Overview
Billy Graham's ministry is often described as a quintessentially American success story. However, by 1954, Billy Graham was bigger news in London than in Texas. Altar Call explores how Graham's encounters and perception in Europe shaped what was from the beginning on an international ministry. Graham was responsible for an unparalleled transformation of US evangelicalism in the second half of the twentieth century. He is also remembered as America's pastor-in-chief, having met with every US President since Harry S. Truman. But Graham's path to triumph was paved abroad. The revival meetings Graham held in London, Berlin, and New York in the 1950s provided lively fora for ministers, politicians, and ordinary Christians to imagine and experience the future of faith, the role of religion in the Cold War, and the intersections between faith and consumer culture in new ways. Graham challenged believers and religious leaders alike to re-position religion amidst the rise of consumerism, moral post-war regeneration, and cold-war tensions. At this confluence of anxieties and desires across the Atlantic, Graham's ministry revealed remarkably similar needs among the faithful and those yearning for renewal. It is the responses of Church leaders to this need, rather than inherent differences in religious sensitivities, that helps to explain the divergent paths to secularization between the US and its European allies, Germany and the UK.
Full Product Details
Author: Uta A. Balbier (Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, King's College London)
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:
Width: 24.10cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 16.40cm
Weight: 0.535kg
ISBN: 9780197502259
ISBN 10: 0197502253
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 29 April 2022
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
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Reviews
This engaging history will be of significant use to anyone studying 20th-century evangelicalism. -- CHOICE
By presenting a sound transnational analysis of religion, participating in the continuing debate about the state of Western European Christianity in the 1950s, and deploying innovative methodologies to assess the importance of Billy Graham's visits to Europe, Uta A. Balbier's book deserves much praise. Scholars who wish to better understand the early postwar period will find Altar Call in Europe an illuminating read with its focus on the tensions (and also affinities) between consumerism and faith and the importance of Christian rhetoric in the early days of the Cold War. * Michael E. O'Sullivan, translated from H-Soz-Kult von * This engaging history will be of significant use to anyone studying 20th-century evangelicalism. * CHOICE * In terms of methodology and source bases, Balbier has the linguistic skills to access many untapped German sources: newspapers, books, and archives. This was a massive boon to her project, which has heartily contributed to the field of Billy Graham studies. Any reader interested in 1950s and 1960s European evangelism, lived religion and consumerism, Christian organizational development, or Billy Graham should pay serious attention to this study. * Ian S. Wilson, European Journal of American Studies *
Author Information
Uta A. Balbier is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at King's College London where she is teaching classes on American cultural and religious history. Before joining King's, she was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington DC.
