America’s pastor
Evangelist blazed numerous spiritual trails
William Franklin Graham Jr., born to pious parents on a North Carolina dairy farm, found Jesus when he was 16. A traveling preacher led the beanstalk-scrawny, baseball-loving Billy to his decision to be saved.
In that moment, Jesus and the role of an itinerant evangelist — changing the world one life at a time — captured his heart.
Graham, who died Wednesday at his home in Montreat, N.C., was 99 and had endured a number of health challenges, including prostate cancer and symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
He graduated from Florida Bible Institute, then went on to Wheaton College, where he found his helpmate in Ruth Bell, daughter of missionaries to China. By 1945, he was the nation’s first field representative for Youth for Christ, a newborn evangelical network aimed at teens and young adults seeking faith in a postwar world. The network’s motto, “Geared to the Times, Anchored to the Rock,” defined his life.
His name became nationally famous in 1949 in Los Angeles, where he made two breakthroughs.
One was private: Graham recalled a long night of prayer when he made a lifelong commitment to the Bible despite his own doubts and questions.
One was public: Newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst told his editors to “puff Graham” — to publish glowing descriptions of the young man whose conservative attitudes matched those of the powerful publisher.
Soon, Graham was a media darling. Time magazine described the “blond, trumpet-lunged” minister pacing his platform, “clenching his fists, stabbing his finger at the sky and straining to get his words to the furthermost corners of the tent.”
Revolution in evangelism
In 1957, he brought his crusade to New York City, filling Madison Square Garden for a stunning 16 weeks. Later broadcast by ABC News, the crusade set a pattern for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for decades to come: Use every communication innovation possible to carry the gospel to any willing heart on Earth.
The broadcast was a revolutionary moment in American evangelism, religiously and socially.
The event no longer was sponsored or underwritten purely by fundamentalists who held themselves separate from anyone who didn’t share their strict views of the Bible and salvation.
Instead, Graham called for a council of several Protestant denominations, united by evangelist intent, to organize and fund the event and follow up with newborn believers.
From then on, every crusade came to be based on an invitation from a broad swath of churches.
His final New York City crusade in 2005 was sponsored by 1,400 regional churches from 82 denominations.
Graham hired his first black evangelist to help staff his 1957 crusade, integrating evangelism back when football-coach-turned-stadium-evangelist Bill McCartney, famous in the 1990s for preaching racial healing to Promise Keepers, was still in high school.
More than 214 million people in 195 cities and territories heard Graham’s stentorian voice and witnessed him deliver the gospel — pure and uncritical — in person or by satellite links. Beyond his 417 crusades were rallies and services adding up to 226 events in the USA and 195 in foreign cities.
His reputation was untouched by sex or financial scandals.
After anti-Semitic comments came to light when transcripts were released of conversations the evangelist had with President Nixon, Graham promptly apologized.
He never built a megachurch, set up a relief agency, launched a political lobby or ran for office. He redefined American Protestant life by popularizing Christianity’s core message — Jesus died for your sins — downplaying denominational details and proclaiming the joys found in faith.
He met, prayed with, comforted and joked with 12 U.S. presidents. He found a fine balance that allowed him to become America’s pastor, Democrat or Republican, North or South.
Millions encountered Graham radiating from giant video screens, TV, film, his weekly radio broadcast or the Internet.
In recent years, most crusades were webcast a week later or syndicated on TV. Trinity Broadcasting Network showed “Billy Graham classics” weekly. Once he retired from the pulpit, his son and association successor, Franklin, recycled and repurposed thousands of video and film hours of Billy Graham sermons for 21st-century video outreach.
‘A very special man’
“The GREAT Billy Graham is dead,” President Trump tweeted Wednesday. “There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man.”
“He was so real, he made Christianity come true,” said Susan Harding, an anthropologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz. “He was homespun, historical and newsworthy all at once. He could span the times from Christ to today, from the globe to you, all in one sentence.”
Billy Graham was:
Founder of Christianity Today magazine in 1956 and publisher of Decision magazine.
The original preaching voice of the weekly Hour of Decision, which was replaced in 2003 by Decision Minute, a series of one-minute messages from Billy and Franklin Graham that aired on 680 stations in the USA and 170 in Australia.
Author of 33 books of advice, inspiration and autobiography, including one on age and facing death published in 2011.
Producer of so many evangelical movies, films, videos and television programs that his association claims to be the world leader in this field.
Changing with the times
Even after he retired in June 2005, he still preached at his son’s crusades in New Orleans and Baltimore months later.
He stopped calling his events “crusades” out of sensitivity to Muslim concerns after 9/11, just as he avoided the militaristic term “campaign” after World War II. But the expression “Billy Graham Crusade” was so ingrained in the popular usage that by 2004, it was back in use.
Legions of everyday admirers named this willfully modest man among the Gallup Poll’s “10 Most Admired Men in the World.” Although he never has led the list, he remained a dominant name. From 1955 to 2013, he was cited 56 times in the top 10 — more than any other man, according to Gallup.
Honors by the score were bestowed on him by governments, brotherhoods, academies, broadcasting organizations and believers of every faith and following. High among them: the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Billy and Ruth in 1996, the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to him in 1983 and the Templeton Foundation Prize for Progress in Religion in 1982.
In December 2001, he was presented with an honorary knighthood by the British Empire for his international civic and religious contributions.
He even has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. George W. Bush says a walk on the beach in Kennebunkport, Maine, with Graham helped turn his life to a commitment to faith.
The Mayo Clinic initially diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease in 1989. Later, the diagnosis was revised to focus on effects of hydrocephalus, water on the brain.
Graham finally ended his crusades in a resounding gathering in New York’s Flushing Meadows Corona Park in June 2005, delivering the same message he’d given for seven decades — an altar call he issued in stadiums and mud huts, disaster zones, cathedrals and Congress: Turn toward the God he believed to be true, he cajoled his audience.
Graham would wait for every soul who stepped forward, standing at the podium with endless patience, tenderly urging, “You come.”