GRAHAM, BILLY 1918-

Evangelist

Political Ties

Billy Graham expanded his influence in the course of the 1970s after the embarrassment of his close association with the failed presidency of Richard Nixon. Graham had a long friendship with Nixon. In contrast to his hesitation in 1960, Graham endorsed Nixon in the 1968 and 1972 presidential races. Nixon even half offered the vice-presidential nomination to the evangelist in 1968, an offer easily declined in jest.

Graham and Nixon

Graham's esteem for the new president was obvious in his frequent presence at White House prayer breakfasts and other quasi-religious events. In May 1970 Graham invited the president to join his crusade in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the president spoke to a huge audience at the University of Tennessee football stadium, the first university campus Nixon had visited since the student turmoil which followed the Kent State shootings earlier that month. In spite of the sympathetic crowd in this Republican area of the country, there were protesters, whose behavior was effectively used by Nixon to gain the crowd's support. The Supreme Court refused to review a case of one of the protesters, who had been punished for breaking a state law prohibiting the disturbance of a religious event.

Billy Graham Day

The following year Nixon flew to Charlotte, North Carolina, Graham's hometown, for the city's celebration of Billy Graham Day. The police carefully monitored the people going to the meeting where the president would appear, checking and frisking those who looked suspicious, including many who simply wanted to share in the religious celebration. While a small group of people were offended by what they saw as an alliance among local politicians, the Graham organization, and Nixon, most people in the area continued their respect for both leaders. The city of Charlotte named a highway for Graham.

Sorrow over Watergate

The Watergate scandal, which began unraveling in 1973, deeply upset Graham. He believed that Nixon had been distancing himself, and as the press reported more and more sordid stories, he thought he understood why. Graham managed to offend both Nixon's supporters and enemies with his refusal to defend the president forcefully and his attempts to urge higher moral standards at all levels. The greatest blow to Graham, he would say for the rest of his life, was the revelation of the bitterness and vulgarity of the private life of Nixon. The preacher insisted that he had never known the president to speak as was revealed on the White House tapes made of private conversations: "What comes through these tapes is not the man I have known for many years." Graham's critics noted he seemed more concerned about Nixon's vulgarity than the president's criminal actions.

World Evangelization Conference

Graham was a moving force in organizing the great 1974 Lausanne International Congress on World Evangelization in Switzerland. While some of the other organizers saw the congress as an alternative to the increasing radicalism they saw in the World Council of Churches, Graham insisted that the Lausanne congress aimed at carrying the word of Jesus to all parts of the world and to bring together those people whose commitment and energy would bring this about.

World Crusades

Throughout the 1970s Graham himself continued his schedule of crusades around the world. In Seoul, Korea, his five-day crusade climaxed with an audience of over a million people, the largest in his career. In 1974 he spent the weeks after the Lausanne congress in Brazil. The following year he was in Taiwan. While Graham himself was the center of adulation, his work depended in large part on the efforts of his associates in the Billy Graham Evangelical Association. But for the American people he himself was consistently rated one of the most popular and respected men in the nation.

Sources:

Marshall Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979);

William C. Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: Morrow, 1991);

John Pollock, Billy Graham: Evangelist to the World (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979).

GRAHAM, BILLY 1918-

Evangelist

Huge Popularity

Billy Graham entered the decade as the most famous Protestant preacher in the world. His swift movement from tent revivals to huge stadium events around the world, his effective use of radio and television, and his organization that was able to coordinate his activities as well as maintain his financial integrity made him consistently one of the most admired men in the nation. Graham continued his crusades, as he called his revivals, speaking in London, Tokyo, Yugoslavia, and Latin America, as well as in Canada and the United States. Like the Vatican, Graham had a pavilion at the New York World's Fair (1964-1965).

World Congress on Evangelism

One of his important activities was working with the World Congress on Evangelism, which met in Berlin in 1966. The congress, reminiscent of the great evangelistic conferences of the turn of the century, brought together representatives from around the world and reinvigorated the actions and growth of conservative Protestantism.

Political Influence

By the 1960s, however, Graham was such a public figure that his actions took on a political cast whether he liked it or not. He was criticized by many blacks and white liberals for his failure to speak out forcefully on the moral and religious implications of the civil rights movement in the early part of the decade. He maintained that his work with African-American evangelists and his insistence that his meetings be open to all people were a symbol of the importance of racial equality. A few months after the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, he held a nonsegregated crusade in that city. He worked vigorously behind the scenes to lower racial tension, but his public voice was muted in this crucial area.

Vietnam

His views on the American involvement in the war in Vietnam were more complicated. He had a long history of anticommunism and a close relationship with Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Like other Americans, he strongly supported the troops actually fighting the war. In 1966, at the request of President Johnson, Graham made a Christmas trip to Vietnam. In a press conference afterward he remarked, "The stakes are much higher in Vietnam than anybody realizes.…Every American can be proud of the men in uniform. …They are paying a great price for the victory they are almost certainly winning there." An illness kept him from visiting the troops in 1967, but he returned at Christmas in 1968 even though he realized this gave an appearance of supporting the unpopular war. He remarked in early 1968, "I hope my son, who is nearing draft age, will gladly go and be willing to give his life."

Counter-Counterculture

Graham deeply disliked the challenges to authority that were characteristic of the last half of the decade. While he was able to reconcile himself to the nonviolent protests against segregation, he bitterly refused to accept the legitimacy of the antiwar protests, insisting they were threats to the nation's security and offensive to God. In regard to the ministers who were active in the antiwar movement he remarked, "Where many of these men get the 'Reverend' in the front of their names, I do not know. Certainly they don't get it from God.…God does not tolerate disorder."

Evasion of Race

While Graham attempted to evade political issues such as race and war, he continued to be deeply involved in politics. In 1960 he strongly supported his friend Richard Nixon's candidacy for the presidency, not because he was anti-Catholic but because he admired Nixon. His subsequent relations with President Kennedy were somewhat strained, but he had a close friendship with Lyndon Johnson. In 1968 he endorsed Nixon and quietly and effectively worked for his election. Graham fully supported the new president's regular White House church services and was the speaker at the first of these. He worked closely with the Nixon administration, supporting its efforts both publicly and privately, serving as if he were the president's chaplain.

Source:

William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: Morrow, 1991).

GRAHAM, BILLY 1918-

Evangelist

Famous for Crusades

By the end of the 1950s William Franklin Graham, better known as Billy, had become the most famous revivalist in the world. His effective presentation of evangelical Christianity in his "crusades" made him one of the leading figures in the revival of religious fervor in the postwar period.

Early Life

Born in North Carolina to a family of dairy farmers, Graham first began preaching in 1938 in Florida. He was ordained in 1939 as a Southern Baptist minister and spent the next few years studying at Wheaton Bible College in Illinois and ministering at the First Baptist Church in Western Springs, Illinois. From 1944 through 1947 he was chief preacher at a series of "Youth for Christ" rallies conceived by Minneapolis, Minnesota, bookshop owner George W. Wilson.

Cold War Preaching

Graham burst onto the national stage when his Los Angeles revival of 1948 received the attention of the Hearst newspaper chain. In the coming years he refined his presentations, honed his skills, but kept the familiar message that faith in Jesus brought salvation. In those tense days of the cold war, he also warned of the dangers that communism presented to Christians and Americans. At times he seemed to indicate that Christianity and Americanism were the same.

Good Planning and Organization

One of the causes of Graham's success was the team he brought into his organization, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. His association was guided by three principles that helped to create the success of the crusades: he would crusade only in a city where local churches had invited him; all financial proceeds would go to the Graham's association, which would pay Graham only a reasonable annual salary; and the crusade would concentrate on telling the audience to attend a local church. In the 1950s Graham and his associates moved from city to city and demonstrated that large numbers of people, mostly members of evangelical churches, were eager to hear the old-time message. By middecade he had become famous and a leading figure in the renewal and growing self-confidence of conservative Protestantism. In 1955 he helped found Christianity Today y a self-conscious magazine voice for evangelicals, as they called themselves

London Crusade

In 1954 Graham took his crusade to Harringay Arena in London for a twelve-week Billy Graham Greater London Crusade. Not since the triumph of Dwight L. Moody nearly a hundred years earlier had an American evangelist attracted the crowds and attention of the British public. The press attention in London spread Graham's name throughout the English-speaking world. The crowds he attracted later that summer as he moved from one European city to another extended his fame. Graham returned to the United States as the most famous evangelist in the world. As Graham's fame grew, he became friends with other national figures. He was especially close to President Eisenhower, and Vice-president Richard Nixon appeared at his New York Crusade in 1957.

Appealing Across the Spectrum

Graham came out of the conservative evangelical community, but his generosity of spirit and focus on a general Christian message made him acceptable to most mainline Protestants. By the end of the decade some conservatives distanced themselves from Graham because of the support he received from denominations and churches they perceived as too liberal.

Civil Rights

Graham came somewhat late to the civil rights movement, but by 1957 he was willing to have the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., appear with him in New York, and he joined the condemnation of racism as un-Christian.

Newspaper Work

Graham developed a widely syndicated newspaper column, "My Answer," in which he addressed religious and moral issues. His sermons were collected in a widely read book, Peace with God, published in 1953. The success of televising his sermons enabled him to reach an unprecedented number of people, and his efforts to turn men and women back to God continued.

Sources:

William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: Morrow, 1991).

Graham, Billy (1918–), evangelist.Born on a farm outside Charlotte, North Carolina, William Franklin Graham Jr. became the most famous and successful evangelist of the twentieth century. Graham preached the Christian gospel in person to more than eighty million people and reached countless millions more by radio, television, films, books, and newspaper columns.

A 1943 graduate of Wheaton College in Illinois, Graham gained experience and exposure in Youth for Christ International during the mid‐1940s. A 1949 tent revival in Los Angeles first propelled him into public view. Hugely successful revivals, his Hour of Decision radio program, numerous books, and periodic telecasts brought worldwide popularity and influence during the 1950s. His revival “crusades” and international conferences fostered ecumenical cooperation, particularly among conservative Christians known as evangelicals. Christianity Today magazine, which he founded in 1956, remained the flagship publication of the evangelical movement in the early twenty‐first century. His association with presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Bill Clinton encouraged religious conservatives to enter the political arena, despite warnings he sounded in later years regarding the perils of such ventures. Graham's connections and unique stature enabled him to overcome many formidable barriers, seen most dramatically in a series of increasingly successful forays behind the Iron Curtain between 1978 and, after the breakup of the communist bloc, 1992. By such actions as refusing to preach to racially segregated audiences, hiring an African American as an Associate Evangelist, inviting Martin Luther King Jr. to appear at a crusade service, and calling on his audiences to espouse racial equality, Graham helped break down resistance to integration in the American South and elsewhere.

Graham and his wife, Ruth, reared five children, all of whom entered some form of Christian work. In 1995, his son Franklin was named leader‐designate of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Among many accolades and prizes, Graham received the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1983) and the Congressional Gold Medal (1996).
See also Protestantism; Revivalism.

Bibliography

William Martin , A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story, 1991.
Billy Graham , Just As I Am, 1997.

William Martin

Billy Graham (William Franklin Graham) , 1918–, American evangelist, b. Charlotte, N.C., grad. Wheaton College (B.A., 1943). Graham was ordained a minister in the Southern Baptist Church (1939), was the pastor of a Chicago church (his first and last pastorate), and in 1944 became an evangelist for the American Youth for Christ movement. In 1949 he received national attention for an extended evangelical campaign in Los Angeles. He subsequently made preaching tours (for which he popularized the term "crusade" ) in most major U.S. cities and in Europe, Africa, South America, Asia, Australia, and Russia. His reputation made him a favored guest among politicians and presidents. Graham, who in his preaching has consistently stressed personal conversion and scriptural authority, is identified with the conservative Protestant movement known as neo-evangelicalism (see fundamentalism ) and is to a large degree responsible for establishing it as part of the American mainstream. He is also the co-founder of the journal Christianity Today. The Billy Graham Evangelical Association, founded in the early 1950s, publishes Decision magazine and produces programs for radio, television, and screen. Graham retired as head of the association in 2000; Franklin Graham, his son, succeeded him as its leader. Billy Graham held his final crusade in 2004.

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Just as I Am (1997); biographies by W. C. McLaughlin (1960), M. Frady (1979), and W. Martin (1991); study by S. P. Miller (2009).

Graham, ‘Billy’ ( William Franklin Graham) (1918– ), American evangelist. He experienced conversion at the age of 16 and entered the Southern Baptist ministry in 1943. He began his first major evangelistic campaign in Los Angeles in 1949, and in 1950 the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was formed. Thereafter he toured the world, becoming well known for his ‘stadium campaigns’ in which he addressed huge crowds. In later years he made full use of modern technology, including broadcasting and satellite links.

Graham, Billy ( William Franklin) (1918– ) US evangelist. A charismatic preacher, he led Christian revivalist crusades all over the world, including communist countries. He was consulted by several US presidents, especially Richard Nixon.