"CRUSADES" IS BACK

“...but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.” (from James 5:12)

I’ve been on the mailing list of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association since the summer of 1970- almost forty years. I’ve also been a huge admirer of Billy Graham and his associates. Somewhere around eight years ago, Billy Graham semiretired and somewhere around two years ago, he fully retired. You may know that Billy Graham suffers from Parkinson’s Disease and is now 91-years-old.

About twenty years ago, Billy Graham’s son Franklin became one of his “Associate Evangelists” and for the past few years, Franklin has been the “big gun” in the organization, filling the role that his Dad previously filled. I knew that mantle had been passed a couple of years ago when the monthly newsletters to the BGEA mailing list began to be written by Franklin rather than Billy. Franklin is definitely less “politically correct” than is Billy. He’s much more outspokenly conservative and much more opinionated. He’s definitely got a bit more of an “edge” than does Billy.

Yesterday, I received Franklin Graham’s newsletter, and from both a social point of view and a political point of view, it was “LOADED”! In much of the newsletter, Franklin expresses strong displeasure with the extremists in the “global warming” movement and disapproval of the recent Copenhagen climate summit. But something else was even more “charged”. He’s gone back to calling their evangelistic events “crusades”!

When Billy Graham started out in the late 1940s, his evangelistic meetings were called “campaigns”. At that time, just a few years after World War 2, there was much criticism of the term “evangelistic campaign”. Many said, the term sounded too warlike, as in Rommel’s “campaign” in North Africa, Patten’s campaign in Italy, etc. In a move to appease critics, Billy Graham began calling his evangelistic events “crusades”. If you’re a baby boomer or older, you certainly remember the days of “Billy Graham Crusades” being on television. Other evangelists also picked up the term “crusade” including the fundamental Baptist Jack Van Impe and even charismatic healing evangelist Benny Hinn. From the early 1950s to the late 1980s, “Crusade” was THE term for an evangelistic event.

But around 1990, that began to change for two reasons. One is that the term “Billy Graham Crusade” conjured up images of well dressed white people over fifty listening to George Beverly Shea music and admiring people such as Gerald Ford. There was just nothing “cool” or “youthful” about that. The MAIN reason the term “crusade” fell out of favor, however, is that it was deemed to be OFFENSIVE TO MUSLIMS. Critics argued that the “Crusades” of the Middle Ages involved cruelty and evil against the middle eastern Arabs by fanatical Europeans. SO, there were no more Billy Graham “Crusades”. Rather, Billy Graham’s evangelistic events were called “Missions” and Franklin Graham’s evangelistic events were called “Festivals”. I attended the Billy Graham “Mission Quebec” in Montreal in 1990, for instance.

Up until VERY recently, the Billy Graham organization was still using the term “Festivals”. In this January 2010 newsletter, Franklin Graham lists an upcoming “Crusade” in India and at the end of the newsletter there is the word “CRUSADES” in bold green letters, highlighting upcoming crusades in Brazil, Latvia,Japan, and the U.S. A few years ago, Franklin rocked the boat by calling Islam an evil religion. Now, he’s gone back to using the term “Crusades”. Does Franklin care who is offended or who gets upset? No, and I’ve got to say, “right on, Franklin Graham!”

Yes, “Crusades” is back!