Smutny says the shift is occurring especially in western Pennsylvania and Ohio, the strongholds of the traditionally German denominations such as the Quakers. He mentions the Sojourners, a group of liberal Christians who publish Sojourner magazine, as one group of evangelists who have always been active pacifists.

Perversely, the Moral Majority's prominence may have helped cause the shift in strength. "A growth of the Moral Majority and the television evangelism has given an impetus for the left side of evangelism to grow." "Smutny says.

While Graham's positions come into direct conflict with fundamentalist views on issues such as defense spending, they come into conflict on the other hand with socially oriented Christians who think that his positions are not hard-line enough Graham is careful not to antagonize either side on political issues. He has stressed, each time he states his position on nuclear disarmament, that he does not support unilateral disarmament, and that the relationship between the styles of evangelism is different but not adversary. "I'm not a pacifist," he said Tuesday at his Institute of Politics (IOP) speech.

Graham organizers are careful not to be overly antagonistic towards the fundamentalist wings of Christianity. Williams emphasizes freedom of speech, saying. "We've learned to sort of coexist." But he says that a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible can be dangerous. "There are people who can look at the Bible and attempt to prove that any people who are not white. Aryan people were intended by God to be second-class citizens."

Graham's approach to politics also comes under fire from more socially oriented Christians. Members of Harvard's Seymour Society--a group of predominantly Black Christian social activists--protested at Graham's speech at the IOP, and Seymour Society president Jacqueline Cook asked the evangelist how he could justify his "criminal silence" on South African apartheid and U.S. military aid to Latin American dictatorships.

Sister Gladys Marhefka, a member of a local Gray Nuns chapter, explains that the Catholic Church--although conservative in its views on contraception and abortion--believes in actively seeking to solve social problems. Evangelism, Marhefka says, "is not just going out and telling people that Jesus loves you. It's coming to meet some of their basic human needs."

There is a theological side to Graham's position on nuclear weapons, and a reason for what socially oriented Christians see as his relative inaction on this position. While he believes that man should strive to eliminate war, and therefore nuclear weapons, he says. "There is going to come an Armageddon, Man stands before the Armageddon, ready to blow himself up, and God is going to intervene."

When Graham speaks, at Nickerson Field, and 100,000 people gather, many of them won't be there because of Graham's new political message. They will be there because they want to hear the gospel according to the man who has been preaching it since 1939. While his two-month crusade will focus attention on the rapidly growing ecumenical involvement in the nuclear disarmament movement, the main force behind its scope is a new, nationwide rise in mainstream, moderate evangelism.