‘Neet Billy Graham’ yet to tape the pulpit
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Who will be the next Billy Graham?
The Charlotte-born Graham is now 98, lives quietly in his mountain home in Montreat, North Carolina, and hasn’t preached to a packed-stadium crusade in 12 years.
Yet no “next Billy Graham” has emerged — that is, no American religious figure who commands as much fame, impact and respect as Graham did.
For decades, as Graham grew older, those in religious circles wondered if some worthy successor would emerge. Ask Graham biographers and religion scholars today who will be the next Billy Graham, here’s their answer:
Nobody.
“I don’t think any single person will be ‘the next Billy Graham,’ ” says William Martin, author of “A Prophet with Honor,” long considered the definitive biography of Graham. “That’s in part because evangelical Christianity has become so large and multifaceted — in significant measure because of what Graham did — that no one person can dominate it, regardless of talent or dedication.”
Some of the U.S. evangelists who’ve been mentioned over the years as would-be successors to Graham — Rick Warren, T.D. Jakes, Greg Laurie and Graham’s own grown children, Franklin and Anne Graham Lotz — have big followings, but mostly within segments of the broader evangelical community. And all are nearing retirement age themselves.
Graham himself sensed way back in 1974 that the times were changing even then and that the evangelical message would be carried forward not by just one religious superstar but by armies of preachers — in the U.S. and around the globe.
At the time, he was attending the International Congress on World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. Someone asked him: Who will be the next Billy Graham?
He answered by pointing to the gathering before him of 2,300 Christian leaders from 150 countries. “They will,” he said.
Since then, the world, including the religious world, has become a million times more fragmented. In the U.S., the mainstream media of yesteryear — three TV networks and daily print newspapers — has given way to social media, the internet and the cable TV universe. They offer endless opportunities to seek out niche communities and connect with only those of like minds on everything from politics to faith. America’s religious landscape, meanwhile, has become an ever-changing picture of diversity. The fastest growing group is the “nones,” the mostly young people who say they have no religious affiliation.
Such soil is not hospitable, say religion scholars, for the blooming of a single religious leader of Graham’s stature and influence.
“Even if a person of Graham’s gifts and graces should come along, the setting that created him has changed,” wrote Grant Wacker, author of “America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation,” a widely lauded portrait of the evangelist’s life and times. “In an age of social media, would huge stadium crusades any longer work? … It is hardly obvious that a new Graham could provide answers in 2017 in the same way that he offered answers 50 to 60 years ago.”