MAUREEN BUNYAN: New York City has been the site of major religious activities this summer. On August 15th, more than 40,000 people came to Central Park to hear the Dalai Lama teach about compassion, tolerance, and nonviolence.Last weekend also marked the conclusion of a six-week-long gospel crusade in Madison Square Garden. The ambitious project was led by a controversial evangelist from South Africa, Rodney Howard-Browne. Kim Lawton reports.
(Excerpt from Good News New York promotional video)
KIM LAWTON: Evangelist Rodney Howard-Browne says his Good News New York campaign began with a dream, a dream in which Billy Graham told him to go to The Big Apple.(Excerpt from Good News New York promotional video)
LAWTON: Teams of street evangelists hit the city carrying out the dream. They held concerts and distributed 200 tons of food. The project's centerpiece: nightly gospel meetings at Madison Square Garden.
Mr. RODNEY HOWARD-BROWNE (Good News New York): Heaven, yes; hell, no.
LAWTON: It was a risky move for the colorful and controversial 38-year-old evangelist, who was born in South Africa and moved to the U.S. in 1987. He has a large following among America's estimated 20 million to 25 million charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, who emphasize supernatural demonstrations of the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues. But Howard-Browne is little known outside that community.
Mr. BILLY GRAHAM (From 1957): I am asking you to give your life to Christ.LAWTON: In 1957, Billy Graham filled the old Madison Square Garden to capacity night after night in a 16-week-long crusade. But times have changed.
By any standards, a six-week-long campaign in New York in Madison Square Garden was an ambitious undertaking. Facility costs alone were $3.2 million. Another major challenge was trying to fill the garden's 19,000 seats.
That proved difficult. Big-name guests brought temporary surges in the numbers, but on many nights, the audience did not reach 3,000. Howard-Browne admits he was disappointed, but says he's still pleased more than 48,000 people made decisions to follow Jesus. The final price tag of the event is expected to be more than $7 million.Mr. HOWARD-BROWNE: What's the cost, really, when you think about it? It's really nothing. We must do whatever we can and however we can to reach our lost and dying world.
Unidentified Woman: He's like this all the time.
Mr. HOWARD-BROWNE: The Bible often talks about the Holy Spirit as being the new wine. Well, when people get filled with the spirit, they get filled with the new wine. And so they will come into our meetings to drink. And I, being the one in charge, I'm the tender of the bar, and I just jokingly say I'm the holiest bartender.
Mr. HANK HANEGRAAFF (Author, COUNTERFEIT REVIVAL): He is a classic example of a guy who works people into an altered state of consciousness, employs peer pressure, the expectations of people, the subtle power of suggestion, so that people become hypersuggestible, willing to believe virtually anything that enters their minds, no matter how mundane or outlandish.
Professor HARVEY COX (Harvard Divinity School): They often say political movements in America always have to come towards the center in order to attract a following. This may be true of revivalism, too. And we may see this happening now among Pentecostals.
BUNYAN: This week, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association released a statement to us expressing concern about Rodney Howard-Browne's use of Billy Graham's name in connection with the Good News New York campaign. The association said it did not endorse the Good News New York project and emphasized that it has not participated in any way with Howard-Browne's movement.
