This posthumously published book by historian Edith Blumhofer resulted from her long-brewing interest and, poignantly, some collaborations that brought the project to completion. Before her 2020 death, Blumhofer was professor emerita of history at Wheaton College (Illinois) and former director of Wheaton’s Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE). This volume’s editor, friend and ISAE colleague Larry Eskridge, describes Blumhofer as “a relentless researcher” (xv). His appraisal receives confirmation on every page. Because her death occurred before the book reached its final polished form, Eskridge, the author of God’s Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (Oxford, 2018), pulled the manuscript into its final form. He also created a select bibliography in the absence of Blumhofer’s specific references. Singer-songwriter and Graham friend Fernando Ortega supplied an appreciative foreword. The final product is an often entertaining book that identifies some of the distinctives of the Graham crusade machinery. Blumhofer’s unique approach to the crusades, looking beyond the evangelist himself to soloist George Beverly Shea and choir director Cliff Barrows as well as to the movement’s music, deepens readers’ understanding of how the crusades continued the evangelical tradition of Gospel innovation using musical materials and methods from the broader culture.

Blumhofer asserts in the book “Prelude” that the “biographies of the songs chart the story of the crusades better than does that of any single life” (xii). Seven chapters and a concluding “Coda” follow. In them, Blumhofer argues that Graham’s crusade music forged a trademark sound and format for twentieth-century Protestant worship.

The book’s first two chapters sketch briefly the lives of Shea, Graham, and Barrows. Shea, the eldest, comes first. I recall my surprise years ago when Blumhofer told me that Shea’s fame preceded his association with Graham. Shea’s radio career began in 1930; he had almost two decades of broadcast and performing experience before Graham finally succeeded in persuading him to join the team. Blumhofer’s lens also brings focus to unfamiliar aspects of Billy Graham’s persona. Shea diagnosed Graham with the “malady of no melody” (20); his forte was preaching, not singing. Likewise, tracing the story of crusade music allows Cliff Barrows to emerge as a fully dimensional agent of crusade planning. He injected the Graham crusades with his passion for hymnody and his interest in the stories behind songs and composers. Blumhofer’s early chapters follow this trio’s growth as a team that followed a flourishing joint vocation.

The book’s third chapter shifts attention toward the music of the movement, comparing 1949’s ground-breaking Los Angeles crusade with the “Southern Cross” crusade in Australia a decade later. Crusade music and methods evolved in the years between. Chapter Four discusses early figures in white musical evangelism, including Fanny Crosby (about whom Blumhofer wrote an excellent 2005 biography, Her Heart Can See), Ira Sankey, Walter Maier, Paul Myers, Charles and Grace Fuller, Homer Rodeheaver, and Theodore Epp. Songs by Crosby and Sankey made their way into the Graham crusade repertoire; certain proven musicians made their way onto Graham’s platform. Chapter Five lays out the “biographies” of two trademark crusade songs: the invitation song “Just As I Am” (also the title of Graham’s 1997 autobiography) and “How Great Thou Art,” Shea’s signature solo with an epic backstory that spans centuries and continents. Chapter Six comprises sketches about celebrities who performed and shared Christian testimony at crusades: Roy Rogers and Dale Evans (accompanied by Roy’s horse, Trigger); stage, film, and recording star Ethel Waters; Johnny Cash and his second wife, June Carter Cash. Such accounts contribute to Blumhofer’s broader story: a song added to the crusade program could become an instant classic and performing at a Graham crusade could transform an artist’s life, personally and professionally. Johnny and June Cash planned their touring schedule around their participation in the crusades (116). Bill and Gloria Gaither went from crusade performing to being household names in white Gospel music (125). The book’s final chapter depicts the crusade team’s struggle with cultural and musical shifts in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Shea and Barrows seemed more reluctant than Graham (and his wife Ruth) to incorporate what Barrows called “beat music” into crusade programs (129). Experiments with different performers and formats led eventually in the mid-1990s to a transformation of the crusades’ “Youth Nights” into (Christian) rock concerts featuring not a sermon from Graham but Christian testimony by some young cultural icon.

Blumhofer’s book leaves a few trailing threads for future researchers to take up. On the subject of crusade finances, and along the lines of what Darren Dochuk did in Anointed with Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America (Basic, 2019), the story of the long relationship between crusades and the music industry calls for in-depth treatment. The connection was often mutually beneficial; given the exposure they received before large crusade audiences, some publishers happily supplied performance rights and music gratis, while instrument companies and many performers also charged nothing (79, 146). Yet, the benefits sometimes flowed in one direction: Blumhofer touches on some episodes in which songwriters, composers, and even performers received subpar treatment from the crusade organization. The Graham crusade dynasty had business savvy, and while the leadership earned an impeccable reputation for probity (financial and personal), the realities of business may have necessitated the occasional trimmed corner.

Another avenue invites exploration: Blumhofer credits Barrows with expertly reaching out and including local artists on crusade programs. Internationally, and especially in the non-European world, what challenges did he encounter? Did the crusade team draw musical boundaries that reflected cultural biases as well as Gospel commitments? In a related vein, dynamics of gender, sexuality, and race in crusade music call for attention, especially in the case of Waters (who apparently assumed a maternal role vis-à-vis the crusade team), other African American artists, and other performers outside the white Gospel fold. Given much recent work on gender, race, and evangelicalism – Anthea Butler’s White Evangelical Racism, Robert Jones’s White Too Long, and Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne, to name three – an exploration of crusade music’s role in constructing, reinforcing, and/or offering resistance to gendered and racialized identities seems timely.