Billy Graham Comes to Las Vegas: Faith at Work on the Strip

Authors

Michelle Robinson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Editors

D. Schwartz (Ed.)

Document Type

Occasional Paper

Publication Date

4-2014

Publication Title

Center for Gaming Research Occasional Paper Series: Paper 24

Publisher Location

Las Vegas, Nevada

First page number:

1

Last page number:

10

Abstract

An exploration of Billy Graham’s 1978 Christian Crusade in Las Vegas, this paper argues that the Billy Graham Evangelical Association (BGEA) developed distinctly Vegas-styled evangelical tactics to address challenges posed by the city’s fragile religious infrastructure and competing attractions on the Las Vegas Strip. To organize a spectacular and successful ecumenical event that would garner local and national attention, BGEA simultaneously leveraged popular notions of Vegas as “Sin City” while recruiting Christian evangelicals from beyond the city proper to temporarily transform the religious ecology of the Strip.

Keywords

Christianity; Evangelicalism; Graham; Billy; 1918-; Nevada--Las Vegas

Disciplines

Christian Denominations and Sects | History of Religion | Sociology

File Format

pdf

Language

English

Repository Citation

Robinson, M. (2014). Billy Graham Comes to Las Vegas: Faith at Work on the Strip. In D. Schwartz (Ed.), Center for Gaming Research Occasional Paper Series: Paper 24 1-10.
Available at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/occ_papers/30