America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation

Abstract

America's Pastor: Billy Graham and Shaping of Nation. By Grant Wacker. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014, Pp. 413. $27.95); Godly Ambition: John Stott and Evangelical Movement. By Alister Chapman. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012, Pp. xi, 222. $58 hardback; $24.95 paper.)Some prominent figures are particularly fortunate in their biographers. This is certainly case with world renowned Protestant leader and with British evangelical Anglican whom Time magazine listed in 2005 as one of globe's hundred most important people. Wacker of Duke University Divinity School perused thousands of documents at Billy Graham Center Archives at Wheaton College, Illinois, in researching global revivalist. Chapman of Westmont College, Santa Barbara, had full access to John Stott's papers. Both of these well written accounts are highly sympathetic towards their subjects, though Walker in particular reveals several major flaws.Both biographers note that Graham and Stott were good friends. Stott in fact faced fierce attacks from more liberal and influential clergy within his own Church of England for supporting Graham's massive London crusade in 1954. Both men stressed infallibility of Bible. Both were influential in International Congress of World Evangelization, held in Lausanne in 1974, body formed in response to liberal ecumenicism of World Council of Churches.Yet biographies reveal how different two men were. Stott was very much part of British establishment, his father prominent Harley Street doctor. He was educated at Rugby and Cambridge, where he graduated with honors, and from 1945 to 1970 usually led London's All Souls Church. Graham came from moderately prosperous farm family in North Carolina, received his bachelor's degree from small evangelical college, never attended seminary, and held pastorate for just over year. Stott saw himself primarily as an educator, in Chapman's words, a learned yet popular theologian who could bridge gap between academy and pew (44). Graham was an unabashed revivalist, ignoring such matters as sacraments and biblical criticism to press unrelentingly for the decision that would determine one's fate for eternity.Certain facts about Stott are particularly fascinating. Influenced by Anglican evangelical Eric Nash, world-denying separatist who believed in imminent coming of Christ, Stott had born-again experience at age sixteen. …