‘America’s Pastor,’ Rev. Billy Graham, dies at 99
MONTREAT, N.C. — The Rev. Billy Graham, the magnetic, moviestar-handsome 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.
More than anyone else, Graham built evangelicalism into a force that rivalled liberal Protestantism and Roman Catholicism in the U.S. His leadership summits and crusades in more than 185 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 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, sweptback 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, newspaper columns, evangelistic 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 of both parties from Dwight Eisenhower to George W. Bush. In 1983, 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 Bible-believers to stay clear of Christians with even the most minor differences over scripture. 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.
In 1957, he said, “I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the Gospel of Christ.” His approach helped evangelicals gain the influence they have today.
A 1949 Los Angeles revival turned Graham into evangelism’s rising star. Held in a tent dubbed the “Canvas Cathedral,” the gathering had been drawing adequate but not spectacular crowds until one night when reporters and photographers descended. When Graham asked them why, a reporter said publisher William Randolph Hearst had ordered his papers to hype Graham. He never found out why.
Over the next decade, his huge crusades in England and New York catapulted him to international celebrity. His 12-week London campaign in 1954 defied expectations, drawing more than 2 million people and the respect of the British, many of whom had derided him before his arrival as little more than a slick salesman. Three years later, he held a crusade in New York’s Madison Square Garden that was so popular it was extended from six to 16 weeks, capped off with a rally in Times Square with more than 100,000 people.
As the civil rights movement took shape, Graham was no social activist and never joined marches, which led prominent Christians such as theologian Reinhold Niebuhr to condemn him as too moderate. Still, Graham ended segregated seating at his Southern crusades in 1953, a year before the Supreme Court’s school integration ruling, and long refused to visit South Africa while its white regime insisted on racially segregated meetings.
In a 2005 interview with The Associated Press, Graham said he regretted that he didn’t battle for civil rights more forcefully.
“I think I made a mistake when I didn’t go to Selma” with many clergy who joined the Alabama march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. “I would like to have done more.”
Graham more robustly took on the cause of anti-Communism, making preaching against the atheist regime part of his sermons for years.
Graham will be buried by his wife at the Billy Graham Museum and Library. There was no immediate word on arrangements.