Ruth Graham shaped the ministries of Billy, Franklin Graham
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ruth Bell Graham died 10 years ago this month. But her influence lives on.
It’s there in the ways scholars are retelling the story of her famous evangelist husband, Billy Graham, now 98. In new books, they credit her with key contributions to the success of a worldwide ministry that spanned nearly 60 years.
Her continuing impact is also evident in the ways their son Franklin Graham, also a preacher, keeps making headlines: with his prayer rallies, with his humanitarian work and with conservative Facebook posts that often echo his mother’s criticism of an American culture she felt was in the throes of moral decay.
Franklin followed his father into the pulpit and succeeded him as head of the Charlottebased Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. But Franklin’s temperament and tone — more uncompromising than Billy’s in his prime and later years — are closer to his mother’s.
“She took a harder line on things while Billy was more diplomatic and less willing to offend,” William Martin wrote in “A Prophet with Honor,” his biography of Billy Graham.
Franklin, the second youngest of five Graham children raised by their mother in Montreat, N.C., while Billy was away for six to eight months at a time headlining his crusades, appeared to acknowledge Ruth’s influence when he once described the difference between himself and his father:
“We preach the same Gospel,” he said, but “Daddy hates to say no. I can say no.”
Franklin also appears to have inherited a compassionate streak from Ruth, who grew up the daughter of medical missionaries in China and, later in life, quietly ministered to prison inmates and people struggling with substance abuse.
Ruth’s parents played a big role, too, in helping shape the theological attitudes — strictly conservative but big-hearted toward the needy — of not only their daughter but also Franklin and his siblings: Before they retired to Montreat and became active grandparents, Nelson Bell, a surgeon, and Virginia, a nurse, ran the biggest Presbyterian hospital in China.
Franklin has made his humanitarian mark with Boonebased Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief agency that he also heads. It is often the first group on the ground ready to help when natural disasters strike anywhere in the world. Its Operation Christmas Child delivers gifts to millions of poor children every year. And Samaritan’s Purse has operated hospitals or medical units in, among other places, Haiti, Liberia and Iraq.
Anne Blue Wills, a Davidson College professor of religious studies who is writing a biography of Ruth Graham, said this smart, contemplative woman who wrote poetry, studied the Bible daily and loved to play tricks, had a greater impact on Billy and Franklin than many realized.
“A close look at how (Billy and Ruth) worked out the practical and theological give-andtake of their commitment and forged a life together reveals more about Billy and Ruth than most people have known,” Wills wrote in an article for Christian History magazine. “Their marriage reflected their mutual love, but also their working relationship.”
In addition, Wills wrote, “Ruth proved to be a generational link: she infused Billy’s work with her father’s influence and molded their elder son (Franklin’s) vision in a way that may permanently reshape the Graham legacy.”