Source: (consider it)
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Thread: 16th June 1966 - I was there
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Phil the Bear
Shipmate
# 10464
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Posted
I had a tweet which stated that Cliff Richard 'came out' at the Billy Graham Crusade on 16th June 1966. By coincidence I was there.
Anyone else want to own up to that?
-------------------- Phil the Bear ------------------------------------ It's not the same thing at all
Posts: 174 | From: Southampton | Registered: Sep 2005
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
'Came out' as what precisely? Generally followed by 'of the closet'.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Am I correct in understanding that that particular Billy Graham crusade was later viewed as some sort of landmark event in the history of modern British Christianity?
I had a book a few years back which contained a chapter that seemed to be arguing that, but I lost my copy before getting to said chapter.
-------------------- I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
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PD
Shipmate
# 12436
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Posted
It certainly put a bomb under the Evangelical Movement in the Church of England. The 1967 Keele Conference is regarded as something of a turning point in the modern history of Anglican Evangelicalism.
PD
-------------------- Roadkill on the Information Super Highway!
My Assorted Rantings - http://www.theoldhighchurchman.blogspot.com
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ArachnidinElmet
Shipmate
# 17346
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Posted
I have a friend who traces her adult Christian faith (brought up CoE, drifted in teenage years) to that event. She was, and is, a big Cliff fan. It was a massive deal to her to hear him state on stage what and why he believed.
-------------------- 'If a pleasant, straight-forward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres' - Kafka
Posts: 1887 | From: the rhubarb triangle | Registered: Sep 2012
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Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
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Posted
quote: Originally posted by Firenze: 'Came out' as what precisely? Generally followed by 'of the closet'.
As publically Christian. It's a hazardous and inappropriate phrase to choose these days as it's usually used in a different context. One suspects that the tweeter referred to in the OP has misunderstood how language was used in 1966 and what anyone then was likely to say.
-------------------- Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Rumour has it that our church was the first one that Billy Graham ever preached in in England.
-------------------- Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
And a brief Google hitns that might might be true. Apparentl;y Billy Graham's first preaching tour of Britain and Ireland was in the winter of 1946/47, speaking for Youth for Christ at various meetings mostly in hired halls. And our then vicar, who was called Tom Livermore, was involved with YFC and invited Graham to preach at an evening service. So we might well have been the first church he preached at in England, and were almost certainly the first Anglican one. Livermore and others then went on to organise the Harringey evaqngelisit campaign, which was the really big one.
Not that I'd remember, as all this happened ten years before I was born and forty years before I moved to the area.
-------------------- Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Phil the Bear
Shipmate
# 10464
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Posted
It was, in fact, Cliff 'coming out' as Christian, having suppressed the fact, presumably, because of possible damage to his image as a pop singer.
It was front page news on many a paper the following day. I can honestly say that the actual 'service' was monumentally boring (my main memory being of an aged American gentlemen who rendered "How Great Thou Art" at interminable length) interrupted less by Cliff's 'revelation' and more by the buckets that were passed round for the collection - which seemed to be going for at least half the time.
I went to 3 of the services (if that's what they were). Cliff's was the first. I went with a girlfriend to a second and at the third took part in an anti-Vietnam war demo (Graham was reputed to be financed by the American arms industry). The third was the most painful, largely because of the rough-housing of the evangelical stewards!
-------------------- Phil the Bear ------------------------------------ It's not the same thing at all
Posts: 174 | From: Southampton | Registered: Sep 2005
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