Celebrating Freedom, God

ANAHEIM — It could have been the World Series.

It was a little before 5:30 p.m., Anaheim Stadium’s gates weren’t yet open, and a line of people 20 wide flowed from Gate 3 well into the parking lot.

Souvenir sellers hawked baseball hats. T-shirts moved briskly.

Inside, the message board and Jumbotron welcomed a crowd already loud and festive an hour and a half before starting time. They cheered as each group was acknowledged on the left-field TV screen. Sections competed for loudest cheer.

There was no question about which team this partisan crowd was for. In the words of Michelle Pickett’s T-shirt: “Jesus Saves, Satan Sucks.”

As it said everywhere, even on the TV sets over the Sausage House and Franks A Lot, this was Harvest Crusade 96, the touring mega-camp meeting put on every year since 1990 by Greg Laurie, pastor of the 12,000-member Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside.

It opened here on the Fourth of July, wrapping the day’s sermons and music in patriotism and fireworks, and will continue each night at 7:30 through Sunday. Elizabeth Dole, wife of Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole, is scheduled to speak tonight.

The crusade will move to another baseball park, Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego, July 26-28. Thursday’s attendance made it plain the crusade would outdraw both baseball teams. First-night attendance was estimated at 63,000, nearly filling Anaheim Stadium.

The venues match the temperament of the crowds.

“It’s just a good time,” said Pickett, who had traveled from Wisconsin and was standing on a prime seat along the third base line trying to hold 15 seats for her extended family.

“The idea is that Christians bring their friends because it’s a good show [with bands and singers, including Grammy winner CeCe Winans] and then they can hear the sermons and be saved. But it’s also just a lot of fun.”

Around the stadium were elderly men with canes, men in biker’s denims embroidered “Heaven’s Angels,” guys with barbed wire tattooed around their biceps, and couples pushing matching strollers.

There were lots and lots of families with lots and lots of children.

“I love it that it’s over the Fourth this year,” said Deborah Billings of Anaheim, who was there with her husband and four children. “This is absolutely the best place to be today. God and music and fireworks, it’s great.”

A huge curved stage spanned second base and a TV camera platform straddled the pitching mound. Daniel proposed to Kimberly on the message board, and the crowd cheered. They cheered when musicians began to set up. They cheered when the choir emerged from the visitors’ dugout.

But the biggest cheers were reserved for Laurie, who came to the podium to talk about the theme of this year’s crusade, “a second chance for America.”

He said the United States has never been materially better off or more empty. He decried the breakdown of the family, unsafe streets and the exclusion of Christianity from schools, courts and American culture.

He asked why there is so much crime committed by very young, yet very hardened, criminals.

“We scratch our heads and say, ‘Why is this happening?’ Because we have forgotten God. . . . Why are these children doing these things? Because they have no values.”