Living Religion

Abstract

The chapter explores the everyday contributions of ordinary Christians to the running of Graham’s crusades. In forming prayer groups and organizing bus rides, ordinary Christians blurred the boundaries between private religiosity and public mass evangelism, as well as between the religious and the secular. They filled the organizational structures implemented by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association with life and by doing so turned the crusades into a powerful force of renewal for local churches and everyday religious life in London, Berlin, and New York. Women played a crucial role in this everyday running of the crusade machine. Religious practices such as prayer and pilgrimages traveled with Billy Graham and crossed the national boundaries between the different organizing committees. Organized prayer turned into a dynamic form of transnational communication that tied different crusade audiences together and became the cornerstone of Graham’s international ministry.