Billy Graham

American evangelist

• Born: November 7, 1918
• Birthplace: Near Charlotte, North Carolina
• Died: February 21, 2018
• Place of death: Montreat, North Carolina

Graham created the modern citywide crusade, pioneered national and global television and radio broadcasts, and wrote popular books that reached millions around the world with a simple gospel. A consistent feature of his public ministry was his personal contact with world leaders and other famous people.

Early Life

Billy Graham, possibly the world’s most famous evangelist, was born William Franklin Graham Jr. on a farm outside Charlotte, North Carolina. His father, William Franklin Graham Sr., was a dairy farmer and husband of Morrow (Coffey) Graham. Early years for the young Graham were spent working on the farm with his siblings and attending grade school. Graham had no strong inclinations toward Christianity until he heard the revival preaching of Mordecai Ham, a traveling evangelist, whose multiday revival in the fall of 1934 inspired the sixteen-year-old Graham to confess his sins to God and ask Jesus Christ to be his personal savior.

This conversion experience was to fundamentally shape the remainder of Graham’s life and his professional calling. He felt a clear “call” from God to preach the Gospel. He entered Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity College) and gained early preaching experience by setting up a makeshift orange-crate pulpit among the orange groves and preaching to the trees. His fervor did not escape the notice of a local church in the Southern Baptist Convention. He was ordained to the ministry in 1939 and graduated from the institute the following year. He went on to Wheaton College in Illinois to major in anthropology, and was known on campus as “the preacher.”

At Wheaton, Graham was introduced by friends to a fiercely independent woman, Ruth McCue Bell (1920–2007), the daughter of medical missionaries to China. Bell was determined upon graduation to travel to Tibet as a single woman missionary, but after much struggle in prayer, she believed God intended her to marry the budding evangelist Graham. The ceremony took place in her parents’ American base of operations in Montreat, North Carolina, on August 13, 1943. The two had just graduated from Wheaton College. Graham took up his first and what would be his only pastorate at First Baptist Church in Western Springs, Illinois, from 1943 to 1945. He also ventured into radio ministry on WCFL in Chicago, hosting the program Songs in the Night.

Life’s Work

In 1945, Graham began working with Youth for Christ, a fledgling evangelical organization established for ministry to youth and service personnel during World War II. As the group’s vice president (1945–48), he was soon the best-known speaker on the circuit, organizing groups in forty-eight states. Northwestern Schools (now Northwestern College) in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, needed leadership, and Graham answered the call, serving both Youth for Christ and the evangelical institution as its president from 1947 to 1952. He published his first of many books, Calling Youth to Christ, in 1947.

Graham’s powerful preaching in large public arenas drew the attention of publisher William Randolph Hearst, who instructed his reporters to “puff Billy Graham” as he launched a series of crusade meetings in Los Angeles in 1949. He liked Graham’s communication style and supported his condemnation of communism’s blatant atheism. Graham pointed out that communism prohibited preaching the Gospel and argued that communism spelled the end of democracy in the West. Featured on the front page of Hearst-owned newspapers across the United States, Graham quickly became a national figure. Originally scheduled for three weeks, his crusade meetings in Los Angeles extended to eight weeks and drew overflowing crowds and nonstop press attention, attention that continued throughout Graham’s career.

The impact of these crusades led Graham to establish, in 1950, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) in Minneapolis. Also in 1950 he launched The Hour of Decision, a weekly radio and television program on both American and Canadian broadcasting networks and heard internationally via shortwave radio. Within two years, he started his syndicated newspaper column, My Answer, which had more than five million readers the first year alone. The best of these early columns would appear collectively in 1960 as a book by the same name. A pioneer of multimedia, Graham founded World Wide Pictures, which has produced and distributed more than one hundred films. He also became founding president of Blue Ridge Broadcasting Corporation, which operated a commercial-free radio station, WFGW, in Black Mountain, North Carolina. Also, he became editor in chief of Decision magazine, which circulated by the millions to patrons and interested parties worldwide.

Graham’s most powerful instrument for change was the large, citywide crusade that became the hallmark of the BGEA. Each crusade proceeded along similar lines: opening crusade choir songs and then corporate singing; testimonies of conversion from notable figures from Hollywood, sports, politics, and the music industry; special music from a guest singer; a crusade solo before the message; a sermon from Graham; and an open invitation for people to leave their seats and come forward to signal their desire to accept Jesus as their savior.

Graham developed a clearly enunciated policy for the crusades, which stated that support for the crusade and active participation should be sought from churches regardless of their denomination or theology. He insisted that the crusades had to be integrated rather than segregated. These two positions caused many churches to refuse to participate in crusades, and it fueled criticism within conservative as well as liberal Christian circles. The crusades themselves were carefully planned: picking venues and times, soliciting and preparing local volunteers by the thousands, raising funds, media blitzes announcing meetings, and a sophisticated follow-up system for every person who registered a decision for Christ or sought additional help from the organization. Graham also pioneered phone banks, personal counseling through mail and in person, and linking people within local churches. The BGEA also engaged in philanthropic work around the globe, work that included disaster relief. The BGEA is now in partnership with Samaritan’s Purse, which is led by one of Graham’s five children, Franklin Graham.

Graham reported that his salary, unlike that of many other radio and television preachers, was paid directly, and determined, by the businesspeople who sat on the BGEA board. He has said that he never handled crusade or other organizational funds (which totaled more than $300 million annually at the peak of his ministry) and ensured his followers that the organization’s accounting records were externally audited each year and made available to anyone upon request. Son Franklin succeeded his father as BGEA president in 2001.

Graham received many honorary degrees and other awards, most notably the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion (1982); the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award (1983); and the Congressional Gold Medal (1996). He was made a Knight of the Order of the British Empire in 2001. He was inducted into the Religious Broadcasting Hall of Fame (1981) and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame (1999), and was ranked consistently in the top ten of the most admired persons in the world in annual Gallup polls.

On the political scene he was a visible and frequent adviser to US presidents, starting with Dwight D. Eisenhower, and often was called to the White House at the darkest periods of the nation’s history. His critics, however, have noted that he was politically naïve and was often manipulated to political advantage. He frequently found it difficult to reconcile a president’s acceptance of evangelical Christianity with that president’s participation in scandals while in office.

Graham first met fellow evangelical minister Martin Luther King Jr. during the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott. The two ministers became friends and shared views on racism and segregation. Graham called for legislation to end segregation, included two of King’s associates on his executive committee, and asked King to take part in the New York Crusade in 1957. They differed on several issues, however. While Graham opposed racism and segregation, he advocated conversion over nonviolent direct action, preferred by King, as the best way to achieve social justice and racial harmony. In 1958, when a crusade sponsoring committee in San Antonio, Texas, wanted Governor Price Daniel, a segregationist, to introduce Graham, King objected to the committee’s plan as being tantamount to supporting segregation and discrimination. The two leaders also disagreed over US involvement in the Vietnam War, with King against it and Graham against King’s criticism of US foreign policy. Despite their differences, the two remained friends and sometimes traveled together until King’s assassination in 1968.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, as Graham advanced in age and continued to struggle with a variety of illnesses, he remained influential, meeting with President Barack Obama in 2010 and writing the books Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well (2011), The Reason for My Hope: Salvation (2013), and Where I Am: Heaven, Eternity, and Our Life Beyond (2015). He died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, on February 21, 2018, at the age of ninety-nine. One week later, he became the fourth private citizen in US history to lie in state at the US Capitol, allowing people from across the country, including President Donald Trump, to pay their respects.

Significance

Graham’s impact on Christianity in particular and on society in general is difficult to calculate fully. He helped establish the modern American evangelical movement and was instrumental in steering it from its more fundamentalist leanings. Furthermore, Graham likely preached to more people than any other individual in human history. Millions heard his sermons in person or on radio or television, read his newspaper columns or books, and watched films produced by World Wide Pictures. Several of his books are best sellers, and many have been translated.

Graham believed that the Gospel was intended for all humanity and his integrated crusades demonstrated his belief. His stance on civil rights drew criticism, both from those who were against desegregation as well as from those who thought he could do more to support the black community and the civil rights movement. His message of religious tolerance garnered awards from many ecumenical and Jewish organizations. He helped establish a number of Christian organizations and periodicals, most notably the magazine Christianity Today, which served as a formal and vital voice for the new evangelism.

Bibliography

Aikman, David. Billy Graham: His Life and Influence. Thomas Nelson, 2007. An admiring biography of Graham by a former senior correspondent of Time magazine who knew him personally.

"Billy Graham." Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 2013, p. 1.

Garfield, Ken. Billy Graham: A Life in Pictures. Triumph, 2013.

Gibbs, Nancy, and Michael Duffy. The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House. Center Street, 2007. Two Time correspondents carefully examine Graham’s complex relationships with American presidents, from Eisenhower to the Bushes, with particular attention to what they see as his overstepping of clerical boundaries in the case of Richard M. Nixon.

Goodstein, Laurie. "Billy Graham, 99, Dies; Pastor Filled Stadiums and Counseled Presidents. The New York Times, 21 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/obituaries/billy-graham-dead.html. Accessed 4 Apr. 2018.

Graham, Billy. Just as I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham. HarperOne, 2007. A reissued edition of Graham’s autobiography, first published in 1997. Discusses his early life and the beginnings of his ministry as well as his relationships with world leaders and dignitaries. A work of close to eight hundred pages.

“Graham, William Franklin (1918– ).” Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle. Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford U, kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc‗graham‗william‗franklin‗1918.1.html. Accessed 17 Sept 2015.

Lowe, Janet, comp. Billy Graham Speaks: Insight from the World’s Greatest Preacher. Wiley, 1999. A collection of quotations from Graham interspersed with short anecdotes from his life and ministry. Material in this book is organized by topic. A valuable resource for those who want to better understand Graham’s views and philosophy.

Miller, Lisa. "The Fight over Billy Graham's Legacy." Newsweek, 2011, pp. 38–40.

Randall, Ian M. "Outgrowing Combative Boundary-Setting: Billy Graham, Evangelism and Fundamentalism." Evangelical Review of Theology, vol. 34, no. 2, 2010, pp. 103–18.