When Karol Wojtyla stepped out on the Vatican balcony on October 16, 1978, as the new Pope John Paul II, waving to the crowds in St. Peter's Square on the first day of his auspicious papacy, the person preaching for him in his home pulpit back in Krakow, Poland, was none other than Billy Graham.

. . . the man who would be pope was already overseeing a radical partnership between a Polish Catholic youth renewal movement popularly known as Oasis and the American evangelical ministry Campus Crusade for Christ.

. . . When 27,000 Oasis pilgrims showed up for their retreats the next summer, what they experienced was a strange unabashed mix of Polish Catholicism—Marian devotion included—and American evangelical revivalism.

. . . While some might wonder whether Campus Crusade was theologically naïve, the same could not be imagined of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School professor Norman Geisler, whom Hinkson recruited as guest speaker for the Polish summer retreats. After returning from Poland, Geisler wrote of his trip in The Christian Herald: "What I experienced was a dynamic, joyous, Christian, and evangelistic community of believers who were more eager than most American evangelicals I know to learn and live the Word of God." Geisler described that summer as the most gratifying experience of his then 25-year ministry.

In January 1978 Blachnicki came to America to visit Bill Bright at Campus Crusade's headquarters in Arrowhead Springs, California. Bright probed Blachnicki about the usual evangelical concerns: "I asked him," Bright remembered, "What about the Virgin Mary? What about praying to the saints? … He gave me answers which for one with my background were satisfying and amazing."

Except for a "few fine points," Bright concluded, "there was basically no difference between what he believed and what I believed." Little more than a decade later, in 1994, Bright was one of the signers of Evangelicals and Catholics Together (ECT)—a statement of shared convictions by 40 Protestant and Catholic leaders. Bright attributed his support to his personal confidence in the spiritual authenticity of Catholic reformers like Wojtyla and Blachnicki, a trust that was established through their history of working together.

. . . The late pope had seen how mass mobilization centered on a conservative piety could accelerate church renewal. Later he approached the challenges of his papacy with the same mix of traditional spirituality and popular mobilization.

In this respect, John Paul II was not all that different from Bill Hybels or Rick Warren. He tried to harness the forms of popular culture to conservative piety in order to to reinvigorate the church.

Last edited on Thu Nov 29th, 2007 07:43 pm by Dave Armstrong