By Sue Cyre
Many people describe our nation as post-Christian. Cultural values based on Judeo-Christian teachings are being attacked and rejected. More commonly, they are ignored. Many of our young people have no first-hand knowledge of Christian faith. Their knowledge comes largely from the media, which is often hostile to Christianity.
Recently I browsed through the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, NC. It was filled with video clips and photographs of many of Graham’s crusades. The crusade in Seoul, Korea, was attended by over a million people; the one in New York City by 250,000 people. Graham reached millions with the Gospel by coupling his warnings of God’s judgment of sin with God’s offer of salvation through the death of his Son, Jesus Christ. Thousands responded by giving their lives to Christ.
We don’t live in a Billy Graham world anymore
We don’t live in that world anymore. The people who attended Graham’s crusades had some memory of the biblical story of God’s mighty deeds in the history of Israel and through Jesus Christ. The story may have been suppressed by communist regimes or liberal skepticism, but the story remained, however dormant, in many hearts and minds.
Unlike earlier generations, many of today’s youth have no knowledge of Christianity except for the caricatures presented in the media. Try typing “Christians are” into Google and you’ll discover that it yields: “annoying, mean, deluded, judgmental, weird, wrong.”
Read more at http://www.theologymatters.com/TNG%20101015.pdf
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I attended the first event at Texas Stadium in the early ‘70s: Not a Dallas Cowboys game (the artificial turf wasn’t down yet), but a Billy Graham crusade. Thirty-odd years later, I watched the demolition of the stadium. As this article notes, a lot changed during that time with regard to the percentage of Americans receptive to – or even aware of – Graham’s message. From Christian to “post-Christian” in 30 or 40 years – just half a lifetime? It’s sobering to ponder what the next half a lifetime might bring.