Evangelical titan had global reach
Force in U.S. religious life broke with narrow approach of fundamentalism
MONTREAT, N. C.— The Rev. Billy Graham, the magnetic, movie-starhandsome preacher who became a singular force in postwar American religious life, a confidant of presidents and the most widely heard Christian evangelist in history, died Wednesday at 99.
“America’s Pastor,” as he was dubbed, had suffered from cancer, pneumonia and other ailments and died at his home in North Carolina.
Graham built evangelicalism into a force that rivalled liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the U.S. His leadership summits and crusades in more than185 countries and territories forged powerful global links among conservative Christians and threw a lifeline to believers in the communist bloc.
Tributes to Graham poured in from major leaders, with U.S. President Donald Trump tweeting: “The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man.” Former president Barack Obama said Graham “gave hope and guidance to generations of Americans.”
A tall, striking man with thick, swept-back hair, stark blue eyes and a firm jaw, Graham was a commanding presence in the pulpit, with a powerful baritone voice.
“The Bible says,” was his catchphrase. His unquestioning belief in scripture turned the Gospel into a “rapier” in his hands, he said. Graham reached multitudes around the globe through public appearances and his pioneering use of prime-time telecasts, network radio, daily newspaper columns, evangelis- tic films and satellite TV hookups.
By his final crusade in 2005 in New York City, he had preached in person to more than 210 million people worldwide. No evangelist is expected to have his level of influence again.
“William Franklin Graham Jr. can safely be regarded as the best who ever lived at what he did,” said William Martin, author of the Graham biography A Prophet With Honor.
He was a counsellor to U.S. presidents including Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush. In1983, president Ronald Reagan gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honour. When the Billy Graham Museum and Library was dedicated in 2007 in Charlotte, N.C., George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton attended.
“When he prays with you in the Oval Office or upstairs in the White House, you feel he’s praying for you, not the president,” Clinton said at the ceremony.
Born Nov. 7, 1918, on his family’s dairy farm near Charlotte, Graham came from a fundamentalist background that expected true Biblebelievers to stay clear of Christians with minor differences over Scrip- ture. But he came to reject that view for a more ecumenical approach.
Ordained a Southern Baptist, he later joined a then-emerging movement called New Evangelicalism that abandoned the narrowness of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists excoriated him for his new direction and broke with him when he agreed to work with more liberal Christians in the 1950s.
Graham stood fast. “The ecumenical movement has broadened my viewpoint and I recognize now that God has his people in all churches,” he said in the early 1950s. His approach helped evangelicals gain the influence they have today.
As the civil rights movement took shape, Graham never joined marches. Still, he ended racially segregated seating at his Southern crusades in 1953, a year before the Supreme Court’s school integration ruling.
In a 2005 interview with The Associated Press, Graham said he regretted that he didn’t battle for civil rights more forcefully.
“The offers I’ve had from Hollywood studios are amazing,” Graham said. “But I just laughed. I told them I was staying with God.”