Someone slipped and fell, was that someone you? The chimes of time ring out the news, another day is through “That kind of a catchy line,” Wayne replied, eager to change the subject, “you ought to turn it into a song.”įrom that chance encounter came the gospel ditty that was on the lips of every singer from Elvis Presley to Jim Reeves when I was a boy: “It Is No Secret What God Can Do.” “Well, it’s no secret what God’s done for me,” Hamblen countered, “and he can do the same for you.”
“Well, I don’t understand how you could give up drinking that easily,” Wayne said, “you really loved your whiskey.” When he refused to do live commercials for cigarettes and whiskey his “Cowboy Church of the Air” was abruptly cancelled.īumping into Stuart Hamblen at a Hollywood party, John Wayne noticed his former drinking buddy was cold sober. Hamblen sold his racing horses and quit chasing women, cussing, smoking and drinking. When the invitation came, he strode to the front and gave his life to Jesus.
He kept his promise and, as Graham exhorted the crowd to shun communism and embrace Jesus, the singing cowboy began to weep. When Billy Graham invited Hamblen’s radio audience to join him under the big tent Hamblen promised to be in the front row on opening night. I won’t go huntin’ with you, Jake, but I’ll go chasin’ women. Well, the moon is bright, and I’m half tight. So put them hounds back in the pens and quit your silly grinnin’. Hamblen’s biggest hit mirrored his persona: Hamblen was the first of the singing cowboys, a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing, sure-enough Texas ranch hand who paused between gospel numbers to do impromptu spots for cigarettes and booze. When Cliff Barrows and Billy Graham arrived in Los Angeles to drum up interest in their 1949 tent revival, an invitation to appear on Stuart Hamblen’s popular “Cowboy Church of the Air” program sounded like just the thing. The shift was intentional and carefully orchestrated. Led by Billy Graham, post-war evangelicals were the beaming face of Christian orthodoxy, a corrective to the mean-spirited fundamentalism that had fallen out of favor in post-war America. For evangelical leaders of a certain age, that makes him the perfect candidate.Īmerican evangelicalism took shape against the backdrop of anti-communist hysteria and explosive economic growth that followed World War II. The Republican candidate is the personification of idealized white manhood, an iconic American in the mold of John Wayne.
Evangelical support for Donald Trump should come as no surprise.
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