Ulteriori informazioni
Billy Graham's ministry is often described as a quintessentially American success story. This book, however, explores how Graham's encounters and perception in Europe shaped what was from the beginning on an international ministry. The revival meetings which Billy Graham held in London, Berlin, and New York in the 1950s provided lively fora for ministers, politicians, and ordinary Christians to imagine and experience the future of faith, the role of religion in the Cold War, and the intersections between faith and consumer culture in new ways.
Sommario
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction: Altar Call in Europe
- Chapter 1: Reviving Religion. Billy Graham's Early Crusades in the Religious Landscapes after the Second World War
- Chapter 2: Selling Religion. The Business of Revivalism at the Early Billy Graham Crusades
- Chapter 3: Politicizing Religion. Rechristianization, Anti-Communism, and the Making of the Spiritual Free World
- Chapter 4: Living Religion. Everyday Religious Life during the Billy Graham Crusades
- Chapter 5: Experiencing Religion. Communities and Conversions at the Billy Graham Crusades
- Epilogue: The Secular Crusades: Graham's Return in 1966
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Info autore
Uta A. Balbier is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at King's College London where she is teaching classes on American cultural and religious history. Before joining King's, she was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington DC.
Riassunto
Billy Graham's ministry is often described as a quintessentially American success story. However, by 1954, Billy Graham was bigger news in London than in Texas. Altar Call explores how Graham's encounters and perception in Europe shaped what was from the beginning on an international ministry. Graham was responsible for an unparalleled transformation of US evangelicalism in the second half of the twentieth century. He is also remembered as America's pastor-in-chief, having met with every US President since Harry S. Truman. But Graham's path to triumph was paved abroad.
The revival meetings Graham held in London, Berlin, and New York in the 1950s provided lively fora for ministers, politicians, and ordinary Christians to imagine and experience the future of faith, the role of religion in the Cold War, and the intersections between faith and consumer culture in new ways. Graham challenged believers and religious leaders alike to re-position religion amidst the rise of consumerism, moral post-war regeneration, and cold-war tensions. At this confluence of anxieties and desires across the Atlantic, Graham's ministry revealed remarkably similar needs among the faithful and those yearning for renewal. It is the responses of Church leaders to this need, rather than inherent differences in religious sensitivities, that helps to explain the divergent paths to secularization between the US and its European allies, Germany and the UK.
Testo aggiuntivo
In terms of methodology and source bases, Balbier has the linguistic skills to access many untapped German sources: newspapers, books, and archives. This was a massive boon to her project, which has heartily contributed to the field of Billy Graham studies. Any reader interested in 1950s and 1960s European evangelism, lived religion and consumerism, Christian organizational development, or Billy Graham should pay serious attention to this study.
