Billy Graham's Mission Improbable

By Richard N. Ostling

Across the U.S.S.R. the evangelist preaches "peace with God"

Wiping flowing tears from his cheeks with a handkerchief, the pastor of Leningrad's lone Baptist church looked down at his packed congregation last week as he welcomed the evening's special preacher. "We know what difficulties you faced in coming here, Billy Graham," said Piotr Konovalchik. "We rejoice that you are with us tonight." Many young women in the choir, clad in orange dresses and white headbands, wept along with him. As Graham quietly thanked Konovalchik, a clergyman who had come from Moscow strode to the pulpit to offer a prayer: "You shed your blood for Russia too, O Lord. We pray that a surge of revival may start in this house of ours."

It was the emotional high point of the first leg of the American evangelist's most improbable mission since he went on the road for God 39 years ago: his first evangelistic tour of the Soviet Union, a country zealously committed to the extirpation of all belief. Commented Graham en route to Leningrad: "I look on it as remarkable that I am here at all, preaching." Lenin would no doubt have agreed.

Graham, 65, had been pointing for this evangelical undertaking since 1959, when he made his first trip to the U.S.S.R. During a quick visit to Moscow's huge Lenin Stadium, he recalls, "I bowed my head and prayed that God would one day open the door and let me preach the Gospel in Russia." In more recent years he has preached in Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, but always with a Soviet mission in mind. Then in 1982 he attended a Moscow peace conference and stirred one of the biggest flaps of lis career. He made remarks to reporters that downplayed the severity of Soviet religious repression, causing him to be charged throughout the West with naivete or, worse, appeasement. Graham rode out the storm unrepentantly while he and his aides worked on the painstaking negotiations for this month's mission.

It is hardly the sort of patented Graham "crusade" that so many nations of the world have witnessed. No billboards beckoned audiences, no hippodromes were booked. But in Leningrad, at least, he got permission to put up loudspeakers for overflow crowds, despite Soviet laws that forbid any evangelism outside church walls. Inside the Leningrad Baptist hall, every inch of pew and aisle space was packed by the 2,000 worshipers, including a healthy number of teenagers. Two participants said they had traveled 2,000 miles from Central Asia for the event. Outside, dozens of people listened to Graham on the loudspeakers while a cold drizzle turned to heavy rain. In Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, a remarkable overflow of 3,000 people stood in the streets outside the Baptist church. There were no loudspeakers this time, and police dispersed two-thirds of the devout. This week Graham moves on to Novosibirsk, the major city in Siberia, and completes the tour in Moscow.

Translated phrase by phrase by interpreters supplied by the host churches, Graham's sermons were generally familiar, but the words had special power in the context of militant state atheism: "Jesus Christ is not dead on the Cross. He is a living Christ. He can come to your person. He can come to your family. He can come to your great country." This time there was no propaganda harvest for Radio Moscow.

Instead, Graham sought to assure the Soviets that Americans and President Reagan desire peace. But he consistently and deftly attached his hopes for world peace to the need for divine intervention -- in his oft-used phrase, "peace with God."

The evangelist is meeting beleaguered Jewish leaders and speaking in Russian Orthodox cathedrals and churches that have rarely allowed Protestants in the pulpit. At Leningrad's Orthodox Academy, Graham offered advice to 1,000 seminarians and priests. Without directly citing Soviet restrictions, he said, "In some societies you cannot go out and preach the Gospel. What do you do?" His answer: "We must wear the fruit of the Spirit, so that people, when they see how we live, will be drawn to the Spirit within us." Christianity has survived atheist taunts, he said, "because the Gospel has its own power to change human lives." But when six youths bravely held aloft crude banners protesting the jailing of Soviet Christians, Graham made no public acknowledgment.

The evangelist's words are likely to be heard by more than those who came to see him; surreptitious cassette recorders will doubtless give his sermons wide distribution among Soviets. Graham also took note of how difficult it is for Soviets to display their faith. In his usual appeal for public commitments to Jesus Christ, he asked his Baptist listeners in Leningrad to raise their hands. Despite the presence of KGB plainclothesmen with cameras, two dozen people did so. A parishioner later explained poignantly why more did not respond: "You Americans live in freedom. Our arms are always pressed down to our sides. We are like prisoners. It is hard for us to lift our souls to God." -- By Richard N. Ostling. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof /Moscow

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof