Religion: Billy at the Golden Gate

Billy Graham set out this week to narrow the gap between the Golden and the pearly gates. He kicked off his six-week San Francisco evangelistic crusade at the 16,500-seat Cow Palace in a glow of promising statistics. The 1,175 participating ministers have reserved 250,000 seats for the crusade—more than in any city but Glasgow. Instead of the expected 2,500 volunteers for counselor training in the whole Bay area, a whopping 5,100 came.

But Billy will need all the help he can get, and he knows it. “Statistics about San Francisco indicate that it is one of the most spiritually needy cities in the country,” he said last week. “It has three times the suicide rate of any other major city in the country. It ranks high in alcoholism and in the consumption of alcohol. One out of two of its marriages end in divorce, which is a much higher rate than the national average. There are only 40,000 Protestants* in San Francisco [pop. 814,000], and it has probably the lowest church attendance of any major city in the U.S.”

*Local Protestant sources estimate only 5,000 more church members than Graham did. The Roman Catholic Church claims at least 100,000 Sunday worshippers.