You probably wouldn’t be too surprised if I were to tell you that there was a time in the history of our country when nearly half of the population attended church on any given Sunday, the Bible was the best-selling book for years in a row, and Congress voted to make “In God We Trust” the national motto. But you might be surprised to know that such a revival of Christianity occurred within the lifetimes of many people who are still alive today - within the modern era of electricity and cars, radio and movies, planes and bombs. And you might become even more intrigued if you were to find that you could trace your own Christian heritage back to that time period some 60 years ago in America.
Yes, there was a time in this country in the mid 1940’s through the mid 1950’s when God moved powerfully, bringing many thousands to repentance and salvation and radically transforming their lives. It’s a time not often talked about anymore, but to put it in the words of a national revival preacher reflecting nearly six decades later, “ . . . that was a wonderfully fruitful season in the life of the church . . . . I, like so many others, saw wonderful movements of the Spirit which we only rarely see repeated during this present time.”1 And there’s a very good chance that if you were to start compiling a spiritual “family tree,” you’d discover that your own Christian roots went back to the mighty work that God did in this country in the ten or so years following World War II.
We’re all well-acquainted with the fact that the end of the war in 1945 began a “baby boom” in the United States. The population started to soar as innumerable thousands of men returned from overseas, got married, and started families. But it’s equally true that during that same time there was a church population “boom.” By 1955, church membership had increased nearly 25 percent from what it was before the war.2 And even more impressive is the fact that near the end of the 1950’s, nearly half of all Americans were worshiping on a weekly basis.3
But dry statistics only tell the very surface of the story. In those days of television’s infancy, radio was still the most popular medium. And as popular as programming like detective shows and comedians were, the broadcasts with the largest audiences were The Old Fashioned Revival Hour and The Lutheran Hour, Bringing Christ to the Nations.4 Every Sunday, Dr. Walter A. Maier of The Lutheran Hour authoritatively preached God’s Word over the air waves, boldly condemning sin and proclaiming Jesus the Savior. By the war’s end he was the most listened-to radio broadcaster,5 and the total number of weekly listeners (national and international) continued to rise to an estimated 20 million within three years after the war.6 More than a few listeners wrote in to report, “As you walk down the street at 12:30 on Sundays, you can hear The Lutheran Hour from almost every home.”7 Just as vital and popular was Charles E. Fuller’s weekly church service and sermon over The Old Fashioned Revival Hour, calling people to repentance and new life in Christ. And the responses poured in, with about 400 people each week in the 1950’s writing to say they had become Christians because of that broadcast.8
Lists of the best-selling books from that era only add to the story. For three years in a row, from 1952 through 1954, the best-selling non-fiction book in the nation was the newly translated Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible. Other non-fiction best-sellers of the era included Mr. Jones, Meet the Master, a book of sermons by Senate chaplain Dr. Peter Marshall (no. 6 in 1950); A Man Called Peter, a biography of the same Dr. Marshall written by his wife after his untimely death (no. 2 in 1952, no. 6 in 1953, and no. 4 in 1955); Angel Unaware, a testimony of praise to God by converted movie stars Roy and Dale Evans Rogers after the long sickness and death of their two-year-old daughter (no. 4 in 1953); and The Secret of Happiness by Evangelist Billy Graham (no. 7 in 1955).9
Perhaps one of the reasons that the story of God’s working in the post World War II years has often been overlooked is that for the most part it did not occur all at once through the ministry of one man or one church. This made it more difficult for the media to pick up on the story. The “Mid-Century Awakening,” as it was called by a notable Christian historian,10 was largely a gradual work of God, a steady stream of Christian growth over a period of 10 or more years. The exception to this is, of course, the story of Billy Graham and the 1949 Los Angeles crusade that rocketed him to fame.
In the late 1940’s, there began to be a movement among pastors of many denominations in America to meet and pray to God for a spiritual awakening.11 One of the most noteworthy of their prayer meetings was a March 1949 multi-day prayer conference near Los Angeles where several hundred pastors and their wives “continued in penitence and prayer until the early hours of the mornings. There was a great moving of the Spirit, with the spirit of Revival being carried out from the conference . . . .”12 During the next year, pastors’ prayer meetings for revival began springing up all over the nation in cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, and Chicago.13 But much of the prayer was centered in the Los Angeles area in anticipation of an upcoming city-wide evangelistic campaign.14
The campaign was held in a large tent in downtown Los Angeles; and the preacher was Billy Graham, a young and fairly unknown evangelist. But the faithful pray-ers saw God answer as thousands flocked to the services night after night until the originally scheduled three weeks of meetings were extended to eight weeks.15 Conversions were recorded by the hundreds and then thousands. “So deep was the moving of the Holy Spirit that at times Graham did not have to preach. After some of the testimonies from the converts all he had to do was give the invitation.”16 After the conversion of a well-known celebrity, local and national newspapers and magazines like Time began to spread all around the nation reports of a revival in Los Angeles.17 By the campaign’s end, 3,000 had received Christ for the first time and another 3,000 had returned to Him again.18 From Los Angeles, Graham moved on to Boston where another 3,000 people were converted in only 18 days.19 Thus, Billy Graham quickly became a nationally known figure, holding campaigns in several large cities every year, with tens of thousands professing conversion and reviving under his ministry.
With the public now eager to hear more revival news, the national press picked up on the story of a revival in February 1950 at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts institution about 20 miles outside of Chicago. A regularly scheduled evening chapel service turned into 42 hours of unbroken student-led confessions and testimonies. Time magazine reported, “Singly and in little groups, sweatered and blue-jeaned undergraduates streamed onto the stage, filling up the choir chairs to await their turns. Hour after hour they kept coming. All night long, all the next day, all through the following night and half the following day, students poured out confessions of past sins and rededicated themselves to God. The auditorium filled up and overflowed into a smaller chapel downstairs. Classes had to be canceled altogether.”20
What the national press didn’t realize was that the revival at Wheaton was the tenth such movement since the first college revival had occurred ten months earlier at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota.21 Each of these revivals had started among students with a deep-felt need for prayer, followed by strong conviction of sin, confession, repentance, and conversions.22 These campus revivals continued for well over two years until at least 20 colleges had been touched.23
But God was working in many more ways around the country than just the headlines that the press was reporting. More than a few state’s governors were outspoken Christians, such as William S. Beardsley of Iowa who encouraged a huge evangelistic crusade to be held on the State Capitol lawn saying, “Spiritual revival is the greatest need in Iowa . . . . We urge the people of this state to seek God in this crisis hour;“24 or Luther W. Youngdahl of Minnesota who told a Graham campaign crowd, “ . . . more important than winning elections is winning souls for Christ.”25 After the elections of 1950 brought a new influx of Congressmen to Washington, D.C., Christian sources reported that there were over 100 Christian Senators and Representatives lending their influence in the nation’s capital. Many of them were very active in prayer and Bible study groups and teaching Sunday School in nearby churches.26 Even President Eisenhower sought counsel from Billy Graham regarding his eternal destiny and his soul’s salvation27 and was often quoted as saying things like, “A democracy cannot exist without a religious base.”28
With such a growing Christian influence in the federal government, it is not so surprising that in 1954 Congress voted to add the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance so that every day countless school children across the land would recite, “One nation, under God.”29 The next year Congress ordered that the phrase “In God We Trust” be printed on all new paper money in addition to the coins on which it was already stamped.30 And in 1956, a bill was passed making that same phrase, “In God We Trust,” the national motto.31
This working of God in the post World War II years even affected Hollywood. Through some unusual but divine circumstances, an evangelist was invited to speak to a small group of Hollywood stars one evening in 1949. He preached on Matthew 6:24, “No man can serve two masters,” and told his listeners that they must decide between serving God and serving self since there was no middle ground.”32 He could have hardly imagined that the small gathering that night was the first of what was to become the Hollywood Christian Group in which 40 to 50 entertainment personalities assembled weekly for Bible study, prayer, and fellowship;33 at least twenty unsaved stars became believers;34 and more than fifteen left the secular entertainment industry in favor of Christian service.35 The wholesome witness of these Christian stars began to be felt not only in their own studios but especially in Christian films and songs.36
It would be difficult to estimate the tremendous number of souls who turned to Jesus Christ or were revived during this “Mid-Century Awakening” because multiplied tens of thousands of individual testimonies of ordinary people were never written down or published. Besides the many who became Christians and joined a church for the first time, the numbers were probably even greater of those already in the church who either were converted to Christ or were revived and revitalized. The individual stories preserved for us today are comparatively few, but a sampling of three of them may help us understand the impact this work of God had on that and future generations.
In 1947, a young Los Angeles businessman became a Christian through the ministry of the revived Hollywood Presbyterian Church and immediately became active in the church. At a Sunday School teachers’ conference only a few months later, he and several others were so moved by the plea for evangelism that they afterward asked the speaker if they could pray with her. After their fervent prayer meeting had gone on for several hours, they received an indelible vision from God of revival among the unsaved college students of the world.37 The young businessman was Bill Bright, and thus was born the vision for what ultimately became Campus Crusade for Christ.
In the early 1950’s, a certain teenager who had no use for God woke up every Sunday morning to The Old Fashioned Revival Hour that his mother had tuned in on his radio. Rather than get up and turn it off, he listened to Charles Fuller’s evangelistic preaching many a time. One Sunday evening, maybe mostly out of idle curiosity, he got a group of friends to go to a local church with him. There he heard the same kind of preaching that he had heard on the radio for the last two years and received Jesus as his Lord and Savior before he left the building.38 That teenager was Jerry Falwell who went on to become a nationally known preacher, the founder of Liberty University and, perhaps most notably, a co-founder of the Moral Majority in 1979.
In 1953, a promising young dance instructor woke up one Sunday morning to his radio alarm clock broadcasting the voice of a certain Bible teacher.39 “If you were to die tonight and God were to say to you, ‘What right do you have to enter into my heaven?’ what would you say?” The dance instructor was so startled that he sat on the edge of his bed and kept listening. Intrigued by what he heard, he went out to a nearby newsstand and bought a copy of The Greatest Story Ever Told, a retelling of the four Gospels. Several days later when he had finished the book, he said, “It seemed as if the Cross of Christ had been erected right in my apartment . . . I slipped . . . onto my knees and asked Christ to come into my heart and . . . cleanse me of my sins.” Within a couple of years this man had attended seminary and planted a church. His name was D. James Kennedy, and he became a widely broadcasted televangelist and the originator of Evangelism Explosion.
Perhaps one reason the work of God 60 years ago in this country has been underestimated in succeeding years is because the individual testimonies that have been preserved are mainly just those of a few well-known and famous people. Another equally true reason is that, as the signs of revival began to disappear in the latter 1950’s,40 the climate quickly disintegrated into the turbulent years of the 1960’s.41 No doubt such things as the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the banishment of prayer from public schools, the beginning of the Vietnam War, and the youth counterculture and drug culture caused many to forget the wonderful works that God had done only a decade or two earlier.
In the years following the post World War II revival, analysts and critics have often attributed the revival to mere “interest in religion”42 or “faith in faith.”44 In other words, Christianity was just the popular cultural thing to do and a sort of tool for self improvement and ego building. They’ve also pointed out that the soldiers returning from four years of horrific war overseas were probably longing to get back into a sense of community like the one that organized religion could provide.44 But it seems that the most repeated explanation offered by the critics is that the revival of God and Christianity in the 1950’s was the best way of uniting the nation against the dreaded advance of atheistic Communism. If the underlying key to Communism was the absence of God, then the best way to defeat Communism was by fostering the presence of God.45 God was the one thing that could distinguish the United States of America from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.46
Now while it would be foolish to completely dismiss all of the keen observations of the critics, it would be equally foolish to brush aside all of the evidence that we’ve seen in the preceding paragraphs and conclude that God had little or nothing to do with it. It’s true that for many people Christianity was nothing more than the popular cultural thing to do and a passing fad. But such an explanation does not account for all of the hearts and lives that were permanently changed during that era. I’m sure that you, like I, have known more than a few wonderful Christian people who trace their conversions back to that time. The enduring witness of their Christian lives cannot be explained away by fear of Communism or fulfillment in community.
No, the explanation for those thousands of changed lives is the mighty work of God. And the reason why these paragraphs have been written is beautifully given in Psalm 78: “We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength and His wonderful works that He has done . . . That the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.” (Psalm 78:4,6-7 NKJV)
It was the Holy Spirit of God that did a mighty work in our country in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and we must pass that story on to the next generations. We must tell them that it is God Who altered the course of a country, saving men from sin and calling them into His kingdom. And if we tell this to our children and our children’s children, they too may put their hope in God, believing that He is everything He claims to be and that He is able to do a mighty work again in our own hearts, in our churches, and in our country. After all, “There have been instances in the history of the Church when the telling and retelling of the wonderful works of God have been used to rekindle the expectations of the faithful intercessors and prepare the way for another Awakening.”47
Who can say what great things God still has in store for us in America? Only He knows. But we can at least conclude that since He is the same God that He was 60 or 300 or 3,000 years ago, He is able to do as great of works in our generation as He did for our ancestors. And with that confidence, we can joyfully say with the Psalmist, “We will show forth Your praise to all generations.” (Psalm 79:13 NKJV)
Notes for Chapter 1
What God Has Done
(title taken from Numbers 23:23 NKJV)
1. Richard Owen Roberts, letter to Jonathan D. Anderson, 4 October 2007.
2. Martin E. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1958), 14-15.
3. Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, Volume 3, Under God, Indivisible, 1940-1960 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 279.
4. Daniel P. Fuller, Give the Winds a Mighty Voice (Waco, TX: Word, Incorporated, 1972), 149.
5. Paul L. Maier, A Man Spoke, A World Listened (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1963), 281.
6. Ibid., 303.
7. Ibid., 305.
8. Fuller, Give the Winds a Mighty Voice, 171.
9. Rankings from Bowker’s Annual/Publishers Weekly as listed on http://www3.isrl.illinois.edu/~unsworth/courses/bestsellers/best50.cgi
(also see http://www.caderbooks.com/best50.html)
10. J. Edwin Orr, Good News in Bad Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1953), 254.
11. Ibid., 32-44.
12. Ibid., 38.
13. Ibid., 40-41.
14. Revival in Our Time, The Story of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Campaigns (Wheaton, IL: Van Kampen Press, 1950), 15.
15. Ibid., 10.
16. Ibid., 16.
17. Ibid., 13-14.
18. Ibid., 11.
19. Ibid., 31.
20. “42 Hours of Repentance,” Time, 20 February 1950.
21. Orr, Good News in Bad Times, 54.
22. Ibid., 58.
23. Ibid., 58, 85.
24. Ibid., 180.
25. Ibid., 193.
26. Ibid., 88-90.
27. Billy Graham, Just As I Am (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997), 238-239.
28. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion, 83.
29. “Under God,” Time, 17 May 1954.
30. “Majestic Minimum,” Time, 20 June 1955.
31. “In God We Trust,” Time, 06 August 1956.
32. J. Edwin Orr, The Inside Story of the Hollywood Christian Group (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1955), 20.
33. Ibid., 55-57.
34. Ibid., 20.
35. Ibid., 132.
36. Ibid.
37. Ethel May Baldwin and David V. Benson, Henrietta Mears and How She Did It! (Glendale, CA: Gospel Light Publications, 1966), 231-232.
38. Jerry Strober and Ruth Tomczak, Jerry Falwell: Aflame for God (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1979), 21-22.
39. D. James Kennedy, forward to Coral Ridge Ministries undated republication of:
Fulton Oursler, The Greatest Story Ever Told, 1949.
Also, D. James Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1970), forward.
40. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion, 11.
41. J. Edwin Orr, The Flaming Tongue (Chicago: Moody Press, 1973), viii.
42. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion, 27.
43. Ibid., 31.
44. Ibid., 17.
45. Ibid., 38.
46. Marty, Under God, Indivisible, 301.
47. Orr, The Flaming Tongue, viii.
Yes, there was a time in this country in the mid 1940’s through the mid 1950’s when God moved powerfully, bringing many thousands to repentance and salvation and radically transforming their lives. It’s a time not often talked about anymore, but to put it in the words of a national revival preacher reflecting nearly six decades later, “ . . . that was a wonderfully fruitful season in the life of the church . . . . I, like so many others, saw wonderful movements of the Spirit which we only rarely see repeated during this present time.”1 And there’s a very good chance that if you were to start compiling a spiritual “family tree,” you’d discover that your own Christian roots went back to the mighty work that God did in this country in the ten or so years following World War II.
We’re all well-acquainted with the fact that the end of the war in 1945 began a “baby boom” in the United States. The population started to soar as innumerable thousands of men returned from overseas, got married, and started families. But it’s equally true that during that same time there was a church population “boom.” By 1955, church membership had increased nearly 25 percent from what it was before the war.2 And even more impressive is the fact that near the end of the 1950’s, nearly half of all Americans were worshiping on a weekly basis.3
But dry statistics only tell the very surface of the story. In those days of television’s infancy, radio was still the most popular medium. And as popular as programming like detective shows and comedians were, the broadcasts with the largest audiences were The Old Fashioned Revival Hour and The Lutheran Hour, Bringing Christ to the Nations.4 Every Sunday, Dr. Walter A. Maier of The Lutheran Hour authoritatively preached God’s Word over the air waves, boldly condemning sin and proclaiming Jesus the Savior. By the war’s end he was the most listened-to radio broadcaster,5 and the total number of weekly listeners (national and international) continued to rise to an estimated 20 million within three years after the war.6 More than a few listeners wrote in to report, “As you walk down the street at 12:30 on Sundays, you can hear The Lutheran Hour from almost every home.”7 Just as vital and popular was Charles E. Fuller’s weekly church service and sermon over The Old Fashioned Revival Hour, calling people to repentance and new life in Christ. And the responses poured in, with about 400 people each week in the 1950’s writing to say they had become Christians because of that broadcast.8
Lists of the best-selling books from that era only add to the story. For three years in a row, from 1952 through 1954, the best-selling non-fiction book in the nation was the newly translated Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible. Other non-fiction best-sellers of the era included Mr. Jones, Meet the Master, a book of sermons by Senate chaplain Dr. Peter Marshall (no. 6 in 1950); A Man Called Peter, a biography of the same Dr. Marshall written by his wife after his untimely death (no. 2 in 1952, no. 6 in 1953, and no. 4 in 1955); Angel Unaware, a testimony of praise to God by converted movie stars Roy and Dale Evans Rogers after the long sickness and death of their two-year-old daughter (no. 4 in 1953); and The Secret of Happiness by Evangelist Billy Graham (no. 7 in 1955).9
Perhaps one of the reasons that the story of God’s working in the post World War II years has often been overlooked is that for the most part it did not occur all at once through the ministry of one man or one church. This made it more difficult for the media to pick up on the story. The “Mid-Century Awakening,” as it was called by a notable Christian historian,10 was largely a gradual work of God, a steady stream of Christian growth over a period of 10 or more years. The exception to this is, of course, the story of Billy Graham and the 1949 Los Angeles crusade that rocketed him to fame.
In the late 1940’s, there began to be a movement among pastors of many denominations in America to meet and pray to God for a spiritual awakening.11 One of the most noteworthy of their prayer meetings was a March 1949 multi-day prayer conference near Los Angeles where several hundred pastors and their wives “continued in penitence and prayer until the early hours of the mornings. There was a great moving of the Spirit, with the spirit of Revival being carried out from the conference . . . .”12 During the next year, pastors’ prayer meetings for revival began springing up all over the nation in cities like Seattle, Minneapolis, and Chicago.13 But much of the prayer was centered in the Los Angeles area in anticipation of an upcoming city-wide evangelistic campaign.14
The campaign was held in a large tent in downtown Los Angeles; and the preacher was Billy Graham, a young and fairly unknown evangelist. But the faithful pray-ers saw God answer as thousands flocked to the services night after night until the originally scheduled three weeks of meetings were extended to eight weeks.15 Conversions were recorded by the hundreds and then thousands. “So deep was the moving of the Holy Spirit that at times Graham did not have to preach. After some of the testimonies from the converts all he had to do was give the invitation.”16 After the conversion of a well-known celebrity, local and national newspapers and magazines like Time began to spread all around the nation reports of a revival in Los Angeles.17 By the campaign’s end, 3,000 had received Christ for the first time and another 3,000 had returned to Him again.18 From Los Angeles, Graham moved on to Boston where another 3,000 people were converted in only 18 days.19 Thus, Billy Graham quickly became a nationally known figure, holding campaigns in several large cities every year, with tens of thousands professing conversion and reviving under his ministry.
With the public now eager to hear more revival news, the national press picked up on the story of a revival in February 1950 at Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts institution about 20 miles outside of Chicago. A regularly scheduled evening chapel service turned into 42 hours of unbroken student-led confessions and testimonies. Time magazine reported, “Singly and in little groups, sweatered and blue-jeaned undergraduates streamed onto the stage, filling up the choir chairs to await their turns. Hour after hour they kept coming. All night long, all the next day, all through the following night and half the following day, students poured out confessions of past sins and rededicated themselves to God. The auditorium filled up and overflowed into a smaller chapel downstairs. Classes had to be canceled altogether.”20
What the national press didn’t realize was that the revival at Wheaton was the tenth such movement since the first college revival had occurred ten months earlier at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota.21 Each of these revivals had started among students with a deep-felt need for prayer, followed by strong conviction of sin, confession, repentance, and conversions.22 These campus revivals continued for well over two years until at least 20 colleges had been touched.23
But God was working in many more ways around the country than just the headlines that the press was reporting. More than a few state’s governors were outspoken Christians, such as William S. Beardsley of Iowa who encouraged a huge evangelistic crusade to be held on the State Capitol lawn saying, “Spiritual revival is the greatest need in Iowa . . . . We urge the people of this state to seek God in this crisis hour;“24 or Luther W. Youngdahl of Minnesota who told a Graham campaign crowd, “ . . . more important than winning elections is winning souls for Christ.”25 After the elections of 1950 brought a new influx of Congressmen to Washington, D.C., Christian sources reported that there were over 100 Christian Senators and Representatives lending their influence in the nation’s capital. Many of them were very active in prayer and Bible study groups and teaching Sunday School in nearby churches.26 Even President Eisenhower sought counsel from Billy Graham regarding his eternal destiny and his soul’s salvation27 and was often quoted as saying things like, “A democracy cannot exist without a religious base.”28
With such a growing Christian influence in the federal government, it is not so surprising that in 1954 Congress voted to add the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance so that every day countless school children across the land would recite, “One nation, under God.”29 The next year Congress ordered that the phrase “In God We Trust” be printed on all new paper money in addition to the coins on which it was already stamped.30 And in 1956, a bill was passed making that same phrase, “In God We Trust,” the national motto.31
This working of God in the post World War II years even affected Hollywood. Through some unusual but divine circumstances, an evangelist was invited to speak to a small group of Hollywood stars one evening in 1949. He preached on Matthew 6:24, “No man can serve two masters,” and told his listeners that they must decide between serving God and serving self since there was no middle ground.”32 He could have hardly imagined that the small gathering that night was the first of what was to become the Hollywood Christian Group in which 40 to 50 entertainment personalities assembled weekly for Bible study, prayer, and fellowship;33 at least twenty unsaved stars became believers;34 and more than fifteen left the secular entertainment industry in favor of Christian service.35 The wholesome witness of these Christian stars began to be felt not only in their own studios but especially in Christian films and songs.36
It would be difficult to estimate the tremendous number of souls who turned to Jesus Christ or were revived during this “Mid-Century Awakening” because multiplied tens of thousands of individual testimonies of ordinary people were never written down or published. Besides the many who became Christians and joined a church for the first time, the numbers were probably even greater of those already in the church who either were converted to Christ or were revived and revitalized. The individual stories preserved for us today are comparatively few, but a sampling of three of them may help us understand the impact this work of God had on that and future generations.
In 1947, a young Los Angeles businessman became a Christian through the ministry of the revived Hollywood Presbyterian Church and immediately became active in the church. At a Sunday School teachers’ conference only a few months later, he and several others were so moved by the plea for evangelism that they afterward asked the speaker if they could pray with her. After their fervent prayer meeting had gone on for several hours, they received an indelible vision from God of revival among the unsaved college students of the world.37 The young businessman was Bill Bright, and thus was born the vision for what ultimately became Campus Crusade for Christ.
In the early 1950’s, a certain teenager who had no use for God woke up every Sunday morning to The Old Fashioned Revival Hour that his mother had tuned in on his radio. Rather than get up and turn it off, he listened to Charles Fuller’s evangelistic preaching many a time. One Sunday evening, maybe mostly out of idle curiosity, he got a group of friends to go to a local church with him. There he heard the same kind of preaching that he had heard on the radio for the last two years and received Jesus as his Lord and Savior before he left the building.38 That teenager was Jerry Falwell who went on to become a nationally known preacher, the founder of Liberty University and, perhaps most notably, a co-founder of the Moral Majority in 1979.
In 1953, a promising young dance instructor woke up one Sunday morning to his radio alarm clock broadcasting the voice of a certain Bible teacher.39 “If you were to die tonight and God were to say to you, ‘What right do you have to enter into my heaven?’ what would you say?” The dance instructor was so startled that he sat on the edge of his bed and kept listening. Intrigued by what he heard, he went out to a nearby newsstand and bought a copy of The Greatest Story Ever Told, a retelling of the four Gospels. Several days later when he had finished the book, he said, “It seemed as if the Cross of Christ had been erected right in my apartment . . . I slipped . . . onto my knees and asked Christ to come into my heart and . . . cleanse me of my sins.” Within a couple of years this man had attended seminary and planted a church. His name was D. James Kennedy, and he became a widely broadcasted televangelist and the originator of Evangelism Explosion.
Perhaps one reason the work of God 60 years ago in this country has been underestimated in succeeding years is because the individual testimonies that have been preserved are mainly just those of a few well-known and famous people. Another equally true reason is that, as the signs of revival began to disappear in the latter 1950’s,40 the climate quickly disintegrated into the turbulent years of the 1960’s.41 No doubt such things as the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the banishment of prayer from public schools, the beginning of the Vietnam War, and the youth counterculture and drug culture caused many to forget the wonderful works that God had done only a decade or two earlier.
In the years following the post World War II revival, analysts and critics have often attributed the revival to mere “interest in religion”42 or “faith in faith.”44 In other words, Christianity was just the popular cultural thing to do and a sort of tool for self improvement and ego building. They’ve also pointed out that the soldiers returning from four years of horrific war overseas were probably longing to get back into a sense of community like the one that organized religion could provide.44 But it seems that the most repeated explanation offered by the critics is that the revival of God and Christianity in the 1950’s was the best way of uniting the nation against the dreaded advance of atheistic Communism. If the underlying key to Communism was the absence of God, then the best way to defeat Communism was by fostering the presence of God.45 God was the one thing that could distinguish the United States of America from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.46
Now while it would be foolish to completely dismiss all of the keen observations of the critics, it would be equally foolish to brush aside all of the evidence that we’ve seen in the preceding paragraphs and conclude that God had little or nothing to do with it. It’s true that for many people Christianity was nothing more than the popular cultural thing to do and a passing fad. But such an explanation does not account for all of the hearts and lives that were permanently changed during that era. I’m sure that you, like I, have known more than a few wonderful Christian people who trace their conversions back to that time. The enduring witness of their Christian lives cannot be explained away by fear of Communism or fulfillment in community.
No, the explanation for those thousands of changed lives is the mighty work of God. And the reason why these paragraphs have been written is beautifully given in Psalm 78: “We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength and His wonderful works that He has done . . . That the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.” (Psalm 78:4,6-7 NKJV)
It was the Holy Spirit of God that did a mighty work in our country in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and we must pass that story on to the next generations. We must tell them that it is God Who altered the course of a country, saving men from sin and calling them into His kingdom. And if we tell this to our children and our children’s children, they too may put their hope in God, believing that He is everything He claims to be and that He is able to do a mighty work again in our own hearts, in our churches, and in our country. After all, “There have been instances in the history of the Church when the telling and retelling of the wonderful works of God have been used to rekindle the expectations of the faithful intercessors and prepare the way for another Awakening.”47
Who can say what great things God still has in store for us in America? Only He knows. But we can at least conclude that since He is the same God that He was 60 or 300 or 3,000 years ago, He is able to do as great of works in our generation as He did for our ancestors. And with that confidence, we can joyfully say with the Psalmist, “We will show forth Your praise to all generations.” (Psalm 79:13 NKJV)
Notes for Chapter 1
What God Has Done
(title taken from Numbers 23:23 NKJV)
1. Richard Owen Roberts, letter to Jonathan D. Anderson, 4 October 2007.
2. Martin E. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1958), 14-15.
3. Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, Volume 3, Under God, Indivisible, 1940-1960 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 279.
4. Daniel P. Fuller, Give the Winds a Mighty Voice (Waco, TX: Word, Incorporated, 1972), 149.
5. Paul L. Maier, A Man Spoke, A World Listened (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1963), 281.
6. Ibid., 303.
7. Ibid., 305.
8. Fuller, Give the Winds a Mighty Voice, 171.
9. Rankings from Bowker’s Annual/Publishers Weekly as listed on http://www3.isrl.illinois.edu/~unsworth/courses/bestsellers/best50.cgi
(also see http://www.caderbooks.com/best50.html)
10. J. Edwin Orr, Good News in Bad Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1953), 254.
11. Ibid., 32-44.
12. Ibid., 38.
13. Ibid., 40-41.
14. Revival in Our Time, The Story of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Campaigns (Wheaton, IL: Van Kampen Press, 1950), 15.
15. Ibid., 10.
16. Ibid., 16.
17. Ibid., 13-14.
18. Ibid., 11.
19. Ibid., 31.
20. “42 Hours of Repentance,” Time, 20 February 1950.
21. Orr, Good News in Bad Times, 54.
22. Ibid., 58.
23. Ibid., 58, 85.
24. Ibid., 180.
25. Ibid., 193.
26. Ibid., 88-90.
27. Billy Graham, Just As I Am (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1997), 238-239.
28. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion, 83.
29. “Under God,” Time, 17 May 1954.
30. “Majestic Minimum,” Time, 20 June 1955.
31. “In God We Trust,” Time, 06 August 1956.
32. J. Edwin Orr, The Inside Story of the Hollywood Christian Group (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1955), 20.
33. Ibid., 55-57.
34. Ibid., 20.
35. Ibid., 132.
36. Ibid.
37. Ethel May Baldwin and David V. Benson, Henrietta Mears and How She Did It! (Glendale, CA: Gospel Light Publications, 1966), 231-232.
38. Jerry Strober and Ruth Tomczak, Jerry Falwell: Aflame for God (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1979), 21-22.
39. D. James Kennedy, forward to Coral Ridge Ministries undated republication of:
Fulton Oursler, The Greatest Story Ever Told, 1949.
Also, D. James Kennedy, Evangelism Explosion (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1970), forward.
40. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion, 11.
41. J. Edwin Orr, The Flaming Tongue (Chicago: Moody Press, 1973), viii.
42. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion, 27.
43. Ibid., 31.
44. Ibid., 17.
45. Ibid., 38.
46. Marty, Under God, Indivisible, 301.
47. Orr, The Flaming Tongue, viii.