Graham went from tent revivals to White House
A retired Rome pastor says the famed evangelist taught him the importance of ‘the simple Gospel.’
As a young man, he practiced his sermons by preaching to the alligators and birds in the swamp. At his height years later, he was bringing the word of God into living rooms around the globe via TV and dispensing spiritual counsel — and political advice — to U.S. presidents.
The Rev. Billy Graham, dubbed “America’s Pastor” and the “Protestant Pope,” died Wednesday at his North Carolina home at age 99 after achieving a level of influence and reach no other evangelist is likely ever to match.
More than anyone else, the magnetic, Hollywoodhandsome Graham built evangelicalism into a force that rivaled liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the United States.
He transformed the tent revival into an event that filled football arenas, and reached the masses by making pioneering use of TV in prosperous postwar America. By his final crusade in 2005, he had preached in person to more than 210 million people worldwide.
All told, he was the most widely heard Christian evangelist in modern history.
Rome resident Jim Austin, 92, — a retired Shorter College (now University) administrator and former pastor of Unity Baptist Church in Summerville — got to know Graham well as a young pastor in Hendersonville, Tennessee. He was involved with the 1954 Billy Graham Crusade in Hendersonville and the two men played golf at the Bluegrass Country Club.
“He was a great influence in my life and convinced me of the importance of just preaching the simple Gospel,” Austin said in a March 21, 2013, profile in The Christian Index. “In those days I preached a lot of revivals myself, and my friends started calling me ‘the poor man’s Billy Graham.’”
A tall figure with sweptback hair, blue eyes and a strong jaw, Graham was a commanding presence in the pulpit with a powerful baritone voice. His catchphrase: “The Bible says ...”
Despite his international renown, he would be the first to say his message was not complex or unique. But he won over audiences with his friendliness, humility and unyielding religious conviction.
He had an especially strong influence on the religion and spirituality of American presidents, starting with Dwight Eisenhower, whom he urged to run for office and baptized at the White House. George W. Bush credited Graham with helping him transform himself from carousing, hard-drinking oilman to born-again Christian family man.
William Franklin Graham Jr. wasn’t always so skilled. After World War II, as an evangelist in the U.S. and Europe with Youth for Christ, he was dubbed “the Preaching Windmill“for his armswinging and rapid-fire speech.
His first meeting with a U.S. president, Harry Truman, was a disaster. Wearing a pastel suit and loud tie that he would later say made him look like a vaudeville performer, the preacher, unfamiliar with protocol, told reporters what he had discussed with Truman, then posed for photos.