ralph Reed. When Bush ultimately moved into the White House, Reed became known as something of a kingmaker. He was elected chairman of the Georgia Republican Party in 2001, and in the 2002 and 2004 elections, under Reed’s leadership, Republicans showed significant gains in the state, electing a Republican governor, and replacing Democratic senators with Republican senators in Washington.
Reed set his sights on the lieutenant governor’s chair. In some states, the “lite guv” is largely a ceremonial position, but in Georgia, it is anything but. The lieutenant governor presides over the state senate, and is therefore one of the most powerful elected officials in the state. Zell Miller, for example, used his tenure as lieutenant governor to further a political career that ultimately yielded two terms as governor and one in the U.S. Senate.
Reed had similar ambitions, and told some of his friends and confidants that becoming lieutenant governor was just the first step in a career that could end up in the White House. Reed began campaigning almost immediately after the 2004 election, and was an early frontrunner. I spoke with Reed in late 2005, and he told me that he would have to raise more than $4-million. He was well on his way to doing that on New Year’s Day, 2006.
But that’s when things started going bad for Reed, Abramoff, and the “values voter” brand that had been so carefully crafted and used to good effect in 2004.
On Jan. 3 – the first real business day of this mid-term election year – Abramoff pled guilty to three felony counts in a Washington, D.C. federal court. The next day he pled guilty to two more felony counts in a Florida court. It had already been revealed that Reed’s Century Strategies had taken millions in fees from Abramoff. At first glance, the fees were not unlike other dealings between Abramoff and Reed. Reed, maintaining his ideological purity, had been involved in several efforts to curtail gambling. So when Abramoff paid him to help curtail casino gambling – well, so far, so good. But then it was revealed that Abramoff himself had been paid by an Indian casino to squash competition from other casinos. So, in reality, the goal was not to stand against gambling, but to stand against competition for those already getting rich off of gambling.
The ties to Abramoff tarnished Reed’s fundraising efforts. When I interviewed Reed in late 2005, he could still maintain the illusion that he was the frontrunner. But what he must have known even then was that his fundraising was beginning to dry up. A few days after Abramoff was indicted, Reed’s 4th quarter 2005 financial disclosure statements were made public, and they showed that he was getting badly beaten in fundraising by the only Republican still in the race, state Sen. Casey Cagle.
And to add insult to injury, when President Bush visited Georgia in July, just days before the primary election, he all but ignored Reed, saying that as long as there was another Republican in the race, he wouldn’t take sides. Reed tried to salvage his campaign by inviting Rudolph Guiliani to campaign for him. To many of Reed’s former supporters, it was a sign of desperation – and a sign that Reed had completely sold out his Christian values. Guiliani was both pro-choice and pro-gay. He was the kind of Republican that Reed and his supporters in previous years would have worked against.
When the primary was held, Reed was badly beaten by Cagle, 56 percent to 44 percent. A disappointed Reed told reporters he would likely never seek public office again.
Reed’s defeat was a precursor of the November 2006 election, when Republicans lost both houses of Congress and many other seats in local and regional elections. Theories abounded and arguments continue about why the Republicans were beaten so badly. Surely the Abramoff affair, and the scandal over U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s dalliance with house pages hurt the Republicans. The war in Iraq was not going well at election time. These factors and more served to discourage Republicans and encourage Democrats to turn out.
But conservatives, and Christian conservatives in particular, needed neither Foley nor Abramoff to indicate that the Republican Party was no longer their true home. Pro-lifers have grown increasingly discouraged by the Republican Party’s inability to make any meaningful headway on the abortion issue. Those who considered themselves “classical” conservatives were horrified by the “big government conservatism” of the Bush administration, which enlarged both the size of the government and the size of the national debt. John Fund, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, said that in times of crisis people want “grown ups” in charge. It was getting harder and harder to figure out who the grown ups were.
But the leaders of the evangelical movement were among the last ones to get the message. Jack Abramoff got a powerful message that the party was over when he was convicted of federal crimes. Ralph Reed got the message when he was badly defeated. But Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council continued apace. They held their Washington Briefing just weeks before the election. Almost 2000 people gathered at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. If the event had a star, it was George Allen. He came to speak at the event, but he stayed to mingle and to give interviews with everyone from the “New York Times” to a wide variety of Christian media outlets. Allen was trying to establish himself as the candidate of the “values voter” in the upcoming presidential campaign, and at least at this event, he was accomplishing that very goal. Everywhere Allen went, cameras and lights and a press “gaggle” followed him – including me. I turned aside from the Allen entourage to interview Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and the official “convener” of the event. I asked Perkins how he thought Republicans would do in the election. Now, to be fair to Perkins, I asked him this question before the Foley scandal broke, but his answer shocked me. “The Republicans will hold their own,” Perkins said. “We might even pick up a seat.”
Needless to say, that didn’t happen.
Fooled By Their Own Hype
In some ways, Perkins was fooled by the hype he had helped create at such events as the Stand For The Family rallies and the Washington Briefing.
Indeed, the evangelical movement has become masterful, or at least proficient, at using all types of mass media, so it should be no surprise that these types of mass rallies have become important tools in the modern evangelical church’s toolbox, but to students of history, it should come also come as no surprise that these mass events are also like echo chambers, creating their own distortions and reverberations.
Of course, in many ways, these mass rallies have a goodly and honorable heritage. The founding fathers of the United States understood well the importance and power of the ability to assemble in groups. They included not just the freedom of the press and the freedom of religion in the First Amendment, but also the freedom of assembly -- the first amendment being, of course, being the founding fathers’ last, best attempt to check the power of government.
Assemblies – small and large – are really forms of mass communication, as any student of history can confirm. In fact, they were our first form of mass communication. The student of history can see this power of assembly by looking at Moses standing before God’s people, at the salons of Plato and Aristotle, at St. Paul at Mars Hill, at the town criers of pre-Industrial Europe, at the public squares of American villages.
But it is important to note that large assemblies are more American than they are biblical. It’s true that Scripture exhorts us to “forsake not the assembling of ourselves together.” But it is also true that Jesus himself seemed to have a great deal of skepticism about large assemblies. He rarely preached before large crowds, and when he did he quickly retreated from them.
Indeed, while America’s Founding Fathers gave us the freedom to assemble as a basic right, no less an analyst than Alexis de Tocqueville noted that Americans had taken the practice of assembly and association to a level of practice not seen in the rest of the world. When he wrote his classic “Democracy in America,” he noted: “Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations.” He went on to speculate that the energy, encouragement, and shared resources associations can bring to bear on a problem or an opportunity were essential to the enlargement of knowledge and liberty. He wrote: “In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.”
That’s Where The Money Is
So this genius for assembly is not a bad thing, necessarily, but it is important to note the dangers of mass rallies.
More typical than these “Stand For The Family” political rallies are the Promise Keepers events. When Promise Keepers began, in the early 1990s, it was a local men’s group, founded by the football coach at the University of Colorado, Bill McCartney, better known as “Coach Mac.” But from the very beginning the group had aspirations of scale, and with its combination of sports celebrities and “big name” evangelical speakers, it didn’t take long for the group to catch a wave. By the mid-90s, it was packing arenas that held 50-thousand people or more. And on Oct. 4, 1997, Promise Keepers organized the “Stand In The Gap” rally in Washington, D.C. A million men attended that event.
Women have their own, slightly more evolved, version of these rallies called Women of Faith. Women of Faith, however, is a for-profit organization, owned by Christian publishing giant Zondervan, which itself is part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. (In one of the ironies of the modern world, Murdoch’s companies own the printing rights to the New International Version of the Bible – and the syndication rights to the salacious, border-stretching situation comedy “Married With Children.”) Women of Faith spawned “The Revolve Tour,” a rally for “tween” and teenage girls that is marketed directly to the girls and to their moms at the Women of Faith events.
Also targeting teenagers is Teen Mania’s “Acquire The Fire” conferences, which draw thousands per city and typically do 20- to 30-city tours each year.
Though all of these groups are different, there are several common threads running through them. One is that they all have significant merchandising arms. What goes on in the arena is just a part of the activity at these events. Everything from books and CDs to clothing and seats on “Christian cruises” are typically sold at the booths lining the concourses at these events. The result of all of this is big money: At its peak, Promise Keepers had an annual revenue of more than $100-million. Women of Faith takes in more than $50-million a year. Teen Mania has revenue of nearly $25-million a year.
Another characteristic of these organizations is that they have made their founders and key leaders wealthy. Some of the more flamboyant televangelists such as Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, and Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Paul Crouch, have been famously investigated by watchdog groups and media organizations such as WallWatchers, the Los Angeles Times, and others. These investigations have revealed that these three ministry leaders, in particular, have benefited personally in the tens of millions of dollars.
But the big money has infiltrated more mainstream ministries, as well. One of the most popular of the women’s group leaders, Beth Moore, draws a salary of about a $225-thousand a year for about half of her time. The royalties from her books, which have now sold in the millions, are retained by her. Hank Hanegraaf, radio’s “Bible Answer Man,” has repeatedly been investigated by WallWatchers and the Los Angeles Times. His annual compensation from the ministry exceeds $400,000 and he lives in a million-dollar-plus home in an exclusive country club community near Charlotte, N.C.
The “gold standard” for mass rallies has been Billy Graham. Indeed, Graham has, over a more than 60-year career, kept himself and his organization remarkably free from scandal. Graham’s own salary, while a comfortable six-figure income, is modest relative to others who lead organizations anywhere near the size of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which in 2005 was about $137-million.(2) But Graham’s son Franklin, who is now the president of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as well as Samaritan’s Purse, receives a total compensation from the two organizations that exceeds a half-million dollars. Samaritan’s Purse also had its membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) suspended over issues of board accountability, Franklin Graham’s use of ministry planes for personal use, and other issues – though it is important to note that these matters were dealt with by the ministry and Samaritan’s Purse is now a member in good standing in the ECFA. (3)
Another characteristic is the degree to which these rallies have tapped directly into the local churches. The most successful of these events are often sold-out weeks and months in advance because of bulk sales to churches. In other words, churches assume a good deal of the financial risk for these events by buying blocks of tickets at a discounted rate in order to re-sell them to church members from tables set up in foyers and fellowship halls in the weeks and months prior to the event. If the church is not able to re-sell the tickets to their members, they either give them away or the seats remain empty. It is not unusual for an event that is officially “sold out” to have 20 percent of the seats go unused. Either way, the event organizers keep the church’s money.
But perhaps the most important characteristic of these rallies is their ability to create the expectation of an “historical moment.” There is an expectation that your life will change, that your church will change, that your city will change – if you’re a part of these events. A regular Promise Keepers speaker, Henry Blackaby, coined a phrase that has become something of a mantra for evangelicals: “Find out where God is working, and go there!” The organizers of these rallies rarely say this explicitly, for fear of being labeled “prosperity” preachers. In fact, evangelical leaders in general are often quick even to deny it, but it seems obvious that following the crowd is one of the primary indicators of whether “God is working.”
In these rallies, we see several traits of modern evangelicalism at work. First and obviously enough is simply the idea of mass, or scale. In the next chapter we will look specifically at the phenomenon of the mega-church, which is this idea of scale taken to its logical end, or near-end. It is enough to say here that in calculus of the evangelical mind, large numbers are better, because it means that God is blessing the effort, as Blackaby implies.
Even better than large numbers is rapid growth, because even if you’re not big, if you’re growing, you’ll get big soon enough. And bigness, even evangelicals will concede (usually when talking about mainline denominations or the Catholic Church) can lead to stagnation and death. But growth is a sign of life, and God is Life. So growth is yet another sign of God’s blessing.
A third essential ingredient of the mass rally is the role of money and corporations. The organization of these rallies is not cheap, and they can be very profitable. We have already seen how for-profit corporations have become instrumental in the organization of some of these events. But even those that remain under the umbrella of not-for-profit organizations have taken on the characteristics of the corporation. Focus on the Family’s 2004 revenue was about $140-million. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has more variability in its annual budget than many organizations, depending on the number of rallies it conducts in a given year. But its 2004 revenue exceeded $114-million, and it had a whopping $290-million in assets.
Fourthly, is their ability to tap into the grassroots community and network of the local church. And fourthly, is their ability to stand apart from the local church when it comes to oversight and accountability.
But perhaps the most significant characteristic of the mass rally is its insistence on creating a community-altering moment. Most evangelical mass rallies – whether explicitly evangelistic or not -- are billed as potentially historical events. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association uses the word “historic” or “historical” to describe almost all of its crusades and many of its other activities. Typical is this headline from a BGEA press release, describing a 2005 Crusade in New York: “Billy Graham’s Historic New York City Crusade To Be Broadcast in December.” The press release goes on to describe the television broadcast schedule of a June 2005 crusade. It is one of dozens of uses of the word “historic” by the Graham to describe the organization’s activities.
One of the ironies here is that this impulse to create the “historical moment” is essentially a modern phenomenon that springs in part from modern man’s lack of historicity. Like much we will discuss in this book, mass rallies were developed in the years just after World War II, the convergence of a deeply felt need for connectedness, community, and significance – and emerging technologies that made previously unprecedented forms of mass communication possible.
The Lion In The Path
As we have already seen, it is impossible to talk about the post-World War II evangelical movement without at least mentioning, and in some cases diving deeply into, Billy Graham’s organization.
Billy Graham is the “lion in the path” of modern American evangelicalism. Every phenomenon we will discuss in this book – from the mega-church, to the use of the mass rally, to mass media – was either pioneered or used extensively by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
By 2004, however, it would be fair to say that Graham was surely the “lion in winter.” Beginning in 1995, when Graham led a crusade in his hometown of Charlotte, N.C., his organization started billing every crusade as his last. So there was some poignancy – and no small amount of media attention -- when Graham began what his organization again called his “final” crusade in Los Angeles on Nov. 18, 2004. The crusade began just two weeks after the election that swept George W. Bush into his second term of office – an election decided by the evangelicals that Graham had been instrumental in organizing over the years.
But more to the point of our discussion, the crusade began exactly 55 years to the day after his first massive crusade ended in Los Angeles in 1949.
Young Billy Graham had been a handsome, well-dressed speaker for the parachurch organization Youth For Christ since 1944, but now he was branching out on his own. This was to be his first really big event, and it was going to take place under a tent with sawdust on the floor, just like the camp meetings Graham had grown up attending in his native North Carolina, including one in which Graham himself had been “saved” after sitting under the preaching of itinerant evangelist Mordecai Ham.
The crusade was to be three weeks in length. But William Randolph Hearst, arguably the most powerful media magnate in the world, heard one of Graham’s early sermons, and he knew a media star when he saw one. It was Hearst, after all, who a half-century earlier, had reportedly told his staff in Cuba, “You provide the photographs, and I’ll provide the war,” thereby taking the United States into the Spanish-American War and launching the political career of Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt.
Hearst, who would die two years later in 1951 told his editors to “puff Graham.” In other words, make him a star. Hearst’s editors knew exactly what that meant, and within a week Graham and the news of his Los Angeles Crusade were front-page fodder all across America. Graham ended up extending his crusade to eight weeks, and an estimated 350,000 people had attended by the time it ended.
Los Angeles had changed dramatically since Graham’s first visit. In 1949, though the city had 5-million people, it still had the feel of an overgrown small town. It was still surrounded by barren hills and orange groves. In 2004 Los Angeles had more than 16 million people and sprawled for 75 miles in every direction not facing the Pacific Ocean.
Graham’s crusade also had that sense of being the same but different. For one thing, they were now called “missions,” not “crusades.” In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the word “crusade” had become politically incorrect.
But there were other differences. In 1949, Hearst gave Graham what he didn’t know he needed: star power. By 2004, the Graham organization had a virtual system in place to create on demand what Hearst had given them. The L.A. crusade was orchestrated with the help of 1,200 churches from nearly 100 denominations, most of whom had been courted at pastor’s luncheons organized and funded by a local committee of wealthy business leaders. Indeed, the crusade would end up with a total budget of $5.4-million, larger than the budget of all but a few of the largest churches in the Los Angeles area. Of the $5.4-million, more than 25 percent of it would be spent on advertising, an amount that ensured positive relations with the local media.
Graham himself had carefully cultivated a public persona as a humble itinerant preacher. And, as we said earlier, it is not an act. The then 86-year-old Graham now lived in an age when it was possible – even fairly common – for the leaders of Christian ministries to become millionaires. Pat Robertson leveraged the Christian Broadcasting Network into a personal fortune worth more than $100-million. Other preachers from all bands on the evangelical spectrum – from Tim LaHaye to Rick Warren to James Robison – have made millions of dollars from their ministries and the ancillary book sales and speaking engagements. At the top of this evangelical food chain is Stuart Epperson, Sr. Epperson is a friend of Graham and the chairman of Salem Broadcasting, the nation’s largest chain of Christian media properties. Epperson owns about 25 percent of a publicly traded company that the market has valued at as much as $1-billion.
All these men – and some women -- have all capitalized on a market that Graham was instrumental in creating. Given these possibilities, Graham has lived modestly, humbly.
Nonetheless, it is hard not to marvel at the irony in the words Graham shared with the Associated Press on the eve of his 2004 Los Angeles Mission in the 92,000-seat Rose Bowl: “I’m a little bit old for it, the stadium is a little bit big for me. But it’s very wonderful that they had the patience to wait on me.”
It is also hard to argue with the inspiring stories that often come out of a Graham Crusade, or Mission. Most of the missions late in Graham’s career take place in cities Graham visited early in his career. And the Graham organization is careful to find people who made professions of faith in Christ in the first crusade and tell their stories to the media as examples of the fruitfulness of Graham’s work. One example, reported by the Associated Press, was of Willie Jordan, who attended every day of the 1949 revival as a 16-year-old girl. At the time of the 2004 rally, Jordan was the 71-year-old president of the Fred Jordan Mission, a ministry that worked with the homeless in the worst parts of Los Angeles. “Every night that tent was packed,” Jordan said. “I remember the crowds of people – you could see them coming for miles. It was a greater sight than any of us had ever witnessed before. It was clear that God had placed his hand on Billy for something special.” (4)
The law of large numbers
That’s the conclusion that has become orthodoxy when it comes to describing the large arena events of Billy Graham, and in the case of Graham, one is tempted to agree that there is some merit to this conclusion. But it is only fair to ask the question: are these stories truly signs of the hand of God, or an example of the Law of Large Numbers at work?
The Law of Large Numbers is well known to statisticians and pollsters. Indeed, it is one of the basic tenets upon which modern polling technique and statistically controlled manufacturing processes are based. It was first articulated by the mathematical genius Jacob Bernoulli, who lived in the late 1600s and was a contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton.
Indeed, in some ways, that era was not unlike our own. The Catholic Church had been rocked to its very foundation by Martin Luther in 1517. Magellan’s crew – without their leader, who had died on the voyage – competed its circumnavigation of the world in 1522. Yeats characterized the modern era as being a time in which the center was not holding, but it might as easily have characterized the this era. Newton’s laws of physics and Bernoulli’s Law of Large Numbers sprang inevitably from the spirit of that age. In fact, over the next 100 years, the center all but disintegrated. For men like Newton and Bernoulli, science and mathematics represented a new search for moral certainty.
It was into this world that Bernoulli’s ideas were born. The Law of Large Numbers says that if you try something enough times, ultimately to infinity, you are increasingly likely to produce an average that is closer to the true average. In other words, if I flip a coin once and it comes up heads, I might conclude that there is a 100 percent chance that a flip of the coin will produce heads. If I flip it again and it comes up heads again, I would still conclude that there is a 100 percent chance that it will come up heads. I might even be able to flip it a third and a fourth time and still come up heads. But as any school child knows, if you flip it 100 times, you end up very close to 50 heads and 50 tales. And if you flip it 1000 times, you end up even closer to a 50/50 split. The Law of Large Numbers says that the variation from the average becomes closer to zero and the number of independent trials approaches infinity.
But the Law of Large Numbers also explains something quite remarkable. If you flipped a coin 10 times and only 10 times, it would be virtually impossible to flip 10 heads or ten tails. It would truly be an anomaly, a freak occurrence. However, if you flipped the coin a million times, the chances are that you would find 10 straight heads or 10 straight tails occurring at least once. The miracle materializes. Indeed, it becomes inevitable.
This idea is vital to an understanding of American evangelicalism, because American evangelicalism is based on the miracle. If a ministry, or a movement, can produce the miracle, it has “proof” of God’s anointing on it. In other words, for a ministry such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to survive, it must – from time to time – produce a Willie Jordan.
And while any professing Christian can and should rejoice in the miracle of a transformed life, we are not therefore absolved of the responsibility of asking this vital question: When the Graham organization highlights someone whose life was changed at a crusade 50 years ago, what are we in fact observing? Are we seeing someone who represents the consistent fruit of this ministry, or are we merely having our attention diverted to the anomaly that shows itself once in a million throws, the “inevitable miracle”?
Two Great American Awakenings
We will defer answering this question for now, but we can say that the large crowd, the possibilities created by large numbers of people, was not always a part of the American evangelical experience. The first Great Awakening, which took place in American more or less between 1730 and 1745, was typified by fiery but sober and generally unemotional preaching. If Billy Graham is the “lion” of the modern evangelical movement, Jonathan Edwards, was the lion of the Great Awakening. He was famous for such sermons as “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God.” (9) But those who saw him preach report that his style was anything but theatrical. That famous speech itself was often read, and sometimes by others, and in no case was it extemporaneously delivered, even by Edwards himself.
In a letter Edwards wrote in 1743 to his friend Thomas Prince, it is easy to see that what Edwards treasured among the gifts of the revival was not emotionalism, but the changed lives and improved communities where the revival took hold:
There has been vastly more religion kept up in the town, among all sorts of persons, in religious exercises and in common conversation than used to be before. There has remained a more general seriousness and decency in attending the public worship. There has been a very great alteration among the youth of the town with respect to reveling, frolicking, profane and unclean conversation, and lewd songs. Instances of fornication have been very rare. There has also been a great alteration among both old and young with respect to tavern haunting. I suppose the town has been in no measure so free of vice in these respects for any long time together for this sixty years as it has been this nine years past.
Whether one agrees or disagrees that the big arena events of today are moves of the Holy Spirit or manufactured emotionalism, it seems clear that the revival that took place in the 1740s did not in any way benefit from or extol mere emotional gratification.
Its impact, however, was great. Historian David Barton, for example, believes that the American Republic itself would not have been possible without the conviction of men who had their spiritual birth and nurturing in the Great Awakening. S.E. Morison, in The Oxford History Of The American People, speculates that less than a majority, only about 40 percent, of the white population in the colonies were Patriots, with “about 50 percent indifferent or neutral.” Around 10 percent were British Loyalists. However, among the Patriots were the religious leaders who had been shaped by the Great Awakening – Baptists and Presbyterians, primarily. Ashbel Green, the Presbyterian chaplain to Washington’s Congress, wrote, “Many of those who took the lead in the arduous struggle which issued in the Independence of our country were…men of decided piety; and those of opposite character yielded to their influence, from a regard to popular opinion, which at that time was strongly in favor of religion.”
In other words, this Great Awakening, born of sober Biblical preaching, a high regard for doctrinal purity, and a healthy skepticism with regard to emotionalism, had an impact that bore fruit not in large crowds, but in transforming and permanent change that stood the test of time.
A second great religious movement swept America around the year 1800, and brought with it the phenomenon of the “camp meeting.” The famous Cane Ridge, Kentucky, meetings of the summer of 1801 attracted as many as 8,000 people – that at a time when Lexington, Kentucky’s largest city, had less than 2,000 people. These meetings resulted in many emotional “converts” who never achieved spiritual maturity. There were no tavern closings in the wake of this wildfire of revivalism, though many of the preachers themselves, including Charles Finney, became wealthy celebrities. Instead, the lack of doctrinal depth of both the preachers and the converts caused many to turn away from faith, and many more to go astray. Whereas the first Great Awakening resulted in churches that have remained faithful to Gospel truth for nearly three centuries, and in an experiment in liberty known as America that is a light to the world, this second great religious movement bore a bitter fruit. Though it started well, with many evangelists claiming converts, over time cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons would spring up, and by the end of the 19th century would be well-established.
Post-World War II American Evangelicalism has been called The Third Great Awakening. And it may be just that. But will it result in lasting fruit, as did the first Great Awakening, or will it be remembered by history as giving birth to a crass revivalism that enriched its leaders with money and power, but had no or little lasting, positive impact on the Kingdom of God, as did the second Great Awakening?
The New Provincialism
This question – “will it result in lasting fruit” – is always an important question to ask of any of our activities, but it is a particularly important one when it comes to the American Evangelical church. It is important because the question presumes a future. In other words, if I sacrifice today in expectation of some gain tomorrow, or if I plant today in expectation of a harvest tomorrow -- I obviously expect that tomorrow will come.
But an important aspect of American Evangelicalism is something theologians call “dispensational premillennialism.” Because this is not a book about eschatology, the study of the end times, we will not dive too deeply into this murky pool. But it is important to say that dispensationalism teaches that tomorrow may indeed not come. In fact, it probably won’t come – if we define tomorrow loosely enough. Dispensational premillennialism teaches that the condition of the world is inexorably in decline and that a “rapture” of Christian believers is imminent. This rapture will take all Christians bodily from earth and leave all non-believers behind. Without Christians on earth to act as “salt and light,” the decline of the earth and all its institutions will become precipitous. It could happen any second, and it most certainly will (they say) happen soon.
If this idea sounds familiar, it is a testimony to the grip this idea has on the modern evangelical church. A grip that is all the more remarkable when you consider that the idea of dispensational premillennialism barely existed, and then only in the very fringes of the church, as recently as 100 years ago. St. Augustine, writing in the 4th century, explicitly rejected interpretations of scripture that we might call premillennial. Martin Luther and John Calvin, both explicitly rejected premillennialism. Jonathan Edwards, who we have already introduced as a leader in America’s first Great Awakening, was explicitly postmillennial. Premillennialism began to rise in the 19th century, in the aftermath of the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening and simultaneous to the rise of apocalyptic Christian sects and cults (such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses) that we have already mentioned. With the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909, dispensationalism spread widely into all churches, including Reformed churches that had been solidly postmillennial.
Most recently, the idea of dispensational premillennialism was made popular by the “Left Behind” series of books by Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins. Because we will devote more attention to these books both as a marketing and publishing phenomenon and as a conduit for these ideas, we won’t say too much about them here except to observe that the “Left Behind” books – in all their forms, including children’s books – have sold well over 30-million copies, making the ideas of dispensational premillennialism commonplace, even of most of the readers of the books could not define these theological terms.
I introduce these ideas here to make this point: many conservative evangelical Christians consider a failure to heed history one of the great dangers of modern culture. But dispensational premillennialism has put the evangelical church in the scripturally and logically untenable position of being a people with neither a past nor a future. We have thoroughly embraced the rootless, existential, modernist condition we say we bring deliverance from.
I have borrowed a phrase from the poet, philosopher, and novelist Marion Montgomery and call this condition the New Provincialism. In an earlier age, those who lacked a sophisticated understanding of the world were referred to as provincial, or from the rural provinces. Technology and transportation have erased distances between places, but have enlarged the gaps between us and both our past and our future. Indeed, this has occurred to the extent that something that is passé is sometimes referred to as “so five minutes ago,” as if five minutes ago or 500 years ago are all the same, equally irrelevant to the ever present and all-consuming now.
What’s Next?
We started this chapter asking tough questions about two of the most important organizations in modern American Evangelicalism, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Focus on the Family. But it is important to remember that these organizations are merely emblematic of thousands of organizations who are pursuing an organizational model very similar. Indeed, the watchdog group Ministry Watch monitors the 500 largest Christian organizations in the United States. These organizations employ tens of thousands of people and have combined annual income in the tens of billions of dollars. The organizations we have cited here are merely models for an entire industry.
For the sake of directness, let’s ask the key question again: Is the success of these organizations and others like them a result of the blessing of God, or the pursuit of an organizational model that is designed to produce immediate results but will inevitably, over the course of time, bear a bitter harvest?
We have many more ideas to explore before we can definitively answer that question, but it is fair to say at this point that the actions of many evangelical organizations, and the thinking behind these actions, have produced a bitter harvest in the past. Before we can say whether it will produce the same bitter harvest again, let’s look more deeply into the ideas we have introduced here, and several more, and let’s match these ideas with the consequences they have produced over time.
NOTES:
1. Both Michele Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming” and Randall Balmer’s “Thy Kingdom Come” mentioned the rallies. They also referred to the rallies to me in private interviews.
2. The exit polling that put the phrase “values voter” in the mind of the mainstream media was ultimately found to be flawed, or at least inconclusive, but by the time the truth about the polling process came out, the phrase had already become a permanent part of the lexicon of the chattering class.
3. Twelve years if you’re counting from the 1994 takeover of the Congress during the so-called “Contract With America” days.
4. “Right Turn On Campus,” Atlanta Weekly, February 20, 1985.
5. K Street, not far from the White House, is where many of the influential lobbying organizations have their offices.
6. A little-credited but key element of that campaign was a tough article about McCain in WORLD Magazine, written by Bob Jones IV. Though WORLD Magazine had a circulation of only about 100,000 at the time it did its scathing article on McCain, there were a disproportionate number of those subscribers in South Carolina, and many of them were pastors, deacons, and elders of prominent churches.
7. Ironically, Graham’s compensation has come under a bit more scrutiny in recent years because of his semi-retired status.
8. It is important to note that “dealt with” means fully disclosed. It does not mean these expenses were eliminated. Franklin Graham continues to draw salaries from both ministries, salaries that when combined exceed $500-thousand a year. Samaritan’s Purse is a tax-exempt humanitarian organization. Its supporters expect the money contributed to go directly to humanitarian aid, yet the organization earned more than $100-million in the four-year period from 2002 to 2005.
9. In what might be called a signpost on the downward path, I noted with some interest (and sadness) that the Rev. Janet Edwards, a Presbyterian minister and distant relative of the circuit riding New England preacher and theologian officiated at a wedding for two women and was investigated by her denomination in 2006.
But it’s possible that by Labor Day 2004 the presidential race was already over, though no one knew it then. It is also possible that this weekend may end up becoming the “high water mark” for the impact of American Evangelicalism on the political process.
Just a few days earlier, Christian music star Michael W. Smith had played a prominent role as a performer at the Republican National Convention in New York City. Indeed, one of his songs was played just as President George W. Bush himself came out to deliver his acceptance speech, which was the climax of the convention. In the minds of many evangelicals, it was a symbolic moment. The pop band Fleetwood Mac – known for a long string of “Top 40” hits, but also for drug use, songs that suggested the occult, and the bedhopping of its members – had provided the musical soundtrack for the Bill Clinton presidency. To have Michael W. Smith on the podium symbolized for many how far evangelical Christianity had come.
But by Labor Day weekend, the president’s convention bounce was beginning to fade. And, in fact, George W. Bush’s ties to the “religious right” was energizing the Kerry campaign. Liberal Democrats, for good reasons or not, feared the evangelical movement.
The only real question was: who would turn out to vote when it actually came Election Day?
Dr. James Dobson, the president of Focus on the Family, wanted to make sure that Christians turned out, and he wanted to make sure that if that did happen Christian voters got the credit they deserved. So he decided that Labor Day, the “official” beginning of a campaign season that had already been two years long, would be the right weekend to flex his political muscle, the muscle of his organization, and the muscle of the evangelical church. Through an organization he had just created, Focus on the Family Action, he organized two Stand For The Family rallies in North Carolina. They would be the first of six such rallies he would hold between Labor Day and Election Day.
On the other side of the political battle line, the John Kerry campaign was in disarray. On the Saturday before Labor Day, things were so disorganized inside the Kerry campaign that senior aides to the Democrat’s campaign forced the candidate to speak with ex-President Clinton, who was in a hospital room in New York awaiting heart surgery. Clinton proceeded to lecture Kerry, with campaign aides listening in, on what he needed to do to get back in the presidential race. On Labor Day Monday, a brutal account of that phone call made the front page of The New York Times, demoralizing Democrats and making Kerry look desperate.
That very evening, more than 6000 people gathered in Cricket Arena in Charlotte, N.C., for the first Stand For The Family rally. The next night, with no competition from the Labor Day holiday, more than 12,000 gathered in Raleigh. Dr. James Dobson, Bishop Wellington Boone, former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, and Family Research Council president Tony Perkins told both crowds to “vote their values.” In part because of these rallies, Republican Richard Burr came from behind to defeat former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles for the seat in the United States Senate previously held by John Edwards. The success of these North Carolina rallies encouraged Dr. Dobson to hold similar rallies in South Dakota, where John Thune would defeat incumbent Democratic Senator Tom Daschle in the most watched Senate race in the nation.
These rallies were barely mentioned in the mainstream media on the days they occurred, but after the election they were cited in a U.S. News and World Report profile on James Dobson as both an indication of Dobson’s ability to draw a crowd of evangelicals and as an early sign that this year’s election would be defined by what came to be known as the “values voter.” And within two years they were recognized as being defining moments in at least two books highly critical of the evangelical movement’s close ties with the political process. (1)
The expression “values voter” got traction on Election Day 2004 because exit polling suggested that the candidate’s values mattered most to the voter. (2) But in reality, the expression had been carefully crafted and marketed by Dobson and those in his camp for months. Everyone who attended the six Stand For The Rallies in North Carolina, Louisiana, and South Dakota received plastic bags full of “swag” or goodies, just as you would at a boat show or corporate trade show. And one of those goodies was an ink pen with the phrase iVoteValues.org emblazoned on it. The values voter, like much associated with the modern evangelical movement, was a carefully crafted brand, now extended with great effectiveness to a new “point of purchase”: the voting booth.
Two Years Later
These Stand for the Family rallies were believed to be so successful in the 2004 election cycle, that Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, and allied groups began to plan them for the 2006 cycle. But things were changing in the political world. Republicans, with whom Dobson, Perkins and others had aligned their political fortunes, were having big problems. After 12 years in power (3), Republican congressional leaders were once again proving the adage that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
This corruption and the subsequent fall from power were embodied by Jack Abramoff. Though Jack Abramoff is even now a relatively young man – he was born in 1958 – he has been active in conservative politics for more than two decades, and – though Abramoff himself claimed to be an orthodox Jew -- has been closely aligned with the Religious Right for much of that time.
In fact, “Atlanta Weekly” magazine did a 1985 profile of a number of young conservatives called “Right Turn On Campus” that was in some ways prophetic. (4) It featured Abramoff most prominently, who by then had become a national figure as the chairman of the College Republican National Committee. Abramoff had risen to power in part because of the help of Ralph Reed. Reed had moved to Washington in 1981 to intern for Abramoff. The two became close friends. Reed even introduced Abramoff to the young woman who would eventually become Abramoff’s wife.
Reed had a conversion to Christianity while interning for Abramoff in Washington, D.C. That conversion experience changed the course of Reed’s life in many ways. Reed’s political ardor did not cool, exactly, but for a few years it re-channelled itself. He left Washington and received a Ph.D. in history from Emory University. He became a pro-life activist, even getting himself arrested outside an abortion facility in Raleigh, N.C. He ultimately became the driving force behind the Christian Coalition. During the peak years of the Christian Coalition, the organization had an annual budget of $25-million and was responsible for supporting strong state chapters that in some cases – especially in the South – changed the shape of local and statewide politics. In 1995, Reed was on the cover of “Time” Magazine.
Reed and Abramoff were often identified with Grover Norquist in what some called a triumvirate that had great influence throughout the late 80s and early 90s. Though they were all three in their 20s when they met, they quickly commanded the attention of much older and more seasoned politicians because between the three of them they were able to turn out both money and votes.
Reed’s association with the Christian Coalition brought the voters of the “religious right” to the table. Norquist became executive director of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization that became known for a plan to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government. Norquist’s ideas appealed to libertarians and social conservatives who were becoming skeptical of the social engineering inherent in “New Deal” and “Great Society” programs. And Norquist’s star would shine even brighter when it became known that he was a key strategist and co-author of Newt Gingrich’s 1994 “Contract with America.” Norquist was also a key figure in what came to be known as the “K Street Project,” founded in 1995. (5)
The K Street Project, depending on who is describing it, was either an evil, shadowy plot to “buy” access and control, or a heroic effort to make sure that conservatives and Republicans are heard on matters of public policy. Norquist defended the K Street Project as a necessary antidote to 40 years of Democratic control of most of the major institutions of Washington – including the White House and Congress.
But the machine would fall apart without money, and Abramoff was the “money guy.” He seemed to have a knack for money. He could raise it, and he could make it – even taking a turn in Hollywood as a producer of low-budget but financially successful action movies with anti-communist themes.
The relationship between Abramoff, Reed, and Norquist was perfect for all three. Reed and Norquist could remain ideologically “pure,” above the fund-raising fray. Reed building the “values voter” base, and Norquist bringing the libertarians and small-government conservatives to the table. Together, they were a large and powerful bloc of voters. So throughout the 80s, 90s, and into the new century, Reed and Norquist could go to Abramoff for money, and Abramoff could go to Reed for votes, and Norquist for strategy and ideas.
Ralph Reed always had the highest profile of the three, eventually landing on the cover of “Time” Magazine in May of 1995, under the headline “The Right Hand of God.” So it was no surprise to anyone when he decided that he wanted to run for office himself. Not long afterwards, in December of 1997, Reed resigned from the Christian Coalition, moved back to Georgia, and began to lay the groundwork for his own political career. He formed Century Strategies, which became known for a series of highly controversial and mostly unsuccessful political campaigns in both the 1998 and 2000 election cycles, but one success covered a multitude of sins – and that success was becoming a key strategist in George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign.
When John McCain won the 2000 New Hampshire primary, he immediately moved to frontrunner status. The next major proving ground would be in South Carolina. McCain had momentum, and if he could win in South Carolina, conventional wisdom was that he would sweep to the Republican nomination. Many religious conservatives had not committed to either Bush or McCain because of the presence of both Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes in the race. The picture was further complicated when Bauer dropped out of the race and surprised many by endorsing McCain. Reed masterminded a Bush victory in South Carolina victory, which put the brakes on the McCain campaign and caused Bush to emerge as the candidate of choice for the Religious Right. (6)
It was a defining moment for both the Bush campaign and for Ralph Reed. When Bush ultimately moved into the White House, Reed became known as something of a kingmaker. He was elected chairman of the Georgia Republican Party in 2001, and in the 2002 and 2004 elections, under Reed’s leadership, Republicans showed significant gains in the state, electing a Republican governor, and replacing Democratic senators with Republican senators in Washington.
Reed set his sights on the lieutenant governor’s chair. In some states, the “lite guv” is largely a ceremonial position, but in Georgia, it is anything but. The lieutenant governor presides over the state senate, and is therefore one of the most powerful elected officials in the state. Zell Miller, for example, used his tenure as lieutenant governor to further a political career that ultimately yielded two terms as governor and one in the U.S. Senate.
Reed had similar ambitions, and told some of his friends and confidants that becoming lieutenant governor was just the first step in a career that could end up in the White House. Reed began campaigning almost immediately after the 2004 election, and was an early frontrunner. I spoke with Reed in late 2005, and he told me that he would have to raise more than $4-million. He was well on his way to doing that on New Year’s Day, 2006.
But that’s when things started going bad for Reed, Abramoff, and the “values voter” brand that had been so carefully crafted and used to good effect in 2004.
On Jan. 3 – the first real business day of this mid-term election year – Abramoff pled guilty to three felony counts in a Washington, D.C. federal court. The next day he pled guilty to two more felony counts in a Florida court. It had already been revealed that Reed’s Century Strategies had taken millions in fees from Abramoff. At first glance, the fees were not unlike other dealings between Abramoff and Reed. Reed, maintaining his ideological purity, had been involved in several efforts to curtail gambling. So when Abramoff paid him to help curtail casino gambling – well, so far, so good. But then it was revealed that Abramoff himself had been paid by an Indian casino to squash competition from other casinos. So, in reality, the goal was not to stand against gambling, but to stand against competition for those already getting rich off of gambling.
The ties to Abramoff tarnished Reed’s fundraising efforts. When I interviewed Reed in late 2005, he could still maintain the illusion that he was the frontrunner. But what he must have known even then was that his fundraising was beginning to dry up. A few days after Abramoff was indicted, Reed’s 4th quarter 2005 financial disclosure statements were made public, and they showed that he was getting badly beaten in fundraising by the only Republican still in the race, state Sen. Casey Cagle.
And to add insult to injury, when President Bush visited Georgia in July, just days before the primary election, he all but ignored Reed, saying that as long as there was another Republican in the race, he wouldn’t take sides. Reed tried to salvage his campaign by inviting Rudolph Guiliani to campaign for him. To many of Reed’s former supporters, it was a sign of desperation – and a sign that Reed had completely sold out his Christian values. Guiliani was both pro-choice and pro-gay. He was the kind of Republican that Reed and his supporters in previous years would have worked against.
When the primary was held, Reed was badly beaten by Cagle, 56 percent to 44 percent. A disappointed Reed told reporters he would likely never seek public office again.
Reed’s defeat was a precursor of the November 2006 election, when Republicans lost both houses of Congress and many other seats in local and regional elections. Theories abounded and arguments continue about why the Republicans were beaten so badly. Surely the Abramoff affair, and the scandal over U.S. Rep. Mark Foley’s dalliance with house pages hurt the Republicans. The war in Iraq was not going well at election time. These factors and more served to discourage Republicans and encourage Democrats to turn out.
But conservatives, and Christian conservatives in particular, needed neither Foley nor Abramoff to indicate that the Republican Party was no longer their true home. Pro-lifers have grown increasingly discouraged by the Republican Party’s inability to make any meaningful headway on the abortion issue. Those who considered themselves “classical” conservatives were horrified by the “big government conservatism” of the Bush administration, which enlarged both the size of the government and the size of the national debt. John Fund, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, said that in times of crisis people want “grown ups” in charge. It was getting harder and harder to figure out who the grown ups were.
But the leaders of the evangelical movement were among the last ones to get the message. Jack Abramoff got a powerful message that the party was over when he was convicted of federal crimes. Ralph Reed got the message when he was badly defeated. But Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council continued apace. They held their Washington Briefing just weeks before the election. Almost 2000 people gathered at the Omni Shoreham Hotel. If the event had a star, it was George Allen. He came to speak at the event, but he stayed to mingle and to give interviews with everyone from the “New York Times” to a wide variety of Christian media outlets. Allen was trying to establish himself as the candidate of the “values voter” in the upcoming presidential campaign, and at least at this event, he was accomplishing that very goal. Everywhere Allen went, cameras and lights and a press “gaggle” followed him – including me. I turned aside from the Allen entourage to interview Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and the official “convener” of the event. I asked Perkins how he thought Republicans would do in the election. Now, to be fair to Perkins, I asked him this question before the Foley scandal broke, but his answer shocked me. “The Republicans will hold their own,” Perkins said. “We might even pick up a seat.”
Needless to say, that didn’t happen.
Fooled By Their Own Hype
In some ways, Perkins was fooled by the hype he had helped create at such events as the Stand For The Family rallies and the Washington Briefing.
Indeed, the evangelical movement has become masterful, or at least proficient, at using all types of mass media, so it should be no surprise that these types of mass rallies have become important tools in the modern evangelical church’s toolbox, but to students of history, it should come also come as no surprise that these mass events are also like echo chambers, creating their own distortions and reverberations.
Of course, in many ways, these mass rallies have a goodly and honorable heritage. The founding fathers of the United States understood well the importance and power of the ability to assemble in groups. They included not just the freedom of the press and the freedom of religion in the First Amendment, but also the freedom of assembly -- the first amendment being, of course, being the founding fathers’ last, best attempt to check the power of government.
Assemblies – small and large – are really forms of mass communication, as any student of history can confirm. In fact, they were our first form of mass communication. The student of history can see this power of assembly by looking at Moses standing before God’s people, at the salons of Plato and Aristotle, at St. Paul at Mars Hill, at the town criers of pre-Industrial Europe, at the public squares of American villages.
But it is important to note that large assemblies are more American than they are biblical. It’s true that Scripture exhorts us to “forsake not the assembling of ourselves together.” But it is also true that Jesus himself seemed to have a great deal of skepticism about large assemblies. He rarely preached before large crowds, and when he did he quickly retreated from them.
Indeed, while America’s Founding Fathers gave us the freedom to assemble as a basic right, no less an analyst than Alexis de Tocqueville noted that Americans had taken the practice of assembly and association to a level of practice not seen in the rest of the world. When he wrote his classic “Democracy in America,” he noted: “Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations.” He went on to speculate that the energy, encouragement, and shared resources associations can bring to bear on a problem or an opportunity were essential to the enlargement of knowledge and liberty. He wrote: “In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.”
That’s Where The Money Is
So this genius for assembly is not a bad thing, necessarily, but it is important to note the dangers of mass rallies.
More typical than these “Stand For The Family” political rallies are the Promise Keepers events. When Promise Keepers began, in the early 1990s, it was a local men’s group, founded by the football coach at the University of Colorado, Bill McCartney, better known as “Coach Mac.” But from the very beginning the group had aspirations of scale, and with its combination of sports celebrities and “big name” evangelical speakers, it didn’t take long for the group to catch a wave. By the mid-90s, it was packing arenas that held 50-thousand people or more. And on Oct. 4, 1997, Promise Keepers organized the “Stand In The Gap” rally in Washington, D.C. A million men attended that event.
Women have their own, slightly more evolved, version of these rallies called Women of Faith. Women of Faith, however, is a for-profit organization, owned by Christian publishing giant Zondervan, which itself is part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. (In one of the ironies of the modern world, Murdoch’s companies own the printing rights to the New International Version of the Bible – and the syndication rights to the salacious, border-stretching situation comedy “Married With Children.”) Women of Faith spawned “The Revolve Tour,” a rally for “tween” and teenage girls that is marketed directly to the girls and to their moms at the Women of Faith events.
Also targeting teenagers is Teen Mania’s “Acquire The Fire” conferences, which draw thousands per city and typically do 20- to 30-city tours each year.
Though all of these groups are different, there are several common threads running through them. One is that they all have significant merchandising arms. What goes on in the arena is just a part of the activity at these events. Everything from books and CDs to clothing and seats on “Christian cruises” are typically sold at the booths lining the concourses at these events. The result of all of this is big money: At its peak, Promise Keepers had an annual revenue of more than $100-million. Women of Faith takes in more than $50-million a year. Teen Mania has revenue of nearly $25-million a year.
Another characteristic of these organizations is that they have made their founders and key leaders wealthy. Some of the more flamboyant televangelists such as Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, and Trinity Broadcasting Network’s Paul Crouch, have been famously investigated by watchdog groups and media organizations such as WallWatchers, the Los Angeles Times, and others. These investigations have revealed that these three ministry leaders, in particular, have benefited personally in the tens of millions of dollars.
But the big money has infiltrated more mainstream ministries, as well. One of the most popular of the women’s group leaders, Beth Moore, draws a salary of about a $225-thousand a year for about half of her time. The royalties from her books, which have now sold in the millions, are retained by her. Hank Hanegraaf, radio’s “Bible Answer Man,” has repeatedly been investigated by WallWatchers and the Los Angeles Times. His annual compensation from the ministry exceeds $400,000 and he lives in a million-dollar-plus home in an exclusive country club community near Charlotte, N.C.
The “gold standard” for mass rallies has been Billy Graham. Indeed, Graham has, over a more than 60-year career, kept himself and his organization remarkably free from scandal. Graham’s own salary, while a comfortable six-figure income, is modest relative to others who lead organizations anywhere near the size of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which in 2005 was about $137-million.(2) But Graham’s son Franklin, who is now the president of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association as well as Samaritan’s Purse, receives a total compensation from the two organizations that exceeds a half-million dollars. Samaritan’s Purse also had its membership in the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) suspended over issues of board accountability, Franklin Graham’s use of ministry planes for personal use, and other issues – though it is important to note that these matters were dealt with by the ministry and Samaritan’s Purse is now a member in good standing in the ECFA. (3)
Another characteristic is the degree to which these rallies have tapped directly into the local churches. The most successful of these events are often sold-out weeks and months in advance because of bulk sales to churches. In other words, churches assume a good deal of the financial risk for these events by buying blocks of tickets at a discounted rate in order to re-sell them to church members from tables set up in foyers and fellowship halls in the weeks and months prior to the event. If the church is not able to re-sell the tickets to their members, they either give them away or the seats remain empty. It is not unusual for an event that is officially “sold out” to have 20 percent of the seats go unused. Either way, the event organizers keep the church’s money.
But perhaps the most important characteristic of these rallies is their ability to create the expectation of an “historical moment.” There is an expectation that your life will change, that your church will change, that your city will change – if you’re a part of these events. A regular Promise Keepers speaker, Henry Blackaby, coined a phrase that has become something of a mantra for evangelicals: “Find out where God is working, and go there!” The organizers of these rallies rarely say this explicitly, for fear of being labeled “prosperity” preachers. In fact, evangelical leaders in general are often quick even to deny it, but it seems obvious that following the crowd is one of the primary indicators of whether “God is working.”
In these rallies, we see several traits of modern evangelicalism at work. First and obviously enough is simply the idea of mass, or scale. In the next chapter we will look specifically at the phenomenon of the mega-church, which is this idea of scale taken to its logical end, or near-end. It is enough to say here that in calculus of the evangelical mind, large numbers are better, because it means that God is blessing the effort, as Blackaby implies.
Even better than large numbers is rapid growth, because even if you’re not big, if you’re growing, you’ll get big soon enough. And bigness, even evangelicals will concede (usually when talking about mainline denominations or the Catholic Church) can lead to stagnation and death. But growth is a sign of life, and God is Life. So growth is yet another sign of God’s blessing.
A third essential ingredient of the mass rally is the role of money and corporations. The organization of these rallies is not cheap, and they can be very profitable. We have already seen how for-profit corporations have become instrumental in the organization of some of these events. But even those that remain under the umbrella of not-for-profit organizations have taken on the characteristics of the corporation. Focus on the Family’s 2004 revenue was about $140-million. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has more variability in its annual budget than many organizations, depending on the number of rallies it conducts in a given year. But its 2004 revenue exceeded $114-million, and it had a whopping $290-million in assets.
Fourthly, is their ability to tap into the grassroots community and network of the local church. And fourthly, is their ability to stand apart from the local church when it comes to oversight and accountability.
But perhaps the most significant characteristic of the mass rally is its insistence on creating a community-altering moment. Most evangelical mass rallies – whether explicitly evangelistic or not -- are billed as potentially historical events. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association uses the word “historic” or “historical” to describe almost all of its crusades and many of its other activities. Typical is this headline from a BGEA press release, describing a 2005 Crusade in New York: “Billy Graham’s Historic New York City Crusade To Be Broadcast in December.” The press release goes on to describe the television broadcast schedule of a June 2005 crusade. It is one of dozens of uses of the word “historic” by the Graham to describe the organization’s activities.
One of the ironies here is that this impulse to create the “historical moment” is essentially a modern phenomenon that springs in part from modern man’s lack of historicity. Like much we will discuss in this book, mass rallies were developed in the years just after World War II, the convergence of a deeply felt need for connectedness, community, and significance – and emerging technologies that made previously unprecedented forms of mass communication possible.
The Lion In The Path
As we have already seen, it is impossible to talk about the post-World War II evangelical movement without at least mentioning, and in some cases diving deeply into, Billy Graham’s organization.
Billy Graham is the “lion in the path” of modern American evangelicalism. Every phenomenon we will discuss in this book – from the mega-church, to the use of the mass rally, to mass media – was either pioneered or used extensively by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
By 2004, however, it would be fair to say that Graham was surely the “lion in winter.” Beginning in 1995, when Graham led a crusade in his hometown of Charlotte, N.C., his organization started billing every crusade as his last. So there was some poignancy – and no small amount of media attention -- when Graham began what his organization again called his “final” crusade in Los Angeles on Nov. 18, 2004. The crusade began just two weeks after the election that swept George W. Bush into his second term of office – an election decided by the evangelicals that Graham had been instrumental in organizing over the years.
But more to the point of our discussion, the crusade began exactly 55 years to the day after his first massive crusade ended in Los Angeles in 1949.
Young Billy Graham had been a handsome, well-dressed speaker for the parachurch organization Youth For Christ since 1944, but now he was branching out on his own. This was to be his first really big event, and it was going to take place under a tent with sawdust on the floor, just like the camp meetings Graham had grown up attending in his native North Carolina, including one in which Graham himself had been “saved” after sitting under the preaching of itinerant evangelist Mordecai Ham.
The crusade was to be three weeks in length. But William Randolph Hearst, arguably the most powerful media magnate in the world, heard one of Graham’s early sermons, and he knew a media star when he saw one. It was Hearst, after all, who a half-century earlier, had reportedly told his staff in Cuba, “You provide the photographs, and I’ll provide the war,” thereby taking the United States into the Spanish-American War and launching the political career of Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt.
Hearst, who would die two years later in 1951 told his editors to “puff Graham.” In other words, make him a star. Hearst’s editors knew exactly what that meant, and within a week Graham and the news of his Los Angeles Crusade were front-page fodder all across America. Graham ended up extending his crusade to eight weeks, and an estimated 350,000 people had attended by the time it ended.
Los Angeles had changed dramatically since Graham’s first visit. In 1949, though the city had 5-million people, it still had the feel of an overgrown small town. It was still surrounded by barren hills and orange groves. In 2004 Los Angeles had more than 16 million people and sprawled for 75 miles in every direction not facing the Pacific Ocean.
Graham’s crusade also had that sense of being the same but different. For one thing, they were now called “missions,” not “crusades.” In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the word “crusade” had become politically incorrect.
But there were other differences. In 1949, Hearst gave Graham what he didn’t know he needed: star power. By 2004, the Graham organization had a virtual system in place to create on demand what Hearst had given them. The L.A. crusade was orchestrated with the help of 1,200 churches from nearly 100 denominations, most of whom had been courted at pastor’s luncheons organized and funded by a local committee of wealthy business leaders. Indeed, the crusade would end up with a total budget of $5.4-million, larger than the budget of all but a few of the largest churches in the Los Angeles area. Of the $5.4-million, more than 25 percent of it would be spent on advertising, an amount that ensured positive relations with the local media.
Graham himself had carefully cultivated a public persona as a humble itinerant preacher. And, as we said earlier, it is not an act. The then 86-year-old Graham now lived in an age when it was possible – even fairly common – for the leaders of Christian ministries to become millionaires. Pat Robertson leveraged the Christian Broadcasting Network into a personal fortune worth more than $100-million. Other preachers from all bands on the evangelical spectrum – from Tim LaHaye to Rick Warren to James Robison – have made millions of dollars from their ministries and the ancillary book sales and speaking engagements. At the top of this evangelical food chain is Stuart Epperson, Sr. Epperson is a friend of Graham and the chairman of Salem Broadcasting, the nation’s largest chain of Christian media properties. Epperson owns about 25 percent of a publicly traded company that the market has valued at as much as $1-billion.
All these men – and some women -- have all capitalized on a market that Graham was instrumental in creating. Given these possibilities, Graham has lived modestly, humbly.
Nonetheless, it is hard not to marvel at the irony in the words Graham shared with the Associated Press on the eve of his 2004 Los Angeles Mission in the 92,000-seat Rose Bowl: “I’m a little bit old for it, the stadium is a little bit big for me. But it’s very wonderful that they had the patience to wait on me.”
It is also hard to argue with the inspiring stories that often come out of a Graham Crusade, or Mission. Most of the missions late in Graham’s career take place in cities Graham visited early in his career. And the Graham organization is careful to find people who made professions of faith in Christ in the first crusade and tell their stories to the media as examples of the fruitfulness of Graham’s work. One example, reported by the Associated Press, was of Willie Jordan, who attended every day of the 1949 revival as a 16-year-old girl. At the time of the 2004 rally, Jordan was the 71-year-old president of the Fred Jordan Mission, a ministry that worked with the homeless in the worst parts of Los Angeles. “Every night that tent was packed,” Jordan said. “I remember the crowds of people – you could see them coming for miles. It was a greater sight than any of us had ever witnessed before. It was clear that God had placed his hand on Billy for something special.” (4)
The law of large numbers
That’s the conclusion that has become orthodoxy when it comes to describing the large arena events of Billy Graham, and in the case of Graham, one is tempted to agree that there is some merit to this conclusion. But it is only fair to ask the question: are these stories truly signs of the hand of God, or an example of the Law of Large Numbers at work?
The Law of Large Numbers is well known to statisticians and pollsters. Indeed, it is one of the basic tenets upon which modern polling technique and statistically controlled manufacturing processes are based. It was first articulated by the mathematical genius Jacob Bernoulli, who lived in the late 1600s and was a contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton.
Indeed, in some ways, that era was not unlike our own. The Catholic Church had been rocked to its very foundation by Martin Luther in 1517. Magellan’s crew – without their leader, who had died on the voyage – competed its circumnavigation of the world in 1522. Yeats characterized the modern era as being a time in which the center was not holding, but it might as easily have characterized the this era. Newton’s laws of physics and Bernoulli’s Law of Large Numbers sprang inevitably from the spirit of that age. In fact, over the next 100 years, the center all but disintegrated. For men like Newton and Bernoulli, science and mathematics represented a new search for moral certainty.
It was into this world that Bernoulli’s ideas were born. The Law of Large Numbers says that if you try something enough times, ultimately to infinity, you are increasingly likely to produce an average that is closer to the true average. In other words, if I flip a coin once and it comes up heads, I might conclude that there is a 100 percent chance that a flip of the coin will produce heads. If I flip it again and it comes up heads again, I would still conclude that there is a 100 percent chance that it will come up heads. I might even be able to flip it a third and a fourth time and still come up heads. But as any school child knows, if you flip it 100 times, you end up very close to 50 heads and 50 tales. And if you flip it 1000 times, you end up even closer to a 50/50 split. The Law of Large Numbers says that the variation from the average becomes closer to zero and the number of independent trials approaches infinity.
But the Law of Large Numbers also explains something quite remarkable. If you flipped a coin 10 times and only 10 times, it would be virtually impossible to flip 10 heads or ten tails. It would truly be an anomaly, a freak occurrence. However, if you flipped the coin a million times, the chances are that you would find 10 straight heads or 10 straight tails occurring at least once. The miracle materializes. Indeed, it becomes inevitable.
This idea is vital to an understanding of American evangelicalism, because American evangelicalism is based on the miracle. If a ministry, or a movement, can produce the miracle, it has “proof” of God’s anointing on it. In other words, for a ministry such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to survive, it must – from time to time – produce a Willie Jordan.
And while any professing Christian can and should rejoice in the miracle of a transformed life, we are not therefore absolved of the responsibility of asking this vital question: When the Graham organization highlights someone whose life was changed at a crusade 50 years ago, what are we in fact observing? Are we seeing someone who represents the consistent fruit of this ministry, or are we merely having our attention diverted to the anomaly that shows itself once in a million throws, the “inevitable miracle”?
Two Great American Awakenings
We will defer answering this question for now, but we can say that the large crowd, the possibilities created by large numbers of people, was not always a part of the American evangelical experience. The first Great Awakening, which took place in American more or less between 1730 and 1745, was typified by fiery but sober and generally unemotional preaching. If Billy Graham is the “lion” of the modern evangelical movement, Jonathan Edwards, was the lion of the Great Awakening. He was famous for such sermons as “Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God.” (9) But those who saw him preach report that his style was anything but theatrical. That famous speech itself was often read, and sometimes by others, and in no case was it extemporaneously delivered, even by Edwards himself.
In a letter Edwards wrote in 1743 to his friend Thomas Prince, it is easy to see that what Edwards treasured among the gifts of the revival was not emotionalism, but the changed lives and improved communities where the revival took hold:
There has been vastly more religion kept up in the town, among all sorts of persons, in religious exercises and in common conversation than used to be before. There has remained a more general seriousness and decency in attending the public worship. There has been a very great alteration among the youth of the town with respect to reveling, frolicking, profane and unclean conversation, and lewd songs. Instances of fornication have been very rare. There has also been a great alteration among both old and young with respect to tavern haunting. I suppose the town has been in no measure so free of vice in these respects for any long time together for this sixty years as it has been this nine years past.
Whether one agrees or disagrees that the big arena events of today are moves of the Holy Spirit or manufactured emotionalism, it seems clear that the revival that took place in the 1740s did not in any way benefit from or extol mere emotional gratification.
Its impact, however, was great. Historian David Barton, for example, believes that the American Republic itself would not have been possible without the conviction of men who had their spiritual birth and nurturing in the Great Awakening. S.E. Morison, in The Oxford History Of The American People, speculates that less than a majority, only about 40 percent, of the white population in the colonies were Patriots, with “about 50 percent indifferent or neutral.” Around 10 percent were British Loyalists. However, among the Patriots were the religious leaders who had been shaped by the Great Awakening – Baptists and Presbyterians, primarily. Ashbel Green, the Presbyterian chaplain to Washington’s Congress, wrote, “Many of those who took the lead in the arduous struggle which issued in the Independence of our country were…men of decided piety; and those of opposite character yielded to their influence, from a regard to popular opinion, which at that time was strongly in favor of religion.”
In other words, this Great Awakening, born of sober Biblical preaching, a high regard for doctrinal purity, and a healthy skepticism with regard to emotionalism, had an impact that bore fruit not in large crowds, but in transforming and permanent change that stood the test of time.
A second great religious movement swept America around the year 1800, and brought with it the phenomenon of the “camp meeting.” The famous Cane Ridge, Kentucky, meetings of the summer of 1801 attracted as many as 8,000 people – that at a time when Lexington, Kentucky’s largest city, had less than 2,000 people. These meetings resulted in many emotional “converts” who never achieved spiritual maturity. There were no tavern closings in the wake of this wildfire of revivalism, though many of the preachers themselves, including Charles Finney, became wealthy celebrities. Instead, the lack of doctrinal depth of both the preachers and the converts caused many to turn away from faith, and many more to go astray. Whereas the first Great Awakening resulted in churches that have remained faithful to Gospel truth for nearly three centuries, and in an experiment in liberty known as America that is a light to the world, this second great religious movement bore a bitter fruit. Though it started well, with many evangelists claiming converts, over time cults such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons would spring up, and by the end of the 19th century would be well-established.
Post-World War II American Evangelicalism has been called The Third Great Awakening. And it may be just that. But will it result in lasting fruit, as did the first Great Awakening, or will it be remembered by history as giving birth to a crass revivalism that enriched its leaders with money and power, but had no or little lasting, positive impact on the Kingdom of God, as did the second Great Awakening?
The New Provincialism
This question – “will it result in lasting fruit” – is always an important question to ask of any of our activities, but it is a particularly important one when it comes to the American Evangelical church. It is important because the question presumes a future. In other words, if I sacrifice today in expectation of some gain tomorrow, or if I plant today in expectation of a harvest tomorrow -- I obviously expect that tomorrow will come.
But an important aspect of American Evangelicalism is something theologians call “dispensational premillennialism.” Because this is not a book about eschatology, the study of the end times, we will not dive too deeply into this murky pool. But it is important to say that dispensationalism teaches that tomorrow may indeed not come. In fact, it probably won’t come – if we define tomorrow loosely enough. Dispensational premillennialism teaches that the condition of the world is inexorably in decline and that a “rapture” of Christian believers is imminent. This rapture will take all Christians bodily from earth and leave all non-believers behind. Without Christians on earth to act as “salt and light,” the decline of the earth and all its institutions will become precipitous. It could happen any second, and it most certainly will (they say) happen soon.
If this idea sounds familiar, it is a testimony to the grip this idea has on the modern evangelical church. A grip that is all the more remarkable when you consider that the idea of dispensational premillennialism barely existed, and then only in the very fringes of the church, as recently as 100 years ago. St. Augustine, writing in the 4th century, explicitly rejected interpretations of scripture that we might call premillennial. Martin Luther and John Calvin, both explicitly rejected premillennialism. Jonathan Edwards, who we have already introduced as a leader in America’s first Great Awakening, was explicitly postmillennial. Premillennialism began to rise in the 19th century, in the aftermath of the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening and simultaneous to the rise of apocalyptic Christian sects and cults (such as Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses) that we have already mentioned. With the publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909, dispensationalism spread widely into all churches, including Reformed churches that had been solidly postmillennial.
Most recently, the idea of dispensational premillennialism was made popular by the “Left Behind” series of books by Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins. Because we will devote more attention to these books both as a marketing and publishing phenomenon and as a conduit for these ideas, we won’t say too much about them here except to observe that the “Left Behind” books – in all their forms, including children’s books – have sold well over 30-million copies, making the ideas of dispensational premillennialism commonplace, even of most of the readers of the books could not define these theological terms.
I introduce these ideas here to make this point: many conservative evangelical Christians consider a failure to heed history one of the great dangers of modern culture. But dispensational premillennialism has put the evangelical church in the scripturally and logically untenable position of being a people with neither a past nor a future. We have thoroughly embraced the rootless, existential, modernist condition we say we bring deliverance from.
I have borrowed a phrase from the poet, philosopher, and novelist Marion Montgomery and call this condition the New Provincialism. In an earlier age, those who lacked a sophisticated understanding of the world were referred to as provincial, or from the rural provinces. Technology and transportation have erased distances between places, but have enlarged the gaps between us and both our past and our future. Indeed, this has occurred to the extent that something that is passé is sometimes referred to as “so five minutes ago,” as if five minutes ago or 500 years ago are all the same, equally irrelevant to the ever present and all-consuming now.
What’s Next?
We started this chapter asking tough questions about two of the most important organizations in modern American Evangelicalism, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Focus on the Family. But it is important to remember that these organizations are merely emblematic of thousands of organizations who are pursuing an organizational model very similar. Indeed, the watchdog group Ministry Watch monitors the 500 largest Christian organizations in the United States. These organizations employ tens of thousands of people and have combined annual income in the tens of billions of dollars. The organizations we have cited here are merely models for an entire industry.
For the sake of directness, let’s ask the key question again: Is the success of these organizations and others like them a result of the blessing of God, or the pursuit of an organizational model that is designed to produce immediate results but will inevitably, over the course of time, bear a bitter harvest?
We have many more ideas to explore before we can definitively answer that question, but it is fair to say at this point that the actions of many evangelical organizations, and the thinking behind these actions, have produced a bitter harvest in the past. Before we can say whether it will produce the same bitter harvest again, let’s look more deeply into the ideas we have introduced here, and several more, and let’s match these ideas with the consequences they have produced over time.
NOTES:
1. Both Michele Goldberg’s “Kingdom Coming” and Randall Balmer’s “Thy Kingdom Come” mentioned the rallies. They also referred to the rallies to me in private interviews.
2. The exit polling that put the phrase “values voter” in the mind of the mainstream media was ultimately found to be flawed, or at least inconclusive, but by the time the truth about the polling process came out, the phrase had already become a permanent part of the lexicon of the chattering class.
3. Twelve years if you’re counting from the 1994 takeover of the Congress during the so-called “Contract With America” days.
4. “Right Turn On Campus,” Atlanta Weekly, February 20, 1985.
5. K Street, not far from the White House, is where many of the influential lobbying organizations have their offices.
6. A little-credited but key element of that campaign was a tough article about McCain in WORLD Magazine, written by Bob Jones IV. Though WORLD Magazine had a circulation of only about 100,000 at the time it did its scathing article on McCain, there were a disproportionate number of those subscribers in South Carolina, and many of them were pastors, deacons, and elders of prominent churches.
7. Ironically, Graham’s compensation has come under a bit more scrutiny in recent years because of his semi-retired status.
8. It is important to note that “dealt with” means fully disclosed. It does not mean these expenses were eliminated. Franklin Graham continues to draw salaries from both ministries, salaries that when combined exceed $500-thousand a year. Samaritan’s Purse is a tax-exempt humanitarian organization. Its supporters expect the money contributed to go directly to humanitarian aid, yet the organization earned more than $100-million in the four-year period from 2002 to 2005.
9. In what might be called a signpost on the downward path, I noted with some interest (and sadness) that the Rev. Janet Edwards, a Presbyterian minister and distant relative of the circuit riding New England preacher and theologian officiated at a wedding for two women and was investigated by her denomination in 2006.
posted by Warren Smith at 6:34 AM
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