Beliefs

Measuring the Crusade

of Billy Graham

Letter to the Citizen, Rev. Brian Kopke, June 1998

I have attended two Graham crusades. I did not go forward at either. I like the fact that Mr. Graham takes the high road with respect to tolerance for other religions. I trust that individuals whose faith in Jesus Christ is renewed will work a bit harder at their faith's demands.

I struggle with the message of Jesus, what he might actually have said and done. I do not work through a religion about Jesus as promoted by Paul and Constantine, Aquinas and Augustine, Luther and Calvin. Either pathways is littered with difficulties of faith, interpretation and high demands on individuals.

Reconciling the claim of THE ONLY TRUTH about life the universe and everything with a respect for others beliefs and tolerance is difficult. It is even harder when a belief is predicated on the need to change other people's minds and make converts. That approach does not respect the dignity and worth of other people or their hard won decisions about life and faith. Such dogmatic and literal approaches are as unrealistic as a computer discovery in Douglas Adams' ‘Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' that the answer to life, the universe and everything is ‘42.'

Graham calls on his followers to tolerate others beliefs. It sounds grudging. While some people love tofu, I will tolerate it. I do not like tofu. Tolerance has limits. It must. Pure tolerance allows Hitler a free hand. Wolfe's arguments about the potential evil of pure tolerance are persuasive. There should be great discussion about where the limits to tolerance rest for each of us. I do not understand how religious beliefs which have found the only saving truth can do other than set tolerance in a very narrow vein.

Many religious individuals struggle with this dilemma. Each religion has people who are open and others who are intolerant At her/his best, a religious person is not just tolerant of a differing belief. He/she is interested what others have discovered in answer to life's great questions. Henry Nelson Wieman called us beyond tolerance to appreciative understanding which he called the building block of our understanding of God. He might have agreed with St. Anselm that ‘God is that which is greater than that of which we can conceive. It follows that in all of our pondering the great questions of life there are partial truths. Yet even the sum of our truths can not give us THE TRUTH - excepting through faith. Paul set faith up as its own arbiter: "The evidence of things hoped for the proof of things unseen." With that definition, discussion is a moot point. Only the faithful are right. With so many different versions of faithful belief, such logic baffles the mind.

It is wonderful to see some Christians take a real interest in the work of the Jesus Seminar without getting their nickers in a knot because it seems to attack their faith. I follow the Jesus Seminar. I teach their works here and in the States because I believe that we should attempt to recover the radical message about our society preached by Jesus. I also tell the Christmas story to my children even though I do not believe it happened that way. Why? It is a hell of a good story with great lessons in it for us. I want my children to understand the depth and mystery of life.

I have trouble with the Graham message. There is such emphasis on Jesus as the Christ and belief in his saving power and in the power of prayer alone to effect change. I know Graham believes we must work hard to make this world a better place. But for me it is the ethics of Jesus that has always been at the heart of my life, not faith in a Christ, salvation, and prayer. For me it is not the faith but the ethics which are important. Faith embellishes through story, ethics seeks integrity between belief and action.

Mr. Graham's approach calls on us to have faith and to pray. These acts save. It is too centred on salvation for the individual. I care about our communities and the roles individuals play in creating places of dignity and worth for others, especially the children, the meek, the oppressed, the powerless, the reviled, and the marginalised, disenfranchised, and seemingly expendable.

Mr. Graham has a large organization to maintain. As a clergyman serving a good sized congregation, I too face the dilemma of having to maintain an organization in the face of the demands of my faith. It would seem it is easier for Mr. Graham to justify a huge glitzy organization in the face of a faith that just asks people to believe in Jesus Christ. It is very hard for me to justify the demands of the institution in the face of the overwhelming human need in or culture. Prayer will not right inequity though it may give us the strength to work against it. Prayer alone is not enough.

We see things differently. That is OK, after all there are many people for whom a saving faith is a needed support in this life. I trust that Mr. Graham and I, and many other caring people, would do the same thing when faced with a suffering person - we would care - and ultimately that is what it all has to be about.

I do not care about the numbers who give their lives to Christ. I will judge this crusade a success if there is a large increase in the amount of caring for others, regardless of differences. This has to be what religion is about. And that is where I find the limits to my tolerance.