Evangelical Christianity has changed since the heyday of Billy Graham
The Rev. Billy Graham’s ability to bring Christians together through his magnetic preaching of the gospel has gone unmatched.
His legacy as a unifier for evangelicalism, highlighted last week as word of his death spread, stands in contrast to the Christian movement’s continued splintering. It is a fact that Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, thinks the late evangelist would grieve.
“He brought together evangelicalism,” Stetzer said. “I think today evangelicalism is fractured and fracturing.”
The fragmentation is on many levels from how to relate to culture and engage in politics to disagreeing over what the heart of evangelicalism is, he said.
While Graham’s simplistic message about Jesus continues to ring true to believers, evangelical Christianity has evolved from the apex of the North Carolina preacher’s ministry. But, it can still learn a great deal from Graham’s example, experts say.
“I think Billy Graham would like to see us put the evangelism back in evangelical,” Stetzer said. “There seems to be a whole lot of other things that are catching people’s attention.”
The evolution isn’t unexpected. Ultimately, Graham was a man of his day, Stetzer said.
The world’s bestknown evangelist, who died Wednesday at age 99, catapulted to prominence in 1949 with an eight-week revival in Los Angeles. In that post-war era, the church was at the center of the cultural landscape but has since lost some of its footing.
Graham’s legacy is complex. That is reflected in the fact that both ends of the evangelical, theological and political spectrum owe something to Graham’s public ministry, said Scott Culpepper, a history professor at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa.
“One ironic aspect of Graham’s legacy is that fact that the evangelicalism he leaves behind is so diverse that it is unlikely that one single figure could dominate evangelical life and discourse today as Graham did at the peak of his influence,” Culpepper said.
For nearly six decades, Graham leveraged emerging media and traveled the globe preaching the gospel to millions, convincing people to accept Jesus as their savior. Many in the pews today came to the faith through Graham’s teachings.
IN THE PEWS
The concerns of those attending church services on Sundays have shifted.
Graham often preached against communism, secularism and divorce, which have dropped off or fallen as major priorities for evangelical Christians today, said James Hudnut-Beumler, an American religious historian at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville.
The evangelist warned against temptations, such as sinful movies and skimpy outfits, said Hudnut-Beumler, who teaches on Graham in his classes.
“You couldn’t simply dust off a Graham sermon and preach it today,” Hudnut-Beumler said.
While not too far off from the Graham-era issues, evangelical Christians’ worries now focus on what faith means for their loved ones and how the world will affect them, Hudnut-Beumler said. Church prayer lists are full of requests for those struggling with illnesses, waiting on tests and serving in the military.
“Will my children have faith? Will they be loved? Will they be safe in the world?” HudnutBeumler said. “All of these kind of much more personal issues continue to be the kind of things that people bring on their hearts into prayer spaces.”
In recent decades, evangelical Christians have spent a lot of time hashing out whether theology supports same-sex marriage and other LGBT issues in the church.
While Graham opposed a 2012 gay marriage ballot measure, he retired from active ministry before the sexuality wars became the defining and dividing line among Protestants, Hudnut-Beumler said.
But, the crisis response team from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which Graham founded, was one of the first religious groups to respond to the 2016 Florida massacre at a gay nightclub and offer support to those affected, he pointed out.
“Billy Graham’s big tent evangelicalism kind of grew beyond him,” Hudnut-Beumler said. “The message of bigheartedness and even recovering in his case from sins of, early on, racism and antisemitism, is a work in progress, as are most people.”
The outreach and culture within the church has evolved, too, said Scott McConnell, executive director of Nashville-based LifeWay Research. Evangelizing has shifted from old-time door knocking to friendship-focused outreach and serving those in need, he said.
Pastors and congregations also are more inclined to address dirty laundry. That change comes, in part, because it is being called out, but also because people in the pews demand authenticity, McConnell said.
“There’s just a lot less sweeping under the rug,” McConnell said.