This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline

theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president

of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

in Louisville, Kentucky.

Grant Wackers, the Gilbert T. Row Professor

of Christian History at Duke Divinity School.

He specializes in the history of evangelicalism. of Christian History at Duke Divinity School.

He specializes in the history of evangelicalism,

Pentecostalism, world missions,

and American Protestant thought.

A PhD graduate of Harvard University,

he's the author and co-editor of several books, including Heaven Below, Early Pentecostals

in American Culture.

His most recent book is America's Pastor, Billy Graham and The Shaping of a Nation.

Grant Wacker, welcome to thinking in public.

Grant, you begin this work on Billy Graham with a very personal anecdote suggesting

that both of you, in one sense sense had descended on New York City in the same time in 1957.

How did that come about?

Well, my parents were vacationing in New York and I grew up or they came from a small town in

southwest Missouri so this was a very big deal for us and then this was about halfway through his crusade and so this was a major event and I still

remember it because it was the first time I was ever in a meeting of that size.

...