Carl and Harold and Billy

Billy Graham’s death (and his funeral on March 2) ends an era of evangelical revival that took off at the 1949 crusade in Los Angeles.

But another side of Graham, which many obituaries missed, comes in Owen Strachan’s 2015 book, Awakening the Evangelical Mind: An Intellectual History of the Neo-Evangelical Movement. It’s a challenge to Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Strachan traces the lives of Boston pastor Harold Ockenga and Christianity Today Editor Carl Henry and how they pursued the lordship of Christ for higher education.

Billy Graham worked behind the scenes to help his two older friends pursue this unusual vision for Christ’s kingship over the world of colleges and universities. The academic world has its own subculture and customs, and Ockenga and Henry thought this world needed Jesus Christ just as much as the homeless men at a rescue mission.

They were swimming upstream against both the secularism of the intellectual world and an anti-intellectual bent among many Christians of the early 20th century. Billy Sunday, for example, was the Billy Graham of an earlier era, preaching in small towns, then in big cities after being a star base-stealing player in big-league baseball. Sunday was influential politically and socially but never had Graham’s ambitions for the academic world. “I don’t know any more about theology than a jack-rabbit does about ping-pong, but I’m on the way to glory,” he declared.

Graham never needed to be center stage in Ockenga’s and Henry’s efforts, as they launched a magazine and started Fuller Seminary on the West Coast and Gordon-Conwell Seminary near Boston. They encouraged young people to pursue doctorates to bring the influence of Christ to bear on an academic world that scoffed at the claims of Christ and the Bible.

Graham was often included in the middle of their efforts, lending his time, talent, and treasure, which included friendships with wealthy and influential business and political leaders across the country. The book sums up the trio’s accomplishments this way: “Led by pastor Harold Ockenga, theologian Carl F.H. Henry, and evangelist Billy Graham, the neo-evangelicals championed a freshly intellectual and culturally engaged brand of evangelicalism that broke with the separationist, preeminently defensive program of fundamentalism.”

Whether they were starting seminaries or a magazine, or helping a young student figure out where to get a doctorate, Graham’s name was often in the middle of their correspondence and counsel as Ockenga and Henry tried to renew the idea of a Christian mind.

Henry had an even more expansive vision for a Christian university that would have the academic standards of Harvard and strong personal piety. They thought young believers should see higher education as a mission field just as important as the countries that had heard little of the gospel.

Of course not all their visions and dreams came true, especially the university idea. Baylor University may come closest in recent years to what they were seeking.

They did much to encourage a little army of believers to take intellectual life seriously and obtain the credentials to serve in the academic world. Strachan’s book outlines their wins and losses and their remarkable influence and progress. “Graham, contrary to popular opinion, did not want only spiritual revival of the heart,” writes Strachan. “He wanted it spread to the mind.”

In this story Graham showed not just the capacity for a big vision for Christ’s kingdom but also the heart of a servant leader. He helped his friends with these projects and never needed to be in the limelight or take credit for what was being accomplished.

Billy Graham was the greatest evangelist of his generation. What helped him achieve that remarkable stature was his character as a servant leader.