Billy Graham at MIT

In April 1982, during my second semester at MIT, Billy Graham came to speak at the invitation of the evangelical Christian groups on campus, including Campus Crusade for Christ, United Christian Fellowship (the MIT affiliate of Intervarsity), the Chinese Bible Study, and the MIT Seekers, affiliated with Park Street Church. The event was not a typical Billy Graham crusade, but one of a series of lectures on seven college campuses around New England: Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT, Boston College, University of Massachusetts, and Northeastern. About a month later, he would preach a traditional week-long crusade at Boston University's Nickerson Field.

The title of his talk was "Peace in a Nuclear Age." His MIT appearance took place at the 1200-seat Kresge Auditorium, the 1955 Mid-Century Modern hemi-demi-semi-sphere designed by Eero Saarinen.

Memories are vague 35 years later, but I seem to recall that preparations for Graham's MIT lecture began early in 1982, following the same pattern that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) used for their larger crusades. The evangelical student groups, which typically worked independently, each with their own emphases and culture, joined together to prepare for the event with prayer, publicity, and training. The training was primarily for following up with interested students after Graham's talk. We were prepared to speak with students who had further questions about the Christian faith, who indicated a desire to follow Jesus or to renew a lapsed commitment to following Him. This might happen there at the auditorium, right after the lecture, or in the days and weeks after, in response to comment cards that attendees were encouraged to submit at the end of the lecture. From the early days of his ministry, Graham understood that the emotions of a crusade would soon fade, and newly committed believers needed instruction in the faith and encouragement to participate in the disciplines of faith -- prayer, God's Word, fellowship -- that sustain a lasting commitment to Christ.

The lecture was also preceded by Operation Andrew, another BGEA standard practice that involved mobilizing the members of the sponsoring student Christian groups to pray for and then personally invite friends and acquaintances to hear Graham speak. The name referred to the apostle Andrew who, as recorded in John 1:41, brought his brother Simon Peter to meet Jesus, saying "We have found the Messiah." While mass advertising was used (including a two-page spread in the student newspaper the week before the event and a half-page ad the day before), a personal invitation from a friend was far more likely to lead to someone attending.

The auditorium was near capacity, and I'm sure that curiosity -- the opportunity to hear a world-renowned figure speak -- was responsible for many in attendance. Graham's lecture was just that, a speech delivered from a podium at one side of the stage, in a fairly subdued and scholarly tone of voice. I don't recall any music or fanfare, nothing like the Billy Graham crusades we'd seen on TV, or the BGEA-sponsored crusade that brought Graham's brother-in-law, Leighton Ford, to Tulsa in 1977. There was no hymn of invitation. Graham made his appeal to the audience to place their faith in Christ and urged those who wanted to learn more about following Christ to stay behind and talk to the students who were serving as counselors that night.

A handful of my fraternity brothers came to the lecture. One complained that Graham offered no political answers to the dangers posed by the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction. Others expressed mild approval of what was said -- interesting, unobjectionable, but nothing life changing. One of my fraternity pledge class mates, who was a cradle Catholic, moral but not especially devout, and hearing Billy Graham speak didn't seem to make much of an impression on him. A few years after graduation, he told me that the seeds that were planted at that time that resulted in his return to the Christian faith years later, as a new father.

The Tech's report after the event, headlined "Rev. Billy Graham proselytizes at MIT," stated that the crowd was near-capacity, about nine hundred. Reporter Andrew H. Wold summarized Graham's remarks:

Graham spoke about nuclear war and disarmament only briefly, using that topic to introduce his religious ideas. With or without nuclear weapons, war is inherent in human nature, Graharn asserted. "You can never really be at peace without God," he contended.

Graham maintained, however, "It is possible and desirable to eliminate all weapons of mass destruction."

Graham cited examples and quotations from scholars such as Oscar Wilde, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Blaise Pascal to reinforce his presentation. Graham discussed how to believe in Christ intellectually, although he admitted there is no scientific proof that Christ exists....

For the rest of the hour, Graham emphasized the importance of God's role in achieving peace. According to Graham, there are several types of peace: spiritual, personal, interpersonal, and international. Graham did not see much possibility in achieving any of these "without coming to God.''

This link has Billy Graham's 11-minute speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, delivered just a few days before his lecture at MIT and on the same topic. Here is Billy Graham's sermon at Yale University, closer to the in tone and structure to the message he delivered at MIT.

Thanks to the nearly complete online archive of The Tech, I've learned that 1982 wasn't Billy Graham's first visit to MIT. On April 21, 1950, Billy Graham spoke to a crowd of nearly 3,500 MIT students, faculty, and staff at Rockwell Cage, MIT's basketball arena. Graham's visit was sponsored by the Technology Christian Association, which was also holding a blood drive the following Monday and Tuesday afternoons. Later in 1950, TCA would invite Anglican rector and evangelist Bryan Green to speak at MIT.

Graham had only recently come to national attention, thanks to his record-breaking Los Angeles crusade that stretched from September 25 to November 20, 1949, and brought celebrities like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans to faith in Christ.

Graham had preached in January of that year at Boston Garden and returned to Boston in April to preach a series of five meetings that concluded with a crowd of 50,000 in Boston Common, according to a summary of Billy Graham's Boston appearances by the Boston Globe.

Perhaps reflecting a more religious time, the first MIT event, described as a "revival meeting" in the previous week's paper, began with "hymn singing, a prayer and a solo." As he would again in 1982, Graham used the world situation as a jumping-off point for his appeal:

He opened his talk with the observation that, "Never in the history of the human race have we as human beings faced the problems that we face at this hour." He observed that we are heading straight for a third world war, and asserted that although on the outside we laugh and joke, "deep down inside" we are afraid of those things which the future holds in store for us.

Graham spoke about the "menace of Communism," calling it a "fanatical religion," threatening war between East and West, and that "Jesus Christ and the principles of Christianity can be and are the answers to the dilemma we face at this hour."

Graham also dealt with sexual morality and family integrity in his 1950 MIT sermon, pointing to the Kinsey Report as "the prime example of the depths to which our spiritual and moral values have fallen," according to The Tech reporter's summary. (I wonder whether Graham assumed the veracity of the fraudulent report by the perverted Indiana entomologist or considered the report itself as a sign of modern depravity.) Contrary to modern-day claims that evangelicals turned a blind eye to divorce while protesting same-sex pseudogamy, Graham in 1950 sounded the alarm about the "spectacular rise in our divorce rate in recent years.". (The rate had climbed steeply during World War II, from a pre-war level of around 18 divorces per 100 marriages, to a peak of 30 divorces per 100 marriages in 1945, then subsided slightly to 25 per 100 by 1949.) Graham said that the present generation had "humanized God, deified man, and worshipped at the shrine of science."

(That same issue of The Tech lists that spring's schedule of final exams, reports on the Inter-Fraternity Council's formal, which featured a performance by Bob and Ray, spotlights a demonstration of a simple robot by Prof. Norbert Weiner along with an upcoming performance of Karl Capek's play R.U.R., announces a debate between representatives of the MIT Young Republicans Club and the Socialist Party over the need for a government health program, and frets over rising tuition rates -- $800 for the year.)

MORE:

World Magazine recounts Billy Graham's ministry and influence on evangelicalism.

Bobby Ross Jr. has a round-up of newspaper coverage of Billy Graham's death and uses the bylines on the stories -- often belonging to retired religion writers -- to call attention to the decline of the newspaper religion beat and the standard practice of writing, and periodically updating, obituaries of prominent individuals long before they're sick, much less dead.

Included in Ross's links:

• The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a detailed timeline of Billy Graham's life and ministry.
• The Oklahoman's religion reporter Carla Hinton recalls interviewing Billy Graham during his 2003 Oklahoma City crusade and how Graham's message about the prodigal son brought reconciliation between Hinton and her own son.

The Charlotte Observer published a lengthy obituary of Billy Graham.

Boston public radio station WGBH interviewed Gordon College professor Marvin Wilson about Billy Graham's 1982 appearances in and around Boston and his meeting with local Jewish leaders.

At Patheos, Brad Roth writes about "that time Billy Graham talked about sex at Harvard" in 1999.

In the '90s, Billy Graham was invited to give a TED talk on technology, faith, and human shortcomings: "David found that there were many problems that technology could not solve. There were many problems still left. And they're still with us. And you haven't solved them...the problem is within us, within our hearts and our souls. Our problem is that we are separated from our Creator, which we call God."

Wikipedia has a list of Billy Graham's Crusades.