Religion: Anglican Evangelist

The intense, handsome man in the pulpit threw back his head and cried in a loud voice: “Oh Lord, uplift me—that I may uplift these others!”

For seven nights last week, in the vast, vaulted cavern of Manhattan’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, thousands of New Yorkers crowded in to get a feeling of the fear and hope and comfort of religion from the Rev. Bryan Green of Birmingham, England. Anglican Preacher Green was providing New York with a sight not seen there since the 1880s—a diocese-wide revival mission under the auspices of the Episcopal Church.

It was Episcopal-style evangelism, to be sure. There was no public testimony of the saved, no mourners’ bench nor sawdust trail, no Bible-banging nor marimba band. The middle-aged women and young people who came to hear Evangelist Green merely rose to their feet at the proper times or hunched forward in their cane-bottomed seats to pray. But when the week-long mission closed on Sunday night, Bryan Green’s audiences had totaled approximately 42,000—an average of about 6,000 a night. Such crowds carried an obvious inference: modern congregations might be ready for some good old-fashioned preaching from the pulpit.

“Some of you listening here tonight have got a storm, a conflict in your soul. Your religion doesn’t mean very much and you’re worried about it . . .”

Bryan Green (he is popularly referred to without the Rev. or Mr.) is considered England’s top evangelist. His success as a fisher of men lies perhaps in his combination of a relaxed, almost chatty delivery with a sudden-flaring, white-hot zeal. His manner is easy and urbane, but his matter is often passionate, personal, and contemptuous of easygoing Christianity. Man is either for God, he says, or against Him.

Many a New York Episcopal clergyman has been staggered by Green’s prodigious energy. Ever since he arrived last month, he has seemed to be everywhere at once in the teeming, 170-parish diocese. On the opening day of his mission, he thought nothing of preaching seven times in six different churches.

“I want complete silence throughout the cathedral at this moment when persons are being shown how to give their lives to God . . . It is simple to receive Christ . . . Will you open the door?” (For some 30 seconds Evangelist Green prays silently, his head in his hands.)

“Have you heard His voice? Have you opened the door? Has He come in? Will you thank Him for coming? Definitely say thank you to Him—say thank you, now.”