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Rather than arriving at faith along the sawdust trail of American evangelicalism, Buechner came via Princeton University and, eventually, Union Theological Seminary.

Graham took his fellow evangelicals from the margins to the center — from the sawdust trail to the White House.

At the conclusion of the sermon he, like the thousands who would one day answer his own “altar calls,” walked “the sawdust trail” to accept Christ — to be “saved,” in the evangelical vernacular.

In spite of the thousands who have hit the sawdust trail, however, it is difficult to believe that more than a tiny proportion of his auditors are religiously affected by him.

There's no telling what happens if Newt Gingrich stumbles down the sawdust trail, yelling "Help me Jesus!"