popularization of the gospel. So did the New York Protestant Council of Churches, which officially sponsored Graham's effort. Indeed, far from being crucified, Graham was lionized by New Yorkers as diverse as Ogden Reid, Henry Luce, Ed Sullivan, and Walter Winchell. The crusade lasted ninety-seven days.
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If Professors Bell, Lipset, and Glazer had taken account of Graham's popularity, they might have concurred in Niebuhr's critique but drawn a different moral. Perhaps they would have discerned that bravura radicalism had become a hollow shell even among most Protestant theological conservatives who, along with their worldly counterparts, were dealing with technical problemsorganizing revivals, for exampleinstead of dreaming chiliastic dreams. In short, they probably would have concluded that fervent fundamentalism also could be absorbed into the American religious and political consensus.
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They would have been partly and temporarily correct. As Professor William G. McLoughlin wrote, Graham's New York campaign was a broad "pep rally" for Americanism. Yet Graham, Carl Henry of Christianity Today, and their fellow moderating evangelicals did not constitute all of the theological right. As Graham attracted national attention while moving toward the religious center, Jerry Falwell, a fundamentalist separate Baptist, began to build the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Nor need we look below the Mason-Dixon line for embryonic signs of the second fundamentalist controversy that would erupt in the 1970s. While Graham filled Yankee Stadium, Pat Robertson sat under a Modigliani print in his living room on Staten Island, sipping Courvoisier with his Catholic wife, and searching for the meaning of life he would ultimately find in a politically conservative Pentecostal ministry.
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This point deserves emphasis since in some respects the religious and political situations in the late 1980s resembled those of the late 1950s. Once again, Protestant theological conservatives, recently regarded by cosmopolitans as a serious threat to the American way. are losing influence on the national scene. Major spokesmen for the theological and political right have been indicted (Jim Bakker), disgraced (Jimmy Swaggart), defeated (Pat Robertson), or worn down (Jerry Falwell) In this environment, cosmopolitan commentators
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