Billy Graham may have been last bipartisan evangelical leader

Billy Graham, who died Wednesday at age 99, may have been the last high-profile bipartisan evangelical leader.

He was one of the few clergy to have ministered to presidents and first ladies on both sides of the aisle. He is perhaps known as much for his loyalty to Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal and visiting George H.W. Bush the night the United States and its allies launched an air attack on Iraq, as he is for helping Lyndon B. Johnson pick his running mate and providing marriage counsel to Hillary Clinton in the midst of her husband’s infidelity scandal.

But Graham’s visibility waned as his health declined. His prominence gave way to that of his son, Franklin, and other evangelical leaders, including James Dobson and Robert Jeffrees, to meet with politicians.

The political approach of many of these later leaders, however, has been quite different from Graham’s, leading to criticism of evangelicalism, particularly the strands affiliated with conservative white Americans, for being divisive and partisan. Graham was known for saying: “I don’t think politics is part of my work.”

Today’s evangelical leaders have praised President Donald Trump for granting them more access than any president in history. But Trump, who overwhelmingly won the white evangelical vote in the 2016 presidential election, is often criticized by more progressive Christian leaders for promising to unite a very divided country while dividing it even more.

In contrast, Graham — known as the “pastor of the presidents” — is being praised for actually being a unifier.

“He is on the plus-side of history. I remember when he opened his doors … to integrate and at that time, it was a tough call,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. told CBSN, CBS’s streaming news channel, on Wednesday.

Current white evangelical leaders have attracted criticism for their silence on how Trump has dealt with race issues. But half a century ago when white evangelicals were often critical of the civil rights movement for its association with Democrats, Graham attracted scorn from those within his faith for calling on them to listen to people with opposing views.

In July 1957, Graham, after noticing his audiences were overwhelmingly white, invited the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., then the most prominent black pastor in America, to give a public prayer at a large evangelical gathering at Madison Square Garden.

“A great social revolution is going on in the United States today. Dr. King is one of its leaders, and we appreciate his taking time … to come and share this service with us tonight,” Graham said.