Religion: High Pitch, Low Key

On New Year's Eve television screens, Evangelist Billy Graham, sports-jacketed and gray-templed, delivered a fireside jeremiad. Citing the year's woeful parade of scandals, crises and other miseries, Graham warned that the U.S. would experience even worse difficulties if Americans did not forthwith repent and return to God. "The only answer," he said, "is Jesus."

Throughout the half-hour sermon, Graham never once mentioned the campaign that was supposed to have been the evangelical catchword of the year: Key 73 (TIME, Feb. 19). As labored over for six years by Graham's organization and more than...