Several years ago President Obama announced to the world, “America is no longer a Christian nation.” From a cultural standpoint, he told the truth. But I can remember when we were a Christian nation spiritually and culturally.
I was 14 years old in 1957. That entire summer, Billy Graham held nightly, fully integrated crusade meetings in New York City. He preached the Gospel to over two million people, not counting the huge TV and radio audiences. Hundreds of thousands of people of all ages, races and cultures came to a relationship with God through Jesus Christ that summer. I remember watching on TV as Billy Graham and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood side by side on the platform before a packed crowd at Madison Square Garden and proclaimed, “There is but one race, the human race, and everyone in that race needs Jesus Christ as their savior.”
That same summer, the number one song on Billboard’s pop and country charts was The Three Bells performed by the Browns (Jim Ed Brown and his two sisters). As you can imagine, the number one song got a lot of play on the radio. I remember being out with our youth group from church and when that song came on the car radio, there was dead silence until it was over. We were Christians, but we were also teenagers so silence was not normal. That song told about church bells ringing and the congregation praying at the birth, wedding and death of Jimmy Brown. Basically, it covered his entire life in just three verses. There is not a popular music radio station anywhere in the country that would play that song even once today.
I was active at church, but when I started high school that fall, I also joined the Youth for Christ club. We met weekly after school in a classroom with our teacher/sponsor Mrs. Saltzman. I have fond memories of those meetings and that wonderful Christian woman who opened and closed our meetings with prayer. She encouraged us to share and discuss the problems we faced as Christian high school students. Billy Graham had been partnering with Youth for Christ since they held a joint conference in Chicago in 1944 (when I was only a year old). We were encouraged to watch on TV as his crusades continued that fall and winter across the southern states. Sadly, none of that would be permitted on school property with a teacher leading it these days.
We have come a long way since 1957, but mostly in the wrong direction. I feel the rumbling of a new revival, when the Holy Spirit will bust through the walls of our churches into our communities and into our culture once again. The enemy won’t give up that territory easily, but the battle is on.