About this book

This book is a product of years of researching, working in various archives, interviewing key participants, and compiling pieces from wealth of books, magazines, and newspapers into one fascinating story. This almost half a century long story started at the beginning of Billy Graham’s evangelistic ministry in 1949 and lasted until almost the end of his international outreach in 1993.

It connects many dots into one big picture. Those are stories that include the rise of “yellow press,” “America First” isolationism, media-driven wars, man-made starvation in the USSR, recovery from the great depression and suppression of reporting on Soviet human rights violations, waves of Soviet religious persecution, the saga of the Siberian Seven who spent five years in the US Embassy in Moscow, Cold War and arms reduction, the Soviet “Peace Offensive” strategy, decline and fall of the Soviet Union and America’s attempts to preserve it from falling apart, the rise of public evangelism in the USSR, and more. You will learn how Billy Graham became a national celebrity, how he tried to evangelize the USSR since 1947, his conflict with a religious rights advocate from Great Britain Michael Bourdeaux of the Oxford-based Keston College, his tensions with Reagan administration, and how he turned tables on the Soviet propaganda machine.

This is a story of struggles, fears, controversies, failures, successes, and of the final triumph of the Cross over the Hammer and Sickle.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction 1
  2. How Anti-communism Helped Billy Graham Become Famous 4
    1. A Star in the Making 4
    2. The Kiss of Hearst 6
    3. Graham’s Preaching Against Communism in 1949 31
    4. Conclusion 46
  3. The Change of Tune 50
    1. Departure From Fundamentalism 50
    2. Billy Graham and the End of McCarthyism 63
    3. Failed Attempts to Come to the USSR 65
    4. Conclusion 70
  4. The First Visit to Moscow in 1959 73
    1. Anticipating an Invitation 73
    2. Coming as a Tourist 74
    3. Conclusion 88
  5. The Siberian Seven and Persecution of Christians in the USSR 91
    1. Religious Persecution in the USSR Before and During the 1960s 95
    2. The Siberian Seven Saga 104
    3. Conclusion 128
  6. The Controversial Peace Conference of 1982 130
    1. The Soviet Peace Offensive 137
    2. Billy Graham and SALT II 143
    3. Billy Graham and the Reagan Administration 148
    4. The Moscow Visit Schedule 160
    5. The Peace Conference 171
    6. Graham’s Visit to the Siberians 173
    7. Graham’s Comments on Religious Freedom in the USSR 185
    8. Criticism of Graham’s Statements 197
    9. The Soviet Propaganda Overview 212
    10. The Playboy Quandary 217
    11. Graham’s Anti-Communism 220
    12. Results of the 1982 Visit 223
    13. Conclusion 226
  7. The Preaching Tours of 1984 and 1988 237
    1. The 1984 Trip to the USSR 237
    2. The 1000th Anniversary Celebration and the Preaching Tour of 1988 254
    3. Conclusion 282
  8. The School of Evangelism and the Crusade 288
    1. The 1991 School of Evangelism and the Fall of the Soviet Union 292
    2. The Moscow Crusade of 1992 318
    3. Conclusion 343
  9. Epilogue 347

Photos and Videos

This section will help put some faces to the names and events described in the book.

Timeline

1949

Los Angeles CrusadeSource: BGEA

1959

Coming to Moscow as a touristSource: BGEA

1978

The Siberian Seven enter the US embassySource: Baylor University

1982

Visit for a Peace ConferenceDecision Magazine

1984

Preaching tour in four citiesCredit: VCC

1988

Millennium Celebration of Baptism of Kievan RusCredit: BGEA

1991

Moscow School of evangelismCredit: VCC

1992

Moscow CrusadeCredit: Deceision Magazibe (Ru)

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Author

Anatoliy Orgunov

Born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine, during the communist rule, Anatoliy Orgunov became a Christian in the Spring of 1992, right after the USSR fell and Ukraine became an independent state. While serving in Ukrainian military, by God’s providence, he got a chance to attend a remote broadcast of Billy Graham’s 1992 Moscow crusade in one of Kyiv’s sports arenas. After moving to the US in 2001, he led a small congregation in Jacksonville, FL, for roughly 12 years while getting his B.S. degree in Ministry Studies from the Baptist College of Florida. In January 2014, he moved to Fort Worth, TX, to study at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he earned his M.Div. in Biblical Studies and Ph.D. in Church Vitalization and Preaching. As a part of his study, he conducted extensive research on Billy Graham’s ministry in the former Soviet Union before and during the unprecedented revival of the early 1990s in Ukraine and Russia. One of the archives, where he worked on this project was the Archive and Research Center at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, of which he was the first researcher. The research resulted in this book.

Anatoliy Orgunov Ph.D.