New book traces cleric’s religious revival

The following is an excerpt from “Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community,” a new book by The Washington Times’ religion editor, Julia Duin. The book recounts the story of the 20th century’s greatest religious revival and of an Episcopal cleric named Graham Pulkingham, without whom the pentecostal-charismatic movement might never have taken hold.

On especially humid nights, a stellar cluster explodes on the Texas prairie. It is Houston; powerful, glittering, the city built by oil.

Just to the east of downtown is a neighborhood named Eastwood, home to a large gray stone church, which stands like a lonely monolith on a triangular plot where Dallas Avenue and Telephone Road intersect.

This is the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer. Enter through its glass doors. Inside and curving around the front of the church and dominating the room is a huge, colorful, stunning mural. At the center is a white-robed Jesus ascending in the clouds; compelling, life-sized, His eyes following you wherever you stand. He is clearly in charge.

In that church, there was a priest. He arrived in the summer of 1963, his unhappy family trailing behind. People knew Graham Pulkingham as ambitious, cultured and music-loving; a blond-haired 37-year-old clergyman with a slight paunch, fashionable liberal views and an air of authority and confidence that people either hated or found irresistible. His professional life had been one stream of successes. Then he had moved his wife and children to an inner-city parish east of Houston, determined that he was going to set this place right.

By the following August, he had shipwrecked on the shoals of Eastwood.

By then, it was time for his family’s annual four-week vacation. Thus, the Pulkinghams left for Burlington, North Carolina, the peaceful oasis of the Carr family, whose eldest daughter, Betty Jane, had married Graham more than a decade before. The family hadn’t been in Burlington more than a week when Graham woke early in the morning, feeling agitated. He sensed the Lord wanted to communicate with him, and sure enough, a familiar voice said, “Go to New York.”

“When?” he wanted to know.

“Next Tuesday,” the voice said.

With what money, Graham wondered. All he had was $5 and a gasoline credit card.

“I can be trusted for that,” the voice assured him. “Do as I say.”

He decided to fast on his way to New York, which would take care of the food question.

By the time he arrived in the Big Apple, Graham was on his third day of fasting and desperate. No cool afternoon rains cooled New York’s broiling environs. Fleeing the simmering sidewalks, he took refuge in the cool interior of the majestic Trinity Episcopal Church on Wall Street. Weeping, he knelt behind the organ bench, hoping no one would discover him. He looked up to see the irate face of the church sexton.

“What are you doing here?” the man demanded.

“I’m praying.”

Story Continues →