The Vanishing Evangelical by Calvin Miller

Author:Calvin Miller [Calvin Miller]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012000
ISBN: 9781441242297
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2013-08-14T00:00:00+00:00

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Four out of every ten non-churchgoing Americans (37 percent) said they avoid churches because of negative past experiences in churches or with church people.

Barna Newsletter[6]

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His first major crusade was not to come for another ten years, but his reputation was set by the Hearst machine. All of the Graham era was fed by video and electronics as his sermons were broadcast on radio and television. The era prepared the church for the video rise of the gospel, though the computers that drove it were yet to be born. And it wasn’t just the telecast that ushered in the new era. Publishing joined the effort, first with the Hearst media machine and then with magazines. This landed Graham on the cover of Time in 1954, and from that point on a dramatic reportage began. The major glory of the Graham years was the ecumenical spirit of the crusades. Pastors and leaders of every denomination were as taken with Graham as Hearst had been. The use of telecast and publicity came in full force.

I do not list the Graham years as the beginning of evangelical decline—certainly anything but that. But the declining enthusiasm that the crusades began to experience toward the end of the twentieth century seemed to create a waning of the ecumenical force they earlier exuded. It was also unfortunate that Graham’s rise to popularity was eclipsed by the beginning of the decline in old-line denominations. In the swelling years of Graham’s success, Methodists, Presbyterians, American Lutherans, and finally even Missouri Synod Lutherans and Southern Baptists (riddled by their own inner strife) contributed to the decline.

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