Opposition To Graham Crusade Criticised

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31224, 23 November 1966, Page 16

Opposition To Graham Crusade Criticised

New Zealand church leaders “should be ashamed of themselves” in refusing to support a full Billy Graham crusade throughout the country, according to a Christchurch Baptist minister who works in California. He is the Rev. M. M. Betts, a former executive secretary of the Y.M.C.A. in Christchurch and youth director of the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church, who is visiting New Zealand after attending the World Congress on Evangelism in Germany last month. Theologians had no right to oppose the ideas of ordinary Christians at “the grass roots,” Mr Betts said. In spite of opposition from some Christians, especially Anglicans, he considered that the church should never put aside the “traditional ways of evangelism.” “I’m very distressed that many of the world’s theological leaders are ‘muddying the garden’ in reference to the proclamation of the gospel,” he said. Although theology had the job of rescuing Christianity from “the infantile Sunday school concept,” it should not destroy the simplicity of the gospel. Those who opposed Billy Graharft, who was “a statesman of the world,” did not fully understand the power of the gospel to change the individual, Mr Betts said. Billy Graham was recog-

nised as one of the “great spiritual geniuses of the age.” He had spoken to more people than any Christian in history, and was recognised, even by his opponents, as a good man. He believed that by changing the individual one changed the social structure. It was significant that in London today the churches which were "exceedingly strong” were those Anglican churches which had wholeheartedly supported Billy Graham in his recent crusade, Mr Betts said.