In a 1994 survey of 3,400 U.S. Protestant church leaders, he was named as their second greatest influence, ahead of Billy Graham. He appealed to Evangelicals because he honored the historic essence of the Christian faith and was never into revisionism. He was able to combine this successfully with contemporary allegories from the world of psychology and anthropology. Nouwen himself had always felt that Evangelicals, while fervent, committed, and word-centered, lacked the mystical dimension to spiritual living—a balance he attempted to redress.
