THE American evangelist Billy Graham began his 1955 Scottish crusade with a surprise Sunday-morning trip to a church in Glasgow’s Hyndland Street, on March 20, and he ended it, in the closing days of April, with open-air rallies at Ibrox stadium and Hampden Park, the latter in front of a congregation of 100,000, perhaps the largest in Scottish church history.

Speaking to journalists on Sunday, May 1, just before he returned home, Graham said his All-Scotland Crusade had been the largest evangelistic effort in history. More than 2.5 million people had attended crusade meetings and relay services, and more than 50,000 “decisions for Christ” had been recorded, he said. The six weeks had been “amazing”. It was beyond anything that he had ever imagined, and was indicative of a great spiritual hunger in Scotland. There had, he conceded, been accusations of showmanship, but showmanship did not affect the people in the little towns to which the services were relayed: they had not a person to see, but only a voice to hear.

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Graham’s visit prompted a debate at Glasgow University Union, at which a motion “that this House considers Billy Graham to be an undesirable immigrant” was rejected by 190 votes to 187.

The Rev Dr Nevile Davidson told Glasgow Cathedral that one of the most remarkable things that Graham had achieved was to make religion, at least for a few weeks, the main talking-point in Scotland.

The Billy Graham website, incidentally, describes the experience of a Fraserburgh man, then aged just 19, who stepped off a bus, intending to see a movie, but was instead drawn to a church, where a crowd was listening to a relay broadcast. Struck by a “powerful atmosphere”, he gave his life to Christ that night.