Topic: Religious Folk Music Revival
The Jesus Movement grew from work by local Pentecostal groups in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. [1] As it attracted publicity, it, like their blue jeans, became a brand too valuable to be left to the people who created it.
Billy Graham was one of the first to attempt coopting the label. He noticed people working the crowds of the Rose Bowl parade, when he was Grand Marshall in 1971. [2] Later that year he wrote a book about The Jesus Generation. [3] The publisher said it didn’t sell well. [4]
Campus Crusade for Christ’s efforts to engage students in San Francisco followed the Human Be-In that initiated the Jesus Movement, but were driven by a desire to condemn the political activities on the Berkley campus that were critical of the United States government. [5]
The group had volunteers call every person on campus to invite them to concerts and other alternative events, including a speech by Graham. [6] Meantime, its Christian World Liberation Front had reserved space on campus for an event that happened to coincide with firing of the university’s president by the governor, Ronald Reagan. It adopted the techniques of leftist organizers to outmaneuver them that day. [7]
The Liberation Front parted ways with Campus Crusade, because its leader, Jack Sparks, felt hampered by the Campus Crusade bureaucracy. [8] On the other side, Bill Bright, head of Campus Crusade, was afraid some of his wealthy donors would be offended by the group’s dress and tactics. [9]
Bright seemed more interested in restoring a society in which people like his family, Republican ranchers in Oklahoma, [10] were the leaders than in implementing any particular Protestant interpretation of the Bible.
When he moved to Los Angeles in 1942, [11] Bright came under the influence of Harriet Mears, [12] the Baptist head of the youth department of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. [13] Her primary concern was training a new generation of Christian leaders. He adopted her views, indeed lived with her from 1953 [14] until her death in 1963. [15]
She believed that, if one influenced the fraternity presidents and football players, others would follow. [16] That strategy was introduced in the late nineteenth century by Henry Drummond, and popularized by the YMCA before World War I. [17] It coincided with Bright’s social ambitions to be part of the elite described by F. Scott Fitzgerald when he was at Princeton before World War I. [18] Communism, which arose during World War I, was seen as the great enemy.
Campus Crusade was interested in influencing the average, middle-class students who attended state-supported public universities. It had no interest in reaching the street people who created the Jesus Movement.
After his Berkley Blitz, Bright planned a large gathering in Dallas to recruit college students to evangelize the country. [19] He had met Graham though Mears, [20] and Graham agreed to be honorary chairman of Explo ’72. [21] In publicizing the event, Graham appropriated another symbol of the young. He announced it would be a “Religious Woodstock.” [22]
Instead of college students, more than of the third of the participants were high school kids. [23] They spent the mornings hearing lectures, the afternoons practicing evangelizing, and the evenings in the Cotton Bowl where music groups performed before speakers like Graham and Roger Staubach. [24] One night, they had a candle light ceremony that dramatized Kurt Kaiser’s song, “Pass It On.” [25]
The final day was an open-air concert that included some Jesus Music artists like Larry Norman, [26] Randy Matthews, [27] and Love Song. [28] The names of the other performers [29] have been eclipsed by the headliners: country music artists Johnny Cash, Kris Kristoferson, and Connie Smith. [30]
The same year as Explo, and probably as part of it, the Campus Crusade published its official songbook, Pass It On. “Kumbaya” shared the two-page spread with Kaiser’s song. [31]
The contents reflected the neutrality of Campus Crusade’s theology. The first section, “Praise,” contained Graham’s theme song, “How Great Thou Art” [32] along with hymns by Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, and nineteenth-century gospel songs by Fanny Crosby and William Bradbury.
The second section, “Songs of Good News,” featured works by John W. Peterson, discussed in the post for 2 August 2020. The “Choruses” in the fourth section generally were written after World War II. The spirituals, for the most part, were from African-American tradition, though none were so identified.
Pass It On perpetuated the repertoire as it existed, just prior to the emergence of Jesus Music. There were no songs by Norman or others in California, while most of the folk songs were written by Kaiser or Ralph Carmichael.
Bright would not have been comfortable with the charismatic beliefs of the Jesus Movement that influenced Jesus Music. He had tolerated speaking in tongues when his primary support came from Bob Jones University. [35] After Jones broke with Billy Graham over the acceptance of support from mainline churches in 1957, [36] Bright turned to the Dallas Theological Seminary for recruits. It believed supernatural gifts had ended with the apostles. [37] In 1960, Bright banned tongue speaking by his staff. [38]
He could control his employees, but not the streets of Dallas, where vendors, including Pentecostals, set up stands. The New York Times observed his staff did make “efforts to discourage such group from handing out literature not specifically approved by Campus Crusade or pushing ideas such as speaking in tongues. They explained that they felt a responsibility to parents to control what their children would be encountering.” [39]
Performers
Vocal Soloist: single melodic line
Vocal Group: none
Instrumental Accompaniment: piano, guitar chords
Rhythm Accompaniment: none
Credits
From Angola, Africa
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: KUM is pronounced “koom”
Verses: kumbaya, cryin’, singin’, prayin’
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-burden
Verse Repetition Pattern: repeat chorus after each stanza
Ending: none
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Time Signature: 3/4
Tempo: very slowly
Key Signature: two sharps
Guitar Chords: D G A A7
Basic Structure: strophic repetition
Singing Style: two notes to a syllable on “yah” and the final “Lord”
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: chords on the first beat of each measure, and on “kum”
Ending: none
Notes on Performance
The cover of the spiral-bound book dramatized Bright and Mear’s beliefs that men were more important than women, and that sorority girls and beauty queens were more desirable than others. A drawing of a young man singing and playing a guitar was on an olive-green background. He had on a long-sleeved, white shirt and striped tie, with sideburns and a short mustache. Inside the inset, at the bottom, were drawings of four women; one was dark skinned, two were brunettes, and the largest was a blonde. One of the two men was dark skinned.
Notes on Performers
Bright was born in 1921, and raised on a cattle ranch located between Tulsa and Muskogee, Oklahoma. [40] He graduated from Northeastern State College, [41] where he pledged a new fraternity spreading in former normal schools. [42] After spending a short period working in a county extension office, [43] he moved to Los Angeles.
Campus Crusade for Christ was founded in 1951. Bright retired in 2001, and the name was changed to Cru in 2011. [44] He died in 2003. [45]
Availability
Book: “Kum Ba Yah.” Pass It On. San Bernadino, California: Campus Crusade for Christ International, 1972. 85.
End Notes
1. For more on the Jesus Movement, see the post for 27 September 2020.
2. Larry Eskridge. “God’s Forever Family: the Jesus People Movement in America, 1966-1977.” PhD dissertation. University of Stirling, July 2005. 185–186.
3. Billy Graham. The Jesus Generation. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1971.
4. James E. Ruark. The House of Zondervan. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2006. 72.
5. John G. Turner. Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2008. 122.
6. Turner. 122–123.
7. Turner. 119.
8. Ronald M. Enroth, Edward E. Ericson, Jr., and C. Breckinridge Peters. The Jesus People. Grand Rapids. Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1972. 108.
9. Turner. 129. I could find nothing specific on his donors at this time. Turner cited several Campus Crusade employees from the time who said he drew on conservative businessmen who were members of Hollywood Presbyterian. Many also supported the John Birch Society. [46] After the success of Explo, he attracted the support of conservative foundations like those of the Hunt and Pew families. [47]
10. Turner. 13–14.
11. Turner. 16.
12. Turner. 19.
13. First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood was discussed in the post for 4 October 2020.
14. Turner. 49.
15. Turner. 116.
16. Turner. 46.
17. David C. Belden. “The Origins and Development of the Oxford Group (Moral Re-Armament).” D. Phil Thesis. St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, January 1976. 116.
Daniel Sack. Moral Re-Armament. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 13.
18. Bright was a student at Princeton Seminary in the fall of 1946. [48] While he has mentioned his unhappiness with some of his classes, one wonders if his attitudes against universities were formed when he encountered the closed social world of the Ivy League that ignored, rather than rejected, outsiders. While he got in trouble with the university president when he left religious leaflets everywhere on campus, [49] he remembered kneeling together in prayer with the head of the seminary. [50]
19. Paul Eschleman, the man who produced Explo, said Bright got his idea from the U. S. Congress on Evangelism in 1969. [51] Eshleman was the son of a Baptist minister who opened a religious retreat for snowbirds in Boca Raton in 1950. [52] While he says he didn’t commit himself to Christ until later, [53] he learned management here before he earned an MBA from Michigan State University. [54] Graham had visited his father in 1949 when both were just starting. [55]
20. Graham had been at Mear’s retreat center before his 1949 crusade. [56]
21. Turner. 139.
22. Edward B. Fiske. “‘Religious Woodstock’ Draws 75,000.” The New York Times website. 16 June 1972.
23. Turner. 141.
Paul Eshelman. The Explo Story. With Norman Rohrer. Glendale, California: Regal Books, 1972. 16, 19.
24. Fiske.
25. Paul Baker. Contemporary Christian Music. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1985. 54–55. This ritual was taken back to camps, or was reinvented in them. John Duffy remembered: “At my camp, we sang it to close out each week. We stood on a hill under a rugged pine cross, held candles, and passed the flame as we sang from one person to the next until the entire circle, some 150 people, was lit.” [57] Paul Eshler remembered that Graham introduced the candles at Explo to signify a commitment to Christ, and that they sang Graham’s “How Great Thou Art.” [58]
26. Larry Norman was discussed in the post for 4 October 2020.
27. Randy Matthews was discussed in the post for 13 December 2020.
28. Love Song was discussed in the post for 4 October 2020.
29. Campus Crusade produced an album to consolidate the image of Explo. It included Armageddon Experience, Great Commission Company, Danny Lee and Children of Truth, and the Forerunners. [59] Paul Baker mentioned Barry McGuire. [60]
30. The album also included African American singers, Willa Dorsey and Andraé Crouch, and a Southern Gospel group, the Speer Family. Paul Baker mentioned another Southern Gospel singer, Reba Rambo. [61]
31. “Pass It On” was discussed in the posts for 4 October 2020 and 13 December 2020.
32. “How Great Thou Art” was discussed in the post for 1 March 2020.
35. Turner. 75–76.
36. Turner. 77.
37. Turner. 88.
38. Turner. 90.
39. Fiske.
40. Turner. 13.
41. Turner. 15–16.
42. Wikipedia. “Sigma Tau Gamma.”
43. Turner. 16.
44. Wikipedia. “Cru (Christian Organization).”
45. Wikipedia. “Bill Bright.”
46. Turner. 107–108, 110–111.
47. Deborah Huntington and Ruth Kaplan. “Whose Gold Is Behind the Altar? Corporate Ties to Evangelicals.” Contemporary Marxism :62–94:Winter 1981/1982. They used financial reports to compile a list of Campus Crusade’s major donors from 1976 [pages 83–84].
48. Turner. 24.
49. Turner. 24.
50. Richard Quebedeaux. I Found It. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. 12.
51. Eshelman, Explo, 95–96.
52. James D. Davis. “Church Founder’s Son Has a ‘Crusade’.” [Deerfield Beach, Florida] Sun-Sentinel website. 2 June 2000.
53. Paul Eshleman. 1978. Quoted in Evangelical-Unification Dialogue. Edited by Richard Quebedeaux and Rodney Sawatsky. New York: The Rose of Sharon Press, 1979. 14–15.
54. Eshelman, Explo. 96.
55. Billy Graham. Just As I Am. New York: HarperCollins, 2001 digital edition. 127–128.
56. Turner. 34–36.
57. John Duffy. “Kurt Kaiser’s Music Changed My Life and Moved a Generation.” Sojourner magazine website. 27 November 2018.
58. Eshler, Explo. 67, 69.
59. Jesus Sound Explosion. Campus Crusade For Christ. 1972. [Discogs entry.]
60. Baker. 55.
61. Baker. 55.
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