Billy Graham
Evangelist whose tent campaign in Los Angeles in 1949 brought him national attention. He preached to mass meetings on the authority of “The Bible says” and helped to found the magazine Christianity Today in 1956.
Graham led the Christ for Greater Los Angeles campaign from 25 September to 20 November 1949, which drew the attention of the national press (Billy Graham Center Archives, Into the Big Tent, Select chronology). He wrote in 1956 that six weeks before it he had settled his doubts about the Bible by accepting it in faith as the word of God, and that from then on his preaching rested on the words “The Bible says” (Graham, Biblical Authority in Evangelism (1956) A word of confession; Preaching from the Bible). The Wheaton College archives trace the founding of Christianity Today to his discussions with L. Nelson Bell in 1954 (Wheaton College Archives, Finding ‘A Clear Voice’ (2021)). See Billy Graham and Postwar Evangelicalism.
In the timeline
- 25 September 1949, firm dateBilly Graham and Postwar Evangelicalism
An eight-week tent campaign in Los Angeles in the autumn of 1949 makes the evangelist Billy Graham known across the United States. In 1956 he and the theologian Carl Henry launch the magazine Christianity Today as a voice for evangelical Christianity.
- 16–25 July 1974, firm dateThe Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization
In July 1974 some 2,700 evangelical Christians from more than 150 nations meet at Lausanne. Their covenant, drafted under John Stott, commits them to world evangelization and affirms that evangelism and social responsibility are both Christian duties.