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The Myth of Influence
W. Robert Godfrey
First published in Modern Reformation, September/October
1998, Volume 7, Number 5 In the March 7, 1998, issue of the
Los Angeles Times, the “Religion” section featured an article
entitled, “L.A.-Area Seminary Teachers Gather to Ponder the
Truth.” For the fourth year, the Skirball Institute on American
Values drew five seminaries together for discussion: St. John’s
Seminary of the Los Angeles Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic
Church, Hebrew Union College of Reform Judaism, the University
of Judaism of Conservative Judaism, Claremont School of Theology
with liberal Protestant connections, and Fuller Theological
Seminary with evangelical roots. The article quotes several
participants on the positive character of the meeting. The
comments of the moderator, Donald Miller of the University of
Southern California, captured the spirit of the news report:
“There is more similarity of religious views among what Miller
called ‘progressive’ Jews, Catholics and Protestants than there
is between orthodox and progressive believers within each
faith.” The article quoted faculty members from each of the
participating schools except Fuller. The presence of Fuller at
such a gathering and the absence of a quotation in the article
from one of its faculty set me thinking. I do not know what
Fuller faculty said at the meeting or what the actual character
of the discussion was. I do know that the article leaves the
impression that Fuller faculty feel closer to progressive Roman
Catholics, Jews, and Protestants than they do to conservative
Protestants. As I reflected on this article’s impact on its
readers, a phrase I had often contemplated came again to mind:
the myth of influence. I could easily imagine a discussion at
Fuller when the invitation to this meeting arrived. Surely
someone said, “We should go. We can be an influence.” But
judging solely from the article, what was the influence? Not
that Fuller had advanced the cause of Christian truth, but that
Fuller agreed with a variety of theological liberals. For a
long time, I have felt that the cause of biblical Christianity
has been undermined in our time by sincere people who engage in
unbiblical activities for the sake of being an influence. The
sad and ironic result of those actions has been harm to the
cause of Christ and little or no good influence has actually
occurred. The myth of influence seduces Christians into
believing that by compromising important theological truths more
people can be influenced for Christ. Now I am not opposed to
the idea of trying to be an influence. The Christian community
should not isolate itself from discussion with anyone or from
common action with non-Christians where the faith is not
compromised. Christians should hope, pray, and work to be a
godly influence wherever they can in this world. Christians need
to recognize that certain kinds of compromise can be
appropriate. Christians and non-Christians can unite to oppose
abortion, for example. And Baptists, Reformed, and Lutherans can
join the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals to promote some
basic truths of the Reformation. The danger comes, however,
when Christians adopt a notion of influence derived from the
world of politics or business. That world sees influence in
relation to power, money, numbers, and success. Compromise,
cooperation, and intentional ambiguity are all methods used to
achieve influence in this world. But should Christians adopt
strategies and set goals that compromise basic elements of their
faith in the name of influence? Let me offer two examples to
try to clarify the dangers of the myth of influence. The first
relates to the ministry of Billy Graham. Billy Graham began his
ministry amidst the American fundamentalism of the 1940s. In the
early days he had strong support from fundamentalists like Bob
Jones, Sr. and John R. Rice. In 1951 Graham wrote, “we do not
condone nor have fellowship with any form of Modernism,” a
position that he reiterated to Rice in 1955.
(1) Yet by the New York City crusade in
1957 that position had clearly changed. Graham has defended his
more cooperative approach to evangelism in these terms:
My own position was that we should be willing to work
with all who were willing to work with us. Our message was
clear, and if someone with a radically different theological
view somehow decided to join with us in a Crusade that
proclaimed Christ as the way of salvation, he or she was the
one who was compromising personal convictions, not we.
(2)
The problem, however, was not just that Graham increasingly
had liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics on his platform and
committees, but that he sent inquirers back to those churches.
The crusades for a long time (perhaps from the beginning) had
sent inquirers who had any kind of church connection back to the
churches from which they came. By 1951 inquirers with no church
connection at all were referred to a church chosen by a
“designations committee” of local ministers.
(3) Graham faced the problem that all
itinerant evangelists face, namely how to relate their work to
the churches. He clearly wanted to cooperate with churches and
not compete with them. From the earliest crusades he urged those
who had made decisions: “Above all, go to church.”
(4) He has written,
Our third concern [in 1948] was the tendency of many
evangelists to carry on their work apart from the local
church, even to criticize local pastors and churches openly
and scathingly. We were convinced, however, that this was
not only counterproductive but also wrong from the Bible’s
standpoint. We were determined to cooperate with all who
would cooperate with us in the public proclamation of the
Gospel, and to avoid an antichurch or anti-clergy attitude.
(5)
In recalling preparations for the Los Angeles crusade of 1949
he commented, “My limited experience had already shown me that
without the cooperation of the local churches and their pastors,
not only would attendance suffer but so would the follow-up of
new Christians.” (6) As a matter of
conviction, he wanted his work to serve the churches, but he
also wanted to be an influence by having many churches involved
and having large numbers attend the meetings. Cooperation with
liberal Protestants and Roman Catholics was designed to increase
the influence of the ministry with the aim of seeing more people
converted. Undoubtedly, Billy Graham was utterly sincere in
his pursuit of converts to Christ and in his belief that his
strategy was the most effective and influential to that end. But
had he been deceived by the myth of influence? Certainly many
thousands have attended crusades that would not otherwise have
attended. Certainly individuals have been converted at his
meetings. Certainly his decisions to be cooperative have
contributed to his status as a national icon and friend of
presidents. But has it made him more effective in actually
preaching the Gospel and making disciples of Jesus Christ? I
believe that from a human perspective more genuine disciples
over the years would have been made if he had directed inquirers
away from liberal and Roman Catholic churches into biblical
Protestant churches. A second example of the dangers of the
myth of influence is the recent statements “Evangelicals and
Catholics Together” and “The Gift of Salvation.” These two
statements have been examined in the pages of this magazine and
I do not want to revisit the theological problems in them.
Rather, I want to observe that the evangelical participants in
the meetings that produced these statements joined in these
efforts out of a desire to be an influence for Christ. They
doubtlessly hoped that they would influence the Roman Catholic
participants—and perhaps the whole Roman Catholic Church—by
presenting the evangelical faith. They hoped that they could
forge an alliance with “born-again” Roman Catholics against the
unbelief and the immorality of our time. They believed that they
could have great influence for good by reaching a responsible
agreement with Roman Catholics. The evangelicals involved
almost certainly believe that they have succeeded beyond their
hopes. The Roman Catholics, we are told, have embraced a
statement that teaches justification by faith alone as taught by
the Reformers. What an influence! The analyses of these two
statements presented in this journal and elsewhere show that in
fact this admirable goal has not been reached. In fact, the
Roman Catholics have not really conceded anything new in the
statement and the evangelicals have embraced all Roman Catholics
as brothers and sisters in Christ, something very new for
evangelicals. Many other examples of the myth of influence
could be mentioned. The church growth movement, for example, has
eviscerated Christian worship in the name of evangelism. On a
smaller scale, think of a pastor praying in public and not using
the name of Jesus so as not to give offense. But the baleful
effects of the myth of influence are everywhere. What leads so
many evangelicals to accept the myth? Part of the motivation is
the American fascination with respectability, success, and
numbers. But such attitudes actually show that American
evangelicals have never really left behind their nineteenth
century postmillennialism. They still with great optimism look
forward to the restoration of the “Evangelical Empire” of the
last century. They dream of being again the “mainstream” of
American religion and culture as they were before the rise of
liberalism and the immigration of Roman Catholics. An even
deeper cause of the attraction of the myth of influence,
however, is theological. Evangelicals who succumb to the myth of
influence do so in part because of their own flawed theology.
They have developed theologies which depart from the rich
biblical theologies of the Reformation. Some evangelicals have
embraced the myth of influence out of an Arminian view of
salvation. Since salvation ultimately depends on the consent of
the free will, many theological compromises are justified in
order to gain a hearing and move the unbeliever. Other
evangelicals are motivated by a defective doctrine of the
church. They see the church, not as an essential institution in
God’s economy founded on and regulated by his Word, but as a
helpful support group for the individual Christian in his walk
of faith.
Both of these theological weaknesses surface in Billy Graham.
His Arminianism is clear. (7) His weak
doctrine of the church is seen in his sending inquirers back to
false churches—a fault that even he seems to recognize in his
setting up Bible study courses as part of the follow-up for the
inquirers. The most tragic consequence of the myth of
influence is that those who embrace it often end up being
influenced by the world rather than being a good influence on
the world. For example, Fuller Seminary in its efforts to be
more influential by moving beyond its own fundamentalist roots
(8) has abandoned basic evangelical
doctrines such as the inerrancy of Scripture. The evangelicals
who signed the agreements with the Roman Catholics have
undermined both their ability to witness prophetically to Roman
Catholics and the work of evangelical missions in places like
Latin America. Billy Graham in a recent interview with Robert
Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral sounded remarkably liberal:
Dr. Schuller: “What I hear you saying [is] that it’s possible
for Jesus Christ to come into a human heart and soul and life,
even if they’ve been born in darkness and have never had
exposure to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what
you’re saying?”
Dr. Graham: “Yes, it is, because I believe that. I’ve met people
in various parts of the world in tribal situations, that they
have never seen a Bible or heard about a Bible, and never heard
of Jesus, but they’ve believed in their hearts that there was a
God, and they tried to live a life that was quite apart from the
surrounding community in which they lived.”
Dr. Schuller: “This is fantastic. I’m so thrilled to hear you
say that. ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.’”
Dr. Graham: “There is. There definitely is.”
(9) The only way to dispel the myth
of influence is to commit ourselves anew to the importance of
biblical theology as the foundation for Christian action. We
must allow the Bible in its fullness to direct our thinking and
doing. We must remember that Paul did not preach an abbreviated
Gospel, but declared the whole counsel of God. When he said that
he became all things to all men, he was speaking of things
indifferent, not matters of basic Christian truth or ethics. He
did not become a prostitute to win prostitutes, nor did he
become an Arminian to win those addicted to the doctrines of the
goodness of man or the freedom of the will. We need to follow
the path of the Apostles and Reformers who accomplished great
things for God, not by ungodly compromise, but by faithful
declaration of the truth of God’s Word. This article
originally appeared in Modern Reformation, September/October
1998, Volume 7, Number 5 and has been reprinted with permission.
For more information, please visit
www.modernreformation.org or call (800) 890-7556. All Rights
Reserved.
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