'Disturbing the complacency of religion'? The evangelical crusades of Dr Billy Graham and Father Patrick Peyton in Britain, 1951-54

Twentieth Century British History

Volumn 18, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 481-513

  Harris, Alana ^a   Spence, Martin ^b  

^a WADHAM COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 42449122686     PISSN: 09552359     EISSN: 14774674     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/tcbh/hwm027     Document Type: Article

References (205)

1. Edward O. England, Hallowed Harringay (London, 1955), 26.
2. Daily Mail, 21 May 1954, 4.
3. Temple was a popular columnist and 'agony aunt' who was broadly Christian (but not Evangelical), as described in her semi-autobiographical book - Good or Bad, It's Life (London, 1944), 195-212.
4. '83,000 at Roman Catholic Rally', Daily Telegraph, 28 July 1952, 5.
5. This article does not seek to minimize the differences between the two traditions under discussion. Rather it assumes that most readers will be familiar enough with the underlying distinctions between Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism so as to make it unnecessary to discuss these contrasts in detail. The article thus focuses on emphasizing similarities between two Christian traditions, which have often received quite separate historiographical treatment, in the context of their response to 1950s society. Those wishing to explore the history of either of these traditions further should consult: D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain (London, 2000)
6. V. Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts (eds), From without the Flaminian gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales 1850-2000 (London, 1999)
7. and generally Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity 1920-2000 (London, 2001).
8. See, for example, Miriam Akhtar and Steve Humphries, The Fifties and Sixties: A Lifestyle Revolution (London, 2001)
9. and Stuart Hylton, From Rationing to Rock: The 1950s Revisited (Stroud, 1998).
10. Contrast Mark Jarvis, Conservative Governments, Morality and Social Change in Affluent Britain, 1957-1964 (Manchester, 2005)
11. and Stephanie Spencer, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (London, 2005).
12. Jeffrey Cox, The English Churches in a Secular Society: Lambeth 1870-1930 (Oxford, 1982), 8.
13. The need for such revisionist work has been noted by other contemporary historians - for example, Matthew Grimley, Citizenship, Community and the Church of England: Liberal Anglican Theories of the State between the Wars (Oxford, 2004), 5.
14. Alan Gilbert, The Making of Post-Christian Britain: A History of the Secularization of Modern Society (London, 1980).
15. Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (Oxford, 2002).
16. Steve Bruce, Religion in Modern Britain (Oxford, 1995), 234.
17. Bruce, Religion, 46-51.
18. Descriptions of the so called 'subjective turn' in religion and the rise of therapeutic and new age spirituality are also premised on the secularization paradigm: See, for example, Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion is Giving way to Spirituality (Oxford, 2005).
19. Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularization 1800-2000 (London, 2001), 5.
20. For further discussion of this issue, see also Callum Brown, Religion and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (Harlow, 2006).
21. Brown, Death of Christian Britain, 179. Brown's argument can be criticized from a nineteenth-century historiographical perspective also: his interpretation of the discursive dominance of evangelical Christianity in the nineteenth century - where 'the agents of evangelism were literally everywhere' (57) - tends to elide a variety of religious expressions, even within the evangelical movement itself, into one homogeneous schema.
22. Brown, Death of Christian Britain, 173.
23. Ibid.
24. Hugh McLeod, Religion and the People of Western Europe 1789-1989 (Oxford, 1997), 136-44.
25. See also Hugh McLeod and Werner Ustorf (eds), The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750-2000 (Cambridge, 2003), 18ff.
26. For an excellent survey of the literature on secularization, and the need for an alternative master narrative to contest the secularization paradigm, see: Jeffrey Cox, 'Provincializing Christendom: The Case of Great Britain,' Church History, 75 (2006), 120-30.
27. Gilbert, Post-Christian, 153.
28. Steve Bruce (ed.), Religion and Modernization: Sociologists and Historians Debate the Secularization Thesis (Oxford, 1992), 4.
29. Bill McSweeny, Roman Catholicism: The Search for Relevance (Oxford, 1980)
30. Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholic Beliefs in England: Customary Catholicism and Transformations of Religious Authority (Cambridge, 1991)
31. Peter Stanford, Cardinal Hume and the Changing Face of English Catholicism (London, 1993)
32. Desmond Ryan, The Catholic Parish: Institutional Discipline, Tribal Identity and Religious Development in the English Church (London, 1996).
33. Anthony Archer, The Two Catholic Churches: A Study in Oppression (London, 1986)
34. Adrian Hastings, Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After (London, 1991).
35. Peter Brierely, The Tide is Running Out: What the English Church Attendance Survey Reveals (London, 2000), 226
36. A. Walker, 'Thoroughly Modern: Sociological Reflections on the Charismatic Movement from the End of the Twentieth Century', in S. Hunt, M. Hamilton and T. Walter (eds), Charismatic Christianity: Sociological Perspectives (Basingstoke, 1997).
37. See Alister Chapman, 'Secularization and the Ministry of John R. W. Scott at All Souls, Langham Palace, 1950-1970', Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 56 (2005), 496-513.
38. Sarah Williams, Religious Belief and Popular Culture in Southwark c.1880-1939 (Oxford, 1999)
39. and Paul Badham, 'Religious Pluralism in Modern Britain', in Sheridan Gilley and W. J. Sheils (eds), A History of Religion in Britain: Practice and Belief from Pre-Roman Times to the Present (Oxford, 1994), 490.
40. Grace Davie, Religion in Britain since 1945: Believing without Belonging (Oxford, 1994), 5.
41. Grace Davie, Europe: The Exceptional Case. Parameters of Faith in the Modern World (London, 2002), 5
42. also Davie, Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates (Oxford, 2000).
43. Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (Cambridge, 1991), 5
44. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (London, 1989), 227
45. and 'Assembling the Modern Self' in Roy Porter (ed.), Rewriting the Self: Histories from the Renaissance to the Present (London, 1997), 225-6.
46. Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man (London, 1977)
47. and Heather A. Warren, 'The Shift from Character to Personality in Mainline Protestant Thought, 1935-1945', Church History, 67 (1998), 537-55.
48. Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, 1991), 16.
49. Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Cambridge, 2002), 83.
50. 'Contemporary Churchgoing', British Weekly, cxxv (3249), 13 January, 1949.
51. Taylor, Ethics, 82.
52. Taylor, Varieties, 87.
53. Taylor, Varieties, 80.
54. It is telling however that even recent, revisionist accounts of the 1960s pay little attention to the role of religion: For example, Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had it So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (London, 2005).
55. For some initial contributions, see: Joan Keating, 'Faith and Community Threatened? Roman Catholic Responses to the Welfare State, Materialism and Social Mobility, 1945-62', Twentieth Century British History, 9 (1998), 86-108
56. and Ian Jones, 'The Clergy, Cold War and the Mission of the Local Church: England ca. 1945-1960', in Dianne Kirby (ed.), Religion and the Cold War (London, 2003), 188-99.
57. See Stephanie Spencer, Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s (London, 2005), 15, which omits discussion of religion but identifies it as an important area that would benefit from more research.
58. For an extended treatment of 'authenticity' as an important analytical category for exploring the transformations in English Christianity in the post-war period, see Jane Garnett, Matthew Grimley, Alana Harris, William Whyte and Sarah Williams, Redefining Christian Britain: Post-1945 Perspectives (London, 2007).
59. Graham completed his 'Last Crusade' in June 2005. BBC News Online, 'Graham Addresses "Final" Rally' , accessed 16 June 2006.
60. Right Rev. Thomas Edward Flynn, Bishop of Lancaster, 'Introduction' in Patrick J. Peyton, The Ear of God (London, 1954), viii.
61. Patrick Peyton, All for Her: The Autobiography of Father Patrick Peyton (Hollywood, 1967), 55ff.
62. Peyton, Ear, 136.
63. Richard Gribble, 'The Second Holy Cross Saint? Spiritual Impressions of Father Patrick J. Peyton, CSC', American Catholic Studies, 114 (2003), 1-19.
64. Billy Graham, Just as I am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (Harper Collins, 1997), 29.
65. Ibid., 49.
66. Ibid., 145-6.
67. The use of the word also had resonance with the language which was beginning to be adopted in the United States to describe the ideological battle against Communism. Dwight Eisenhower used the word on accepting the Republican Presidential candidacy in 1952, saying that 'you have summoned me...to lead a great crusade'; Diane Kirby, Religion and the Cold War (London, 2003), 5.
68. Judith Smart, 'The Evangelist as Star: The Billy Graham Crusade in Australia, 1959', Journal of Popular Culture, 33 (1999), 165-73.
69. 'Thousands Flock to Hear Fr Peyton', Catholic Times, 9 May 1952, 1, 12.
70. '85,000 Throng Rally in Birkenhead', Catholic Times, 6 June 1952, 3.
71. 'Magnificent and Moving Pageant at Wembley', Catholic Times, 1 August 1952, 1, 12
72. 'For Family Prayer: Last Sunday's Great Meeting in Wembley Stadium', The Tablet, 2 August 1952, 94
73. 'Return to Family Prayer Urged: Pope's Letter Read at Rally', Manchester Guardian, 28 July 1952, 2,
74. and newsreel 'Family Prayer Crusade' at .
75. 'Family Rosary Preached in Hyde Park: Crowd of 100,000 hears Fr Peyton', Catholic Times, 11 July 1952, 1, 12
76. and 'The Family Crusade, The Tablet, 12 July 1952, 38.
77. Contrast these with the figures given in 'Cardinal's Call to Family Prayer: 30,000 at Rally', Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1952, 5
78. and within the newsreel 'Father Peyton Packs Hyde Park' at .
79. 'Rosary Crusade Sweeps to Climax', Catholic Times, 18 July 1952, 1.
80. 'Billy Graham Starts Crusade', British Pathé Newsreel 146.01 (4 March 1954) at .
81. George Burnham, Billy Graham: A Mission Accomplished (London, 1955), 11
82. Graham, Just, 217.
83. 'Billy Graham Starts Crusade'.
84. 'Family Rosary Crusade: General Information for the clergy, lay parish chairman and association parish chairman', 3. North Easton, Massachusetts, Archives Holy Cross Family Ministries (hereafter AHCFM): 01-13-02-04-00 Lancaster.
85. Paul Grant, 'A Record of the Family Rosary Crusade in the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, 1952', 18-19. AHCFM: 01-13-03-04-00 Durham.
86. James R. Bacon, 'Father Peyton'. AHCFM: 01-13-02-01-00 Lancaster.
87. Frank Colquhoun, Harringay Story (London, 1955), 40.
88. This was one of around eighty interviews with Billy Graham attendees carried out in 2002/3 by the author (MS), after placing adverts in regional newspapers. Author's interview (MS) with Joe House, a 26 year-old teacher from East Finchley at the time of attending the Greater London Crusade, 20 February 2003.
89. 'Crusader for Prayer', Picture Post, 26 July 1952, 4-5.
90. Frank Mort, 'The Commercial Domain: Advertising and the Cultural Management of Demand', in Becky Conekin, Frank Mort and Chris Waters (eds), Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain 1945-1964 (London, 1999), 67.
91. Evening Standard, February 27 1954.
92. Grant, 'Record', 7.
93. Reporter, 'Famous Football Ground Scene of Rosary Rally', Catholic Times, 20 June 1952, 1.
94. Colquhoun, Harringay, 25-7
95. Author's interview (MS) with David Smith, a 19 year-old Upper-Sixth form student from Sevenoaks, Kent at the time of attending the 1954 Greater London Crusade, 20 February 2003.
96. Author's interview (MS) with Bryan Wadland, a 21 year-old bank clerk from Kingsbury, Greater London at the time of attending the 1955 All England Crusade, 20 February 2003.
97. J. Richards and D. Sheridan (eds), Mass-Observation at the Movies (London, 1987), 39-52.
98. 'Notes of the Week: Family Rosary', Catholic Times, 18 April 1952, 8.
99. Church of England Newspaper [CEN], 26 March 1954, 14.
100. Daily Mirror, cited in Colquhoun, Harringay, 183.
101. Peyton, Ear, vii.
102. 'An English View of the Family Rosary Crusade', The Ushaw Magazine, Durham, 1952, 1. AHCFM: 01-13-03-04-00 London.
103. William Martin, A Prophet with Honour: The Billy Graham Story (London, 1992), 182.
104. Grant, 'Record', 9.
105. Introducing Billy Graham: The Work of an Evangelist (London, 1953), 17.
106. Colquhoun, Harringay, 93.
107. Mort, 'The Commercial Domain', 65.
108. '35,000 at another great Rosary Rally', Catholic Times, 16 May 1952, 12.
109. Geoffrey Fisher, Canterbury Diocesan Notes, June 1954, 1.
110. 'TJF', 'The Round of the Rallies', Westminster Yearbook, 106. AHCFM: 01-13-03-01-00 London.
111. 'One of the Greatest Religious Crusades', 1952, 23. AHCFM: 01-13-03-01-00 London.
112. Colquhoun, Harringay, 79.
113. Editor, 'The Rosary Crusade', The Tablet, 5 July 1952, 15.
114. London Crusade News, No. 6, March 1954, 3.
115. Colquhoun, Harringay, 232.
116. Billy Graham Center Archives , accessed 16 June 2006.
117. The author's interviews (MS) with British attendees support this view, with several interviewees talking of the excitement of hearing hymns sung by a massed choir and audience, when they had only ever attended their local church and heard the same music performed falteringly. Such people found that it 'did their heart good' to join in such an event: Charles Thomas Cook, London Hears Billy Graham (London, 1954), 44.
118. Reuben Torrey, the American revivalist who came to Britain in 1903/4, admitted that he sometimes thought that the blessing which came to 'nominal Christians' through his revivals 'was of greater importance than the conversion of the unsaved': Revival-Times, Showers of Blessing-A Souvenir of the Three Years' Mission of Dr Torrey & Chas. M. Alexander (London, 1905), 6.
119. London Crusade News, No. 6, March 1954, 3.
120. See the assessment of Charles Lippy that many of those 'making a decision for Christ' already had some formal religious affiliation or former involvement with a religious institution-'Billy Graham', in Charles H. Lippy (ed.), Twentieth-Century Shapers of American Popular Religion (Westport, 1989), 179-86.
121. Some contemporaneous press reports also hinted that many attendees had a church background-for example, The Times, 24 May 1954, 7.
122. '85,000 Throng Rally in Birkenhead', Catholic Times, 6 June 1952, 3.
123. '40,000 Attend Nottingham's Rosary Rally', Catholic Times, 27 June 1952, 3.
124. The Times, 24 May 1954.
125. Daily Mail, 15 April 1954.
126. Sunday Times, 6 June, 1954 (cited in Colquhoun, Harringay, 185).
127. A minor, but telling example: Many of the Graham team's wives wore make-up, a fact which at first startled many British evangelical women but which very quickly encouraged them to follow suit 'to smarten-up their appearance'. Maurice Rowlandson, 50 Years in Christian Work , accessed 16 June 2006.
128. Work of an Evangelist, 30. Mark Jarvis has shown how this concern about moral implosion was also a concern of Conservative governments in the 1950s.
129. See Jarvis, Conservative Governments (Manchester, 2005).
130. Peyton, Ear, 141.
131. Graham, Just, 126.
132. CEN, 26 March 1954, 14.
133. Billy Graham Song Book (London, 1954): No. 7 - E. Mote, 'My Hope is Built'; No. 16 - E. Perronet, 'All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name'; No. 32 - P. P. Bliss, 'Let the Lower Lights Be Burning'.
134. BG Song Book (1954): No. 53 - F. J. Crosby, 'He Hideth My Soul'.
135. 'Billy Graham's All Scotland Crusadé (24 March 1955), British Pathé Newsreel, 513.29 at British Pathé Online Archive .
136. Burnham, Billy Graham, 23-5.
137. Greater London Crusade Songbook (London, 1955): No. 76 - Lieut. Col. E. H. Joy, 'All Your Anxiety'.
138. See 'Family Prayer Rally' Programme for Wembley Stadium, 27 July 1952, AHCFM: 01-13-03-02-00 London, and the present-day website , accessed 16 June 2006.
139. Peyton, Ear, xv.
140. Peyton, Ear, xv.
141. Burnham, Billy Graham, 23.
142. Father Patrick Peyton, 'The Rosary Crusade for a Better World', The Fold, 6 (1952), 4-5. AHCFM: 01-13-04-04-00 Newcastle.
143. Peyton, Ear, 156.
144. See Barbara Corrado Pope, 'Immaculate and Powerful: The Marian Revival of the Nineteenth Century', in Clarrisa W. Atkinson et al. (eds), Immaculate and Powerful: The Female in Sacred Image and Social Reality (Boston, 1985), 173-200
145. Katherine Massam, 'The Blue Army and the Cold War: Anti-Communist Devotion to the Blessed Virgin in Australia', Australian Historical Studies, 24 (1991), 420-8
146. and, in an English context, Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway, Political Catholicism in Europe 1918-1965 (Oxford, 1996), 29.
147. On Peyton, see Richard Gribble, 'Anti-Communism, Patrick Peyton, CSC and the C.I.A.', Journal of Church and State, 45 (2003), 535-58.
148. Bishop of Southwell, 'Faith and Freedom', Sunday Times, 3 August 1952, 6.
149. Crusade, June 1955, 7-8.
150. Burnham, Billy Graham, 17.
151. See also Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, MD, 1991), 77-100.
152. Jones, 'The Clergy', 194.
153. Daily Sketch, 24 May 1954 (cited in Colquhoun, Harringay, 182).
154. Peyton, Ear, 36.
155. 'Quotes from Father Peyton's Speeches', 1951, 2. AHCFM: 01-13-02-02-00 Lancaster.
156. J. Rowe, 'I Would Be Like Jesus', Greater London Crusade Songbook, No. 64.
157. World Wide Pictures Inc., Souls in Conflict (dir. Dick Ross and Leonard Reeve), , accessed 16 June 2006. Italics indicate verbal emphasis.
158. 'Thousands Flock to hear Fr Peyton', Catholic Times, 9 May 1952, 12.
159. World Wide Pictures Inc., Souls in Conflict.
160. 'Record of the Family Rosary Crusade', 33.
161. Peyton, 'Quotes', 1.
162. Peyton, Ear, 112.
163. 'Famous Football Ground Scene of Rosary Rally', Catholic Times, 20 June 1952, 12.
164. Constraints of space do not allow for a fuller exploration of understandings of femininity and maternity within the crusade messages of both Graham and Peyton - but nevertheless, in valorizing the role of the mother in the appropriate socialization of children, both men tapped into wider instabilities and anxieties about working women and the fragility of the family in the post-war period, explored by social historians: Such as Denise Riley, War in the Nursery: Theories of the Child and Mother (London, 1983).
165. See for example, John Springhall, Coming of Age: Adolescence in Britain 1860-1960 (Dublin, 1986),
166. and William Osgerby, Youth in Britain Since 1945 (Oxford, 1998).
167. Sally Cunneen, In Search of Mary: The Woman and the Symbol (New York, 1996)
168. and Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (London, 2000).
169. See McLeod, Religion, 33
170. Brown, Death, 10.
171. 'Record of the Family Rosary Crusade', 12.
172. 'Greatest Religious Crusades', 13.
173. 'Greatest Religious Crusades', 17.
174. CEN, 5 March 1954, 3.
175. Martin, The Billy Graham Story, 101.
176. Martin Francis, 'Tears, Tantrums and Bared Teeth: The Emotional Economy of Three Conservative Prime Ministers, 1951-1963', Journal of British Studies, 41 (2002), 354-87.
177. For an exploration of shifting constructions of masculinity within wartime photography see also: Martin Francis, 'Cecil Beaton's Romantic Toryism and the Symbolic Economy of Wartime Britain', Journal of British Studies, 45 (2006), 90-117.
178. Martin Francis, 'The Domestication of the Male? Recent Research on Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century British Masculinity', Historical Journal, 45 (2002), 637-52
179. and Lynne Segal, 'Look Back in Anger: Men in the Fifties', in Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (eds), Male Order: Unwrapping Masculinity (London, 1988), 68-96.
180. Michael Roper, 'Between Manliness and Masculinity: The ''War Generation'' and the Psychology of Fear in Britain', Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005), 343-62.
181. Mass-Observation, Puzzled People: A Study in popular attitudes to Religion, Ethics, Progress and Politics in a London Borough (London, 1947), 16.
182. M-O, Puzzled, 49.
183. Decision, December 1961, 11.
184. Peyton, Ear, xv.
185. F. Crosby, 'Blessed Assurance', GLC Songbook, No. 9.
186. Peyton, Ear, 108.
187. See newsreel 'Father Peyton Packs Hyde Park'. See also John Davies, '"Faith of Our Fathers; Dare to be Daniel": Catholic Processions and Protestant Parades, Liverpool 1909', North West Catholic History, 31 (2004), 98-120.
188. Author's (MS) interview with Michael Drew, a 20 year-old printers' compositor from Bournemouth, Dorset at the time of attending the 1954 Greater London Crusade, 22 February 2003.
189. Gilbert, Post-Christian, 77.
190. Compare the high and stable Catholic attendance until mid-1960s: R. Currie, A. D. Gilbert and L. S. Horsley, Churches and Churchgoers: Patterns of church growth in the British Isles since 1700 (Oxford, 1977), 24.
191. CEN, 26 May 1954, 6.
192. Author's (MS) interview with Fred Cobrough, a 32 year-old shipbuilder from Glasgow at the time of attending the All Scotland Crusade, 1955, 22 February 2003.
193. 'Greatest Religious Crusades', 11.
194. Colquhoun, Harringay, 79.
195. Peyton, Ear, 36.
196. 'Billy Graham Ends Crusade', British Pathe' Newsreel, 164.10, at British Pathé Online Archive .
197. Both Graham and Peyton can thus be located in a wider context of a revived interest in the role of Christianity in preserving the values of western civilization and fear of internal collapse caused by moral declension - see Keith Robbins, 'Britain, 1940 and "Christian Civilization" ', in History, Religion and Identity in Modern Britain (London, 1993)
198. and Diane Kirby, 'The Archbishop of York and Anglo-American relations during the Second World War and early Cold War, 1942-1955', Journal of Religious History, 23 (1999), 327-45.
199. Tom Allan, Crusade in Scotland (London, 1955), 94.
200. The Times, 25 August 1954, 14.
201. M-O, Puzzled, 17.
202. M-O, Puzzled, 147.
203. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, 79.
204. Grimley, Citizenship, 218-26.
205. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation (Berkeley, 1985), 435ff.