Transcript: "The Women and Men of American Religion. Story 2" with Billy Graham
Chris: If anyone thinks about religion in America, which thinking is absolutely essential to understand the nation, one of the first things that comes to mind whether one is religious or not, is Billy Graham. And even if that's not the case, because of his outsized 20th-century influence, we should think about Billy Graham. Born in 1918 on a dairy farm in North Carolina, Billy Graham later would be an advisor to American presidents, travel the world including behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, and fill stadiums to witness his preaching. Our discussion about this towering figure on the American historical stage will help all of us better understand what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and we trust that, as a result, listeners will see how indispensable the idea of religious freedom as a governing principle is to the United States and its ability to fulfill its purposes in the world.
Today we have with us - Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor Billy Graham and The Shaping of a Nation. He specializes in the history of Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, World Missions, and American Protestant thought. He is the author or co-editor of seven books including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture, Religion in American Life, and Religion in 19th Century America.
Dr. Wacker has served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture and is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and of the American Society of Church History. We encourage listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab. Grant, thank you so much for being with us today.
Graham: Thank you, Chris.
Chris: Before we dive into the details, Grant, can you tell us why you chose the title you did?
Graham: Well, at the most obvious level in a sense is that when the Billy Graham Library was dedicated in 2007, George Bush, former president, George HW Bush was present, and he called Graham “America's Pastor.” And so the label was publicized quite prominently at that point. But the label had often been used in, um, in newspapers and in magazines and, you know, over-- for many years, um, and in a lot of different contexts.
Chris: And then the subtitle is prominent, “Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation”, that's, uh, that's a pretty powerful statement. Why did you choose that?
Graham: Well, I have to be honest. My editor chose that. So I asked her, "Are you sure we want to go with that? That is a pretty powerful statement." And she said, "Yeah. Go for it." Uh, so, yeah, that may be a bit too muscular. Uh, but what I did want to suggest-- I was willing to go with it, but I did want to suggest is that he helped articulate, uh, a set of religious values. They came to define the Evangelical movement, which, you know, is 60 million, 80 million strong depending on how you define it. A segment that large and he comes to define it, that did seem reasonable.
Chris: Right. Tell us in brief why should Americans who are not Evangelicals including those who are not Christian, uh, should pick up a book that says “America's Pastor”, someone who's shaped the nation? Just really briefly and then we'll dive into some details, we'll get into the details.
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: If that would be a good question to ask.
Graham: Well, that's-- it's a terrific question and, uh, and, again, I would say that Graham helped create a public space for religion, uh, certainly for Evangelicals, he helped bring that-- he helped bring them out of the closet in the 1950s into a place of prominence and respectability and that those numbers have grown continually since then. And, so, um, almost by any reasonable measure of things, Graham is important by virtue of the public space he helped create but also because of his associations with presidents of the United States. He's conspicuous, he was always there, and the press loved it. And all these photographs of, you know, Graham on the golf course with Eisenhower and Johnson and Nixon, it goes on and on, so he brings a certain brand label of faith into public consciousness.
Chris: Okay, fair enough. Grant, give us a short biography of Billy Graham bringing us up through the 1949 Los Angeles Crusade which made him a prominent national figure--high-level bio up to that point.
Graham: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the short of it is-- is that he was a pretty inconspicuous figure until then and born on a dairy farm in North Carolina and a very remote rural area. Um, his sister told me that they would probably not see more than one car a day pass. He attended a rural high school for three years, which was customary in those days. He was a C student, not terribly good and not terribly bad either, just an ordinary kid. He went off to Bob Jones University, which in those days was Bob Jones College, and it was in Tennessee. He went there for a semester. He did not fit in, didn't like it, transferred to Florida Bible Institute, and he did fit in and he loved it. But, again, a very inconspicuous school in Florida. Then he went to Wheaton College for a better education and for a respectable bachelor's degree and as the jargon goes - Wheaton is the Harvard of the Evangelical world. It was then, still is. In fact, around there, they say that Harvard is the Wheaton of the Ivy League. A very fine school.
And so Graham did well there. Again, he was not a valedictorian or anything, but he did well enough. After Wheaton, he became a pastor for a year, not successful as a pastor. Then he went into Youth for Christ and began to-- began to spread his wings, so to speak and traveled all over the US, all over Britain, part of the continent, and he began to feel, you know, his calling. But he didn't really come into national prominence until 1949, the crusade in Los Angeles.
Chris: Can you give us a few details about that event? How it happened and what happened?
Graham: Yeah. In retrospect, you look at Billy Graham's autobiography the part-- the chapter on, um, Los Angeles, he calls “turning point.” So, in his own perspective, he wrote when he was an old man, h, he looked back at this very long career, very, you know, celebrated career and he sees 1949, Los Angeles is the point where he ceases to be just a Southern Country Boy preacher and he has a kind of national prominence. Um, and he went there for three weeks in the fall of 1949 and, uh, that was extended to six weeks and then finally, to eight weeks. Pitched a huge circus tent and reputedly one of the largest in the world right in downtown Los Angeles. Graham always had an eye for the spectacular. And so right in the center of the town and a big carbon arc light and at first, crowds were very slow to come but momentum built and I'd say momentum built three weeks in and for three, uh, two reasons. First is, uh, celebrities started to come and they would then give their testimonials and Graham always understood the power of the testimonial. Testimonies meant more than any theology textbook. Right?
And then the second reason he really flourished was because William Randolph Hearst discovered him and Hearst was the owner of one of the two largest newspaper chains in the nation, and there's no reason to think that Hearst shared Graham's religious views, but he did share Graham's anti-communism. And so Hearst began to give Graham prominent coverage in his newspapers.
Chris: Okay. Thank you for that, uh, that biography of him and bringing us up to that important event. Is it important to note for our listeners that Graham was also a Fuller Brush salesman?
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: Wasn't that true? He was a--
Graham: He was. Summer out of high school, 17, uh, he's just a 17-year-old kid and he was selling Fuller brushes door-to-door in South Carolina. And as the story goes, he sold more Fuller Brushes than anybody else in the state that summer and what's important to note about that, the long-range significance is that he came to the sense that, A, Fuller brushes are really good brushes, and if you have a good product and market it with all the energy you can. So he was never shy about marketing his message. Use the newspapers, use radio, television, podcasts. Use anything available.
Chris: Right.
Graham: He said, "I got the best product in the world. I'm going to sell it."
Chris: Yeah, okay. And for our listeners, you used the word “testimonials” of celebrities at that 1949 Crusade event, what do you mean by “testimonials”? What celebrities said after they were at The Crusade and would report to the press or what?
Graham: Yeah. At several levels, uh, the most obvious level is that when someone made a commitment to Christ they would sign a card and so Graham's organizers, counselors, would know. So, in a sense, they go on record.
Chris: Okay.
Graham: And then Graham was quite a student, never shy about asking people who are prominent then to talk, come up, and to talk about what-- what they've meant to them or their conversion experience. Now, what Graham was always a little vague about, I think, is that very often - more often than not, these are not sky-blue conversions. These were people who had grown up in the church and they had strayed, their faith had grown cold, and they were coming back to the church. So once in a while though when he was confronted about this, he would say, "Look, what's the difference? You're coming to faith from no faith, or if you are reviving a faith that has grown cold or dead, died? What's the difference?"
Chris: Right.
Graham: So people would talk about this.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. Now, Grant, you write in your book that Graham was not a theologian but a "craftsman who worked with theological materials". Would you tell us what his main teachings were and then talk about his delivery and style? That is, paint for us the portrait of Billy Graham as pastor?
Graham: Well, first, his main teachings was traditional Protestant, Evangelical theology almost boilerplate, you would say. He made no innovations theologically at all. In fact, he trimmed it a lot. He preached a very streamlined gospel. Left off a lot of things that a lot of Protestants think are terribly important. For him, the core of the Gospel is that the Bible is authoritative. It provides a rule for life and he wasn't very concerned about the Bible and churches or Society. It's a rule for our personal lives and Christ died for our sins, rose again, and by appropriating Christ, faith in Christ, bringing-- calling Christ into our lives, we can be forgiven of sins into an invigorated life. Graham didn't use the word “holiness of life” very often but this is what he was talking about. We can have a new life. We can have a cleansed life, a better light, and then the life beyond. That was part of the message.
And when I think about it and as I read many letters to Graham, I mean, people literally sent millions and we think about what you see there over and over is that from Graham, they gain the sense of a second chance: "I messed up my life and this message gives me a second chance." So that was, I would say, the theology and the effect. He was not an eloquent preacher, but he was an effective preacher, um, and, uh, his goal always was to connect and he figured if you can't connect, there's no point preaching. And we know that he connected because of the crowds that came, he probably preached to more people than anyone else in history with the exception of John Paul II. We know he preach live to more than 80 million people. He was connecting and the message was simple. It was dynamic, he preached fast and hard especially in the beginning. As time went on, it slowed down, but it was a simple method. And once he said, "The average American has a vocabulary at 600 words," and he said, "I'm going to stay within their range." And he did. I mean, you look at those sermons and you know, these are-- and let’s even talk more about that.
Actually, I haven't thought about this for a long time is he said, "I try to use one-syllable words." And if you look, this in all sermons, any of that, they're short and punchy, it's like one time he said, "I like your thinking my preaching is like firing ammunition, you know, these short punching one-syllable words." So anyway, so that was the preaching style - fast, loud, hard, in the beginning, it tapered off over the years, but an eloquent-- not an eloquent preacher, but an effective one.
Chris: I remember reading in your book, or maybe it was his autobiography or something else where he, as part of his preaching maybe at the end of his sermon if he called him that he would-- he would invite people to come up, right? And, uh, he would continually say, "We'll wait. I'm waiting." Right? Was that part of-- was that always part of his delivery?
Graham: Yes. From the very beginning. And it was, um, very deliberate and actually that-- I've thought about this some and actually, I thought about it a lot, is what the old fashioned revivalist had called, “The Altar Call.” He didn't call it that very much. He'd say, "It's time to come forward," and for an evangelist, that's the payoff, it isn't the money. It's if people don't respond then there's no point being an evangelist. It's like being a salesman, again, if you don't sell brushes, then you're not effective. Well, if people don't respond, then you have failed, frankly. Now, he would not always say that. He would say, "God has called me to preach, and regardless of the results, I'm preaching." But still at a more human level. It was the result, people coming, that counted.
Chris: Sure. Okay. Thank you. Later on, now, this is mid-20th-century and you write, after-- after he became a prominent national figure, you say that, "Graham fit the idealization if not idolization of the post-World War II youth culture." What did you mean by that? And what were the ramifications?
Graham: He came to prominence in the late 40s as a Youth for Christ speaker and at that point he was flamboyant and, uh, he wore bright-colored suits and even at one point flashing ties, with little batteries in the ties, believe it or not. And the lights that flash. I mean, there was almost-- I mean it was spectacular and some people would say it was tacky. He wouldn’t and he just say, "Well, you know, I'm attracting young people," and, uh, and in those meetings, they would do things that he would later on regret or either back at, they would even have, uh, you know, dancing. I think it was a dancing bear or maybe his horse, a dancing horse would come out and say, the horse, you know, "How many people are there in the trinity?" And the horse would stomp his feet three times. This was in the very beginning and later on, you know, he would wince, oh, my lord, you know, but it attracted people. I mean, it worked, he was attracting young people. Um, as time went on, in the 50s, he tried to connect and he brought his message into connection with world events.
Now, later on, he would, again, feel that he had gone too far and he would back off from that. But in the early years, he talked a lot about communism and other kinds of social trends, um, that he thought made his preaching relevant. And in that sense, he wasn't preaching precisely to youth any more, but it certainly was a younger crowd.
Chris: And at this time in American history, there was sort of a “celebrity culture” that had emerged post-World War II, you think of the Kennedy administration as Camelot and things like that. He fit in very well with that. Can you give us your thought on--
Graham: Yeah, even more than that, and this is, you know, I wouldn't want to lay my body on the track for this but in a lot of ways, this was the era of the one person celebrity per field, one person per field. There's one Elvis, right? There was one Leonard Bernstein. Uh, there was one Walter Cronkite and obviously, there are so many more in all those fields, but there's one person who seemed to define the conversation and everybody else, singers, you know, rock 'n roll singers want to be like Elvis. All right? And so somehow, there are reasons, it's not somehow but they really good reasons why Billy moved into that singular position among evangelists and nobody else came close. By the early 50s, there was simply no one else who came close and today we look back at it and we have to kind of say, "Billy Graham wasn't always Billy Graham." I mean there was a time, you know, he failed at times when he was younger and he knew it. But by the mid '50s, you know, he was a singular person.
Chris: Right. Okay. So now let's move forward maybe a decade or so and regarding Billy Graham and the Civil Rights Movement you write this, Grant, "Martin Luther King was the absent presence throughout Graham's life both before and after King's death." What does the historical record tell us about Billy Graham and Jim Crow, racism, and the Civil Rights Movement? That is a very broad subject.
Graham: Complicated--
Chris: Just the high-level.
Graham: Yeah, a very good question. We could talk about that for hours, I'll try not to. I'll try to be succinct. And I'd say that Graham’s record on Civil Right was erratic. We do not see linear progress. We expect to see a man who started off as a Southern segregationist and then ended up very progressive at the end of his life and that's not the way it happened. The way it happened is that he did grow up in a strongly segregated society and it was until he was a young man that it ever occurred to him there was something wrong with that and he talks about it. And it wasn't until he actually got to Wheaton College as a postgraduate in the sense that it never occurred to him, he said that, as he put it in those days, "A negro was my peer." And he said this with regret. He said, "I can't believe that that's how I grew up. But I did, I grow up in the South." All right? And so this is by the late '40s and by 1952, 53 he had come to the conviction that he would no longer tolerate segregation in his meetings.
So he insisted upon integrated meetings. He encountered enormous opposition. He was commonly called a communist traitor, a traitor to his race. I mean, you know, he-- he took a lot of opposition, it was a courageous position. By the late 50s and into the mid-60s, however, he seemed to step back and he became, um, worried about two things - one, violence in the street, Watts, for example, and he wasn't alone. I mean, Robert Kennedy, you know, was worried too. So he wasn't alone in his but he was growing worried about, uh, black power. And so they began to call for law and order. You know, the solution to our problem is not Christ but, well, Christ is a part of it, but we certainly need law and order. So in a sense, he's moving backward in the mid-60s. Um, and then also he becomes very worried later on about Martin Luther King's opposition to the Vietnam War. Graham supported it. He supported Nixon in the early days. So there are a couple of reasons.
By the early 70s, however, he had this complete turnaround and he comes, by the early 70s, to be-- he strongly insists upon colorblindness. Now, today, we see that as a problem, as part of the problem, but in the early-- early 70s that was perceived as a progressive position, absolute color blindness. In fact, I think in one of his best sermons where he was actually quite eloquent was preached in Durban South Africa in 1973. The first integrated meeting since apartheid and there he insisted, he said, "Christ was a brown man. He wasn't black. He wasn't white. But the point is he transcends all these colors." It's a kind of colorblindness message and he held to that 'til end of his life.
Chris: Do we have, uh-- we must have a record that he interacted with Martin Luther King?
Graham: He did. It was not-- I would say it was an unsteady relationship and one since these are kind of like, you know, you know, two big German shepherds in the ring. I mean, these are two of the most prominent figures in American culture and I think the relationship was wary, not weary, but wary for both of them. Graham is an Evangelist, King as a reformer and they were both some of the other, but fundamentally, their approaches are different. And so there's a certain wariness and there was a public cooperation, uh, from about 1957 on, when Graham invited King to come to his Crusade. But there definitely were times after 1957 where Graham drew back from King; King drew away from Graham. I think we can only imagine what would have happened if Graham and King had really worked together, but the plain sad historical truth of it is they didn't. They didn't oppose each other but they didn't work together, with the one exception where, in '68, King came out, he came out publicly and strongly opposing the Vietnam War as I mentioned and Graham challenged King quite directly on this point. But when King was assassinated, Graham was very clear that King was one of the, you know, the great moral leaders of the age.
Chris: Okay, we'll have to think about that. Process all that, a little bit. Thank you.
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: Grant, Billy Graham--
Graham: It is a complicated story.
Chris: Sure.
Graham: A lot of ways we wish that it weren't, but the history often isn't. You just have to deal with it as it is.
Chris: Grant, Billy Graham set up the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and you write that “he originated it to regularize his finances but that from the outset, it was more than that. It enjoyed providential legitimation for it handled the disposition of money that had been received providentially." Would you tell us the role of this organization in what Billy Graham aspired to do and did do?
Graham: Well, first, I'll say the-- it came to be called the BGEA and then insiders deleted the E. And so they just called it the BGA, you hear that all the time. So let's say the BGA is understudied. It's one of the most important features of Graham's career and we don't-- we have not received a sustained study of it. You need someone with a business career, really, to look at it because it was an extremely well-oiled machine, um, and the main purpose of it was to handle the finances, to receive the finances, the public accounting to make sure that there is nothing illegitimate. Graham received a lot of criticism in his life. Some of it was warranted. But the one thing he was never criticized about was finances and because of the BGA, totally upfront public. Okay.
So the money would come in usually in small quantities, mom-and-pop. There's a continual revenue stream and it would be sent, he would say on the radio program, you know, “send your contributions” or Cliff Barrels, and so he would say, "Send your contributions to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota," then those lines, "That's all the address you need. Just Minneapolis, Minnesota," and, you know, people did by the millions. I think it's worth noting the Graham organization and ministry, always survived on small contributions from large numbers of people, mom and pop, grandma and grandpa, never survived with big grants. He didn't want big grants. He wants contributions. And so that's what the BGA was there for.
Chris: Okay. You quote Billy Graham as saying quote here, "I intend to go anywhere sponsored by anybody to preach the gospel of Christ if there are no strings attached to my message. I'm sponsored by civic clubs, universities, ministerial associations, and councils of churches all over the world." Then you add, Grant, "When his life and words are considered in their entirety, Graham clearly did not mean that correct belief was unimportant, but some items of belief are more important than others. The question was how to work with people of divergent views in the common cause of Christian evangelism." How did Graham do this and what were the effects?
Graham: Almost, uh, well, I won't say from the outset but certainly by the early 1950s and very clearly by the mid-1950s, he would say, "I work with anyone who works with me and then there were two qualifications. If they don't ask me to change my message," and then he would add, "and if they accept the deity of Christ." Well, in practice, he didn't stress the deity of Christ and he was willing for that to be presupposed. He understood that people understood the deity of Christ in different ways. So he didn't make an issue of that. Um, what he did make an issue of, "Just don't ask me to change my message and let's talk about Christ. Let's talk about changing the world." So he worked with Mormons. He worked with liberal Protestants and with Catholics and he tried to work with Fundamentalists to his right ,and that did not work. Fundamentalists would not work with him, but he tried. So he just tried to open his arms and say, you know, there's a big tent here because, in a sense, he didn't put it this way, but it was, "We've got bigger fish to fry than to fight with each other." And to a remarkable extent, um, he succeeded.
He even said I'll work with Jews. Now, of course, this is tricky. I mean, he's calling people to faith in Christ and then Jews couldn't go that far, but they could go with him in his affirmation of God and morality and patriotism. So he had lots of good relationships even with Jews.
Chris: Right. Thank you for that. We are talking with Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Listeners, if you have not yet done so, please visit storyoamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the signup tab.
Grant, I think our listeners have great interest and that's understated, generally in this question - how religion is involved in politics? You dedicate a chapter to investigating Billy Graham's involvement in politics. You write this in that chapter, "By virtually all accounts, including otherwise sharply critical ones, Graham proves impervious to the temptations of greed and lust but political power was another matter." Tell us, Grant, what we need to know about Graham and American presidents and American politics.
Graham: Hmm. I'm amazed by that sentence that I wrote. Wow. Okay, I'll stand by that. I'm surprised by that but I think I got it there right. There's not a trace of sexual impropriety in his life. And as I said, there is not a trace of financial impropriety. There is a great deal of evidence, overwhelming evidence, that he fell into partisanship in ways that he would later, uh, severely regret. And he admitted that, I mean, he said, this-- these are my words but effectively, he said it is like the moth to the flame. He said, "I just couldn't stay out of it." And the real issue is that politicians gained a lot by their association with him. They gain, let's go back to our word here, legitimation. By having their picture on a cover with Billy Graham, they knew perfectly well that there would be millions of people say, "Well, you know, this guy is endorsed by Billy Graham. He must be okay." So they gained and he gained at a very human level. He would not acknowledge this but I think it's pretty obvious that he enjoyed association with power. He didn't exercise power himself except within his organization, and it wasn't that he wanted to, you know, be the Secretary of Defense or something like that, but he enjoyed being with people who had power, he enjoyed the association with the glamour, the allure of power. So he got something out of it.
And then if he were pressed about it, he would admit that he did hang out a lot with famous people and powerful people and his defense of this was, hey, the rich need God just as much as the poor, the powerful need God just as much as the weak. I mean, why not? I mean, you know, they need a pastor, and presidents need a pastor. So that was part of it. Then he would also have the argument that overseas, internationally, people took him and his message more seriously if they saw that he had the ear of the president and he did. He did have the ear of the president and it is undeniable that especially overseas people found that very, very impressive. And again, “if the president of the United States listens to Billy Graham, then I should to.”
Chris: Right. What's the list of presidents that he was an unofficial adviser to? Can you give us that and then maybe an anecdote or two, uh, of him interacting with presidents? Whether it's Truman or Nixon or Eisenhower or Reagan, give us a sense of that.
Graham: Yeah, he personally met every president of the United States in the course of his life. Uh, one president, the first one that he met was Truman and the relationship was disastrous. Truman, uh, intensely disliked Graham, personally. Uh, and Graham disliked Truman. He didn't say so but there was, uh, no compatibility there at all. There are reasons for that. Um, but Graham got along with all the other presidents. He was-- I think his closest friend in his whole life except for two or three immediate associates, his closest friend was Lyndon Johnson and they were what we call “pals.” They were buddies. There was a camaraderie there. They just enjoyed being with each other. And at one point, Johnson said, "Billy consider the White House your motel whenever you're in Washington, you don't need an invitation. Just ring us up and you know, there'll be a room for you." So he was very close to Johnson personally. He was close to Richard Nixon, which was probably the most unfortunate thing that ever happened to him. He was entangled in his friendship with Nixon and, uh, he lost perspective. I think that's all we can say. And later he knew that. But he did. He lost perspective with Nixon.
After that, he was fairly close with Reagan and with the senior Bush, these were all personal friends, but also, often isn't noted is that his wife Ruth was close to the Presidents' wives and so it wasn't just one way but very often, the four would vacation together. That's a whole another story that needs to be told.
Chris: Okay. Great. Let's see. You write in the same chapter that over the course of his public ministry, Graham "displayed three distinguishable outlooks towards the American dream - challenging America, embracing America, and transcending America." Would you elaborate on each briefly?
Graham: He always from the beginning to the end, um, challenge, uh, America's misdeeds as a nation. Now, exactly what those misdeeds were changed according to the times and say in the 1950s, he warned Americans about being soft on communism. And, uh, in the 1960s he continued to worry about that but they were soft on communism in Vietnam. Now, he changed his mind about this. He, uh, he backed off on his support of the Vietnam War and that's another story. But then in the 60s, he would talk about materialism and, you know, juvenile delinquency, the rise of divorce, such things. And then later on, he talked about racism and militarism and by the end of his career, I'd say his central concern with America was militarism like Eisenhower, the military-industrial complex. Graham said by the 1980s that our greatest dangers, he said we're going to destroy the-- we're going to destroy civilization if we keep going, not just America, America and the Soviet Union. That's the challenge part.
The embrace part is that, I would say by the 60s and especially in the 70s, he had grown to become very comfortable with the American way of life. He was the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade, for example, in 1970. And so here he is, he's in this convertible, you know, and the roses and, you know, and all the other people that are celebrities and he's waving and gives every indication that America's a pretty good place and not a whole lot that do draw back from. And then say this last through the 70s, he becomes, well, there was a magazine article, an article in the New York Times. They called him “America's chaplain.” He intensely disliked that but it's true. He disliked it because he knew it was true. Okay.
By the end of his life, though, I'd say from the '70-- the later 70s and the 80s and 90s, um, he took this posture of transcending in which he tried to say the gospel is bigger than us, it's bigger than America, it's bigger than any country. Christ transcends the gospel. One of the lines that he would repeat, over the years was if you hitch your wagon to any particular political party, when that party falls, your wagon will fall. And if you want the gospel to succeed, you got to unhitch from the political parties from America. And, I mean, at one point, he even said, "America should be more like Canada." He said, "Canada doesn't go around trying to police the world." Well, that, a little bit tongue-in-cheek there, but his larger point is is that we have a message that's bigger than the nation.
Chris: Right. Regarding this last point of transcending, I noted that you quote him as admitting "I used to make the mistake of almost identifying the kingdom of God with the American way of life," which is, sort of, captures that-- that sentiment that you explain there.
Grant, talk to us about Billy Graham and war, peace, and global justice, which you call long and complex, but I think it's important enough to our listeners to get a 30,000-foot level - allowed by our time constraints.
Graham: Um, let's focus on war and peace, uh, and, uh, their-- the short of it is he moved from a posture of a guy whose strident spread-eagled patriotism in the 50s to, as I have said, an advocacy of the mutual disarmament, demilitarization and it's important to stress “mutual.” He never wanted the US unilaterally to disarm. But he said we have to work with the Soviet Union. And, indeed, by the 80s, he would say that what the US and Soviet Union are doing is like two little boys, uh, standing in a tub of gasoline and playing with matches. We're going to destroy the world.
Now, that's the late Graham. The early Graham was quite different. The early Graham saw communism as the greatest threat and though he did not call for, uh, well-- I was gonna say he didn't call for war. He supported the Korean War, in the beginning. He supported the Vietnam War, in the beginning, in both wars, he backed off as time went on but still he would-- he felt that, uh, communism was a terrible threat, militarily, religiously in every way and we have to confront it. And so there's that strident, confrontational side of Graham, but it gradually abated as he grew older and I think the reason he came to have a more-- he was never a pacifist but he had a more pacific view of the world is just that he traveled the world so much and he just came to see so much suffering. A lot of people see it and they don't-- it doesn't register. But he saw suffering around the world and it touched him and changed him, he became a changed man.
Chris: Thank you. In telling this part of the story in the book, you write this, which I think was a fantastic capture of it. You wrote, "Graham seem to be hearing the voice of a new Jesus." That's how you put it.
Graham: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Grant, in an absolutely fascinating and enlightening part of your book, you state this: "The pastor as evangelist needed an audience, which is to say, he needed an audience in order to be who he was. The pastor and the audience created each other." What can you tell us about why the people came, who they were, the conversion process at his events, at his crusades and why they committed while there?
Graham: From the outside and here I draw upon the letters that people wrote to him afterward. So this isn't just speculations, it's listening to the letters. And from the outside, many of them would talk about how, uh, they came because there was something amiss in their lives and they usually couldn't put their finger on it. Um, “my life is just off the rails” and sometimes in very specific ways, “I've fallen into crime”, for example, or adultery or this or that but more often, it was a sense-- just a general sense that life is lost its meaning and then Graham preached about a second chance in Christ, you know, you come to Christ and you can start over. And again and again, this is what they would talk about is that second chance. Now, that's at the spiritual level. I think we can back off then we can analyze it a little more and as historians and we can say that it was also was a spectacular event in the precise sense of that. It was exciting. Graham comes to town, you know, tens of thousands of people come to the meetings. All buses are going to town. There's all this advertising all around town, billboards, bumper stickers, people are talking about it. And so then you go to a meeting and there's all the music and the crowds and, you know, so there's all of this. It is an event.
I went to a Graham meeting, myself, when I was only 12 years old. It was the only time I've ever been to Graham meeting, 12 years old, but I still remember it. What I remember about, A, is that Graham was a very funny preacher and they're-- actually I can remember one of the jokes he told and I don't remember anything else about the sermon. But I was a kid, grew up in a little town in Missouri--
Chris: What was the joke?
Graham: Oh, well, [laughs] it's probably-- it won't be funny if I tell it, but he was talking about puppy love and he said parents never take puppy-- he's talking about young teenagers. He said, "Parents never take puppy love seriously, but it's extremely real to the puppy." Okay? Well, there are just gales of laughter at this and it doesn't come off all that great when I tell it all these years later but in the context of the setting it was funny, but he was great. He told a lot of jokes and sometimes just straight-up jokes, self-deprecating jokes. He was a master of self-deprecating humor. And, of course, when you analyze that, that only works if you know that you're very famous and powerful. If you don't have, you know, accomplishments behind you then a self-deprecating joke isn't a joke, but he could joke about himself and people like that and it was genuine. I think he really did see his own career as amazing himself as much as anyone else. “How did this happen? I'm just a country kid.”
So he told jokes about himself and people laughed about it. So that was part of the appeal, his humor, the music, the crowds and then when people come forward, they would repeatedly talk about a new life they found.
Chris: And so, what was the conversion process to-- for lack of a better word, maybe that's not the right word. But at the-- at the crusade, what happened physically when somebody was converted and then what-- and why did they do it? What did they have to do?
Graham: This too. It's a very important process and I mean, we haven't studied enough. It can be analyzed, religious studies, scholars have analyzed it some but not enough.
Typically, typically, he would come to the end of a sermon and he would ask people to make a commitment to Christ and he-- more than that, he would say, "I want you to stand up and walk to the front." Now, this was a stroke of genius. He didn't invent this but he stressed it, you need to stand up and walk to the front. In other words, it doesn't count if you just have a conversion in your heart. And it really doesn't count if you just sort of put your finger up. What you need to do is make a palpable, visible movement. So what does that do? Well, it solidifies it in your own life and it solidifies it in the eyes of people around you. So, if you're standing up you're telling people around, "I need something," and he understood that. So people then walk to the front and he would offer a short prayer and then there are counselors.
Now, there's many counselors and sometimes or as many counselors as they were converts. He never called them converts. He called them inquirers. Okay. But there are as many counselors as inquirers and the idea was, in fact, that for every inquirer there would be a counselor and the counselor would offer a small gospel of John and a decision card. Uh, people could write down their name, phone number, and then in principle, later on, a counselor would contact the inquirer and say, "How's it going?" You know, and, "Have you found a church?" And there, again, Graham was shrewd. It isn't good enough just to come forward and even sign a card that's not good enough. What you need to do is an affiliate with a church. I mentioned Jews earlier, he even said, quietly, affiliate with a synagogue if you're Jewish, but that wasn't a big part. But the point is you need to make a concrete affiliation. And so this-- this is the process and I look at it and I think about it and what's striking about the whole process is the stress upon making things visible and palpable where you can measure it.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. That paints a great picture for us, uh, let's see. You mentioned letters-- in the book you say, uh, this about the letters that came and the letters that were written by him in response that "They flowed as an unending river from all parts of the world." Despite admitting in your book that letters to him and from him, merit a book themselves, would you be willing to paint the picture here perhaps as small as time allows, you know, we don't have a lot of time but give us a sense of this letter phenomenon.
Graham: If I were ever to write another book about Graham, I'm not. I promise you. But, uh, but if I were ever to do that, I would write it about the letters. I think that's this, actually I think that's the single most important part of studying who Billy Graham was because who he was was entirely a product of how he connected to people and we don't know how he connected with people until they tell us and they did and they told us in the letters. As I said they came in by the millions. I don't know how many, most of them were discarded but a few thousand have survived and I've sampled them systematically and I would say the majority of the letters, uh, simply expressed thanks to Graham, coming to town, preaching a message that meant a lot to me. Uh, by large minority of the letters talked about a conversion of some sort, not usually in any dramatic sense. These are not Pentecostal meetings, but rather, you know, "I changed my life. I came to Christ. I professed faith." So this would be a large minority of the letters.
Um, other strains that you get within the letters are people who talked about very-- some very serious misdeeds whether you think of them as sins or crimes, um, straying, a lot of letters referring to adultery and, um, less of them actually referring to fornication but a striking number of them referred to adultery and to addictions, problem with alcohol. It would be prominent. So, you know, it's a mix, now what is fascinating to me? Why are they sending these to Graham? They know he's not going to read them. I mean, he's getting millions of letters – it’s like riding the president of the United States. And many of the letters are long and they're detailed and handwritten. So why do people do this? Um, it is kind of a confessional. It's a Protestant version of the Catholic confessional, I think. Um, but there are a lot of possible reasons but clearly, people found a lot of meaning just in the act of writing the letters.
Chris: Well, if you're not going to write the book, hopefully, somebody listening--
Graham: I hope so. Maybe you, Chris. That's good project for you.
Chris: Okay, thank you. Here, as we wind down a few more questions. As you write about his identity in the book how Graham viewed himself; on the one hand you write this: "Though hardly anyone called Graham vain, flashes of vanity abounded." And then the other side of the coin, "Graham's personal humility seemed to atone for the excesses of self-promotion." Would you help us understand what Billy Graham thought of Billy Graham?
Graham: Now, that's a wonderful question and, um, it's one of the most complicated features of his career. Extremely ambitious and you have a sense that he just worked hard but in the obvious sense that he wants to promote himself and he was never shy about promoting himself. And the other time-- but at the same time he was a deeply humble man, and everybody who was around him and me too, I mean, I had four extended visits with him and each time, I came away, just kind of overwhelmed by this personal humility. And insofar as I can explain it, I would say it was his sense that God had called him to a mission and that he was good at it. But it's always God has called me, God has enabled me and actually, it's the sense that "If I don't do what I'm called to do, then I have failed God." And so he never, you know, he never put it exactly this way, but it was like an Olympic runner like the Eric Liddell, you know, line, "God made me fast and God takes pleasure in watching me run," and I think this was it. There's nothing in it myself. I'm just a kid from the-- from the farm, he keeps saying. He said that over and over. He's just a farm kid and he'd say, "I'm not--" you know, "I'm not an academic. I'm probably not all that smart. I mean, you know, nothing like that," but he said, "God gave me a job and I'm good at doing that job."
Chris: Okay, fair enough. Well explained. I guess here at the end, uh, the last question would be this. So here we are 2020, almost 21, he has been dead several years, uh, in his prime, it's been several decades. So he is no longer with us. Obviously, the historical record is clear. He had an effect on America. He had an effect on Americans; he occupies a very particular place in American history and in American religious history. From your vantage point now, Grant, as an expert on him, in the scholarly sense, would you share any lessons or takeaways from this book either in terms of important historical transformations that you have charted over American history in regards to religion and religious people acting in it, or in terms of helping us better understand the present moment?
Graham: In answering these, I reveal a certain, I suppose, a political orientation of my own in the sense that I think that what we learned, number one, from Graham is the dangers of political entanglement. Um, and he became aware of it and strongly regretted it and I think that's a message that is worth noting and he withdrew from the Christian Right. He never was part of it. He opposed and he said, "I will not support it because politics, explicit partisan politics does not belong in the pulpit." So I would say for me, anyway, that's one lesson is the danger of the explicit partisan entanglement with the church.
Um, the second lesson, though, is actually comes from, a very-- the penultimate question you asked about the relation of ambition and humility. And that is, in Graham, we see a man of deep personal humility, but one who also felt that he had a call. And humility was no excuse for not fulfilling that call, you do the job that God has called you to do.
Maybe there's one more and that is, I would say, he understood the person-- the importance of personal probity, uh, sexual fidelity with his wife, financial integrity, um, and honesty with, you know, within as much as possible and person spoke that much sometimes, you know. He would overstate what he-- what he meant to say. But within reason, the conviction of the necessity of telling the truth.
Um, and then personal holiness. I mean, he took very very seriously personal devotions, reading Bible, prayer, all of these things were part of his conviction that it matters how the Evangelist lives.
He never said this but I would say, you know, there was a TV commercial, it says, "What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas." Graham felt that was absolutely wrong. What happens in Las Vegas does not stay in Las Vegas. It does matter how the individual lives.
Chris: Okay, thank you. And I guess I'll have one last personal question. Do we know anything from the historical record about how he shouldered the burdens of what he learned as America's Pastor? I'm thinking specifically of the letters. He didn't read them as you say, but certainly, he knew people were writing him. Certainly, he knew who he was addressing and what sort of things people were coming to the altar with, right? That the burden of a pastor although he didn't pastor his own church and get to know people intimately, in some senses, perhaps he knew more of human suffering because of his immense reach. Is there anything in the historical record that tells us how he shouldered those burdens?
Graham: He sampled the letters, certainly, as far as humanly possible. I mean, for many years, they came in semi-trucks each day. So all you can do is a sample and actually, his wife was a very important part of his story, Ruth Bell Graham, and she read samples of the letters too. So, in that sense, he came to know, uh, about the suffering, um, but also, though Billy worked hard, he also was very careful about vacations. This may surprise us, he spent a lot of time sunning himself, you know, on beaches. He loves beaches and just, you know, getting a suntan and I want to stress, I mean, he worked hard and yet he knew how to pace himself. So he understood the importance of a weekend, the importance of a vacation, he understood the meaning of a sabbatical. And so a lot like Ronald Reagan in this sense. We read that Reagan was very strict about, you know, his personal recreation, you know, exercise and all this. Well, Graham was too. He was a calisthenics-exercise-nut, we would say and so Graham knew how to balance, you know, work with play and exercise and I think that, you know.
Chris: Okay. Fair enough. We've been talking with Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor, Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Here at the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners understand more about what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States, seeing to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.
Don't forget to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the signup tab.
Grant, thank you so much for being with us and doing the hard work, for writing a book that helps us all understand America better.
Graham: Right. You asked wonderful questions, Chris. So thank you so much.
Today we have with us - Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor Billy Graham and The Shaping of a Nation. He specializes in the history of Evangelicalism, Pentecostalism, World Missions, and American Protestant thought. He is the author or co-editor of seven books including Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture, Religion in American Life, and Religion in 19th Century America.
Dr. Wacker has served as a senior editor of the quarterly journal, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture and is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies and of the American Society of Church History. We encourage listeners to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the sign-up tab. Grant, thank you so much for being with us today.
Graham: Thank you, Chris.
Chris: Before we dive into the details, Grant, can you tell us why you chose the title you did?
Graham: Well, at the most obvious level in a sense is that when the Billy Graham Library was dedicated in 2007, George Bush, former president, George HW Bush was present, and he called Graham “America's Pastor.” And so the label was publicized quite prominently at that point. But the label had often been used in, um, in newspapers and in magazines and, you know, over-- for many years, um, and in a lot of different contexts.
Chris: And then the subtitle is prominent, “Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation”, that's, uh, that's a pretty powerful statement. Why did you choose that?
Graham: Well, I have to be honest. My editor chose that. So I asked her, "Are you sure we want to go with that? That is a pretty powerful statement." And she said, "Yeah. Go for it." Uh, so, yeah, that may be a bit too muscular. Uh, but what I did want to suggest-- I was willing to go with it, but I did want to suggest is that he helped articulate, uh, a set of religious values. They came to define the Evangelical movement, which, you know, is 60 million, 80 million strong depending on how you define it. A segment that large and he comes to define it, that did seem reasonable.
Chris: Right. Tell us in brief why should Americans who are not Evangelicals including those who are not Christian, uh, should pick up a book that says “America's Pastor”, someone who's shaped the nation? Just really briefly and then we'll dive into some details, we'll get into the details.
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: If that would be a good question to ask.
Graham: Well, that's-- it's a terrific question and, uh, and, again, I would say that Graham helped create a public space for religion, uh, certainly for Evangelicals, he helped bring that-- he helped bring them out of the closet in the 1950s into a place of prominence and respectability and that those numbers have grown continually since then. And, so, um, almost by any reasonable measure of things, Graham is important by virtue of the public space he helped create but also because of his associations with presidents of the United States. He's conspicuous, he was always there, and the press loved it. And all these photographs of, you know, Graham on the golf course with Eisenhower and Johnson and Nixon, it goes on and on, so he brings a certain brand label of faith into public consciousness.
Chris: Okay, fair enough. Grant, give us a short biography of Billy Graham bringing us up through the 1949 Los Angeles Crusade which made him a prominent national figure--high-level bio up to that point.
Graham: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the short of it is-- is that he was a pretty inconspicuous figure until then and born on a dairy farm in North Carolina and a very remote rural area. Um, his sister told me that they would probably not see more than one car a day pass. He attended a rural high school for three years, which was customary in those days. He was a C student, not terribly good and not terribly bad either, just an ordinary kid. He went off to Bob Jones University, which in those days was Bob Jones College, and it was in Tennessee. He went there for a semester. He did not fit in, didn't like it, transferred to Florida Bible Institute, and he did fit in and he loved it. But, again, a very inconspicuous school in Florida. Then he went to Wheaton College for a better education and for a respectable bachelor's degree and as the jargon goes - Wheaton is the Harvard of the Evangelical world. It was then, still is. In fact, around there, they say that Harvard is the Wheaton of the Ivy League. A very fine school.
And so Graham did well there. Again, he was not a valedictorian or anything, but he did well enough. After Wheaton, he became a pastor for a year, not successful as a pastor. Then he went into Youth for Christ and began to-- began to spread his wings, so to speak and traveled all over the US, all over Britain, part of the continent, and he began to feel, you know, his calling. But he didn't really come into national prominence until 1949, the crusade in Los Angeles.
Chris: Can you give us a few details about that event? How it happened and what happened?
Graham: Yeah. In retrospect, you look at Billy Graham's autobiography the part-- the chapter on, um, Los Angeles, he calls “turning point.” So, in his own perspective, he wrote when he was an old man, h, he looked back at this very long career, very, you know, celebrated career and he sees 1949, Los Angeles is the point where he ceases to be just a Southern Country Boy preacher and he has a kind of national prominence. Um, and he went there for three weeks in the fall of 1949 and, uh, that was extended to six weeks and then finally, to eight weeks. Pitched a huge circus tent and reputedly one of the largest in the world right in downtown Los Angeles. Graham always had an eye for the spectacular. And so right in the center of the town and a big carbon arc light and at first, crowds were very slow to come but momentum built and I'd say momentum built three weeks in and for three, uh, two reasons. First is, uh, celebrities started to come and they would then give their testimonials and Graham always understood the power of the testimonial. Testimonies meant more than any theology textbook. Right?
And then the second reason he really flourished was because William Randolph Hearst discovered him and Hearst was the owner of one of the two largest newspaper chains in the nation, and there's no reason to think that Hearst shared Graham's religious views, but he did share Graham's anti-communism. And so Hearst began to give Graham prominent coverage in his newspapers.
Chris: Okay. Thank you for that, uh, that biography of him and bringing us up to that important event. Is it important to note for our listeners that Graham was also a Fuller Brush salesman?
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: Wasn't that true? He was a--
Graham: He was. Summer out of high school, 17, uh, he's just a 17-year-old kid and he was selling Fuller brushes door-to-door in South Carolina. And as the story goes, he sold more Fuller Brushes than anybody else in the state that summer and what's important to note about that, the long-range significance is that he came to the sense that, A, Fuller brushes are really good brushes, and if you have a good product and market it with all the energy you can. So he was never shy about marketing his message. Use the newspapers, use radio, television, podcasts. Use anything available.
Chris: Right.
Graham: He said, "I got the best product in the world. I'm going to sell it."
Chris: Yeah, okay. And for our listeners, you used the word “testimonials” of celebrities at that 1949 Crusade event, what do you mean by “testimonials”? What celebrities said after they were at The Crusade and would report to the press or what?
Graham: Yeah. At several levels, uh, the most obvious level is that when someone made a commitment to Christ they would sign a card and so Graham's organizers, counselors, would know. So, in a sense, they go on record.
Chris: Okay.
Graham: And then Graham was quite a student, never shy about asking people who are prominent then to talk, come up, and to talk about what-- what they've meant to them or their conversion experience. Now, what Graham was always a little vague about, I think, is that very often - more often than not, these are not sky-blue conversions. These were people who had grown up in the church and they had strayed, their faith had grown cold, and they were coming back to the church. So once in a while though when he was confronted about this, he would say, "Look, what's the difference? You're coming to faith from no faith, or if you are reviving a faith that has grown cold or dead, died? What's the difference?"
Chris: Right.
Graham: So people would talk about this.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. Now, Grant, you write in your book that Graham was not a theologian but a "craftsman who worked with theological materials". Would you tell us what his main teachings were and then talk about his delivery and style? That is, paint for us the portrait of Billy Graham as pastor?
Graham: Well, first, his main teachings was traditional Protestant, Evangelical theology almost boilerplate, you would say. He made no innovations theologically at all. In fact, he trimmed it a lot. He preached a very streamlined gospel. Left off a lot of things that a lot of Protestants think are terribly important. For him, the core of the Gospel is that the Bible is authoritative. It provides a rule for life and he wasn't very concerned about the Bible and churches or Society. It's a rule for our personal lives and Christ died for our sins, rose again, and by appropriating Christ, faith in Christ, bringing-- calling Christ into our lives, we can be forgiven of sins into an invigorated life. Graham didn't use the word “holiness of life” very often but this is what he was talking about. We can have a new life. We can have a cleansed life, a better light, and then the life beyond. That was part of the message.
And when I think about it and as I read many letters to Graham, I mean, people literally sent millions and we think about what you see there over and over is that from Graham, they gain the sense of a second chance: "I messed up my life and this message gives me a second chance." So that was, I would say, the theology and the effect. He was not an eloquent preacher, but he was an effective preacher, um, and, uh, his goal always was to connect and he figured if you can't connect, there's no point preaching. And we know that he connected because of the crowds that came, he probably preached to more people than anyone else in history with the exception of John Paul II. We know he preach live to more than 80 million people. He was connecting and the message was simple. It was dynamic, he preached fast and hard especially in the beginning. As time went on, it slowed down, but it was a simple method. And once he said, "The average American has a vocabulary at 600 words," and he said, "I'm going to stay within their range." And he did. I mean, you look at those sermons and you know, these are-- and let’s even talk more about that.
Actually, I haven't thought about this for a long time is he said, "I try to use one-syllable words." And if you look, this in all sermons, any of that, they're short and punchy, it's like one time he said, "I like your thinking my preaching is like firing ammunition, you know, these short punching one-syllable words." So anyway, so that was the preaching style - fast, loud, hard, in the beginning, it tapered off over the years, but an eloquent-- not an eloquent preacher, but an effective one.
Chris: I remember reading in your book, or maybe it was his autobiography or something else where he, as part of his preaching maybe at the end of his sermon if he called him that he would-- he would invite people to come up, right? And, uh, he would continually say, "We'll wait. I'm waiting." Right? Was that part of-- was that always part of his delivery?
Graham: Yes. From the very beginning. And it was, um, very deliberate and actually that-- I've thought about this some and actually, I thought about it a lot, is what the old fashioned revivalist had called, “The Altar Call.” He didn't call it that very much. He'd say, "It's time to come forward," and for an evangelist, that's the payoff, it isn't the money. It's if people don't respond then there's no point being an evangelist. It's like being a salesman, again, if you don't sell brushes, then you're not effective. Well, if people don't respond, then you have failed, frankly. Now, he would not always say that. He would say, "God has called me to preach, and regardless of the results, I'm preaching." But still at a more human level. It was the result, people coming, that counted.
Chris: Sure. Okay. Thank you. Later on, now, this is mid-20th-century and you write, after-- after he became a prominent national figure, you say that, "Graham fit the idealization if not idolization of the post-World War II youth culture." What did you mean by that? And what were the ramifications?
Graham: He came to prominence in the late 40s as a Youth for Christ speaker and at that point he was flamboyant and, uh, he wore bright-colored suits and even at one point flashing ties, with little batteries in the ties, believe it or not. And the lights that flash. I mean, there was almost-- I mean it was spectacular and some people would say it was tacky. He wouldn’t and he just say, "Well, you know, I'm attracting young people," and, uh, and in those meetings, they would do things that he would later on regret or either back at, they would even have, uh, you know, dancing. I think it was a dancing bear or maybe his horse, a dancing horse would come out and say, the horse, you know, "How many people are there in the trinity?" And the horse would stomp his feet three times. This was in the very beginning and later on, you know, he would wince, oh, my lord, you know, but it attracted people. I mean, it worked, he was attracting young people. Um, as time went on, in the 50s, he tried to connect and he brought his message into connection with world events.
Now, later on, he would, again, feel that he had gone too far and he would back off from that. But in the early years, he talked a lot about communism and other kinds of social trends, um, that he thought made his preaching relevant. And in that sense, he wasn't preaching precisely to youth any more, but it certainly was a younger crowd.
Chris: And at this time in American history, there was sort of a “celebrity culture” that had emerged post-World War II, you think of the Kennedy administration as Camelot and things like that. He fit in very well with that. Can you give us your thought on--
Graham: Yeah, even more than that, and this is, you know, I wouldn't want to lay my body on the track for this but in a lot of ways, this was the era of the one person celebrity per field, one person per field. There's one Elvis, right? There was one Leonard Bernstein. Uh, there was one Walter Cronkite and obviously, there are so many more in all those fields, but there's one person who seemed to define the conversation and everybody else, singers, you know, rock 'n roll singers want to be like Elvis. All right? And so somehow, there are reasons, it's not somehow but they really good reasons why Billy moved into that singular position among evangelists and nobody else came close. By the early 50s, there was simply no one else who came close and today we look back at it and we have to kind of say, "Billy Graham wasn't always Billy Graham." I mean there was a time, you know, he failed at times when he was younger and he knew it. But by the mid '50s, you know, he was a singular person.
Chris: Right. Okay. So now let's move forward maybe a decade or so and regarding Billy Graham and the Civil Rights Movement you write this, Grant, "Martin Luther King was the absent presence throughout Graham's life both before and after King's death." What does the historical record tell us about Billy Graham and Jim Crow, racism, and the Civil Rights Movement? That is a very broad subject.
Graham: Complicated--
Chris: Just the high-level.
Graham: Yeah, a very good question. We could talk about that for hours, I'll try not to. I'll try to be succinct. And I'd say that Graham’s record on Civil Right was erratic. We do not see linear progress. We expect to see a man who started off as a Southern segregationist and then ended up very progressive at the end of his life and that's not the way it happened. The way it happened is that he did grow up in a strongly segregated society and it was until he was a young man that it ever occurred to him there was something wrong with that and he talks about it. And it wasn't until he actually got to Wheaton College as a postgraduate in the sense that it never occurred to him, he said that, as he put it in those days, "A negro was my peer." And he said this with regret. He said, "I can't believe that that's how I grew up. But I did, I grow up in the South." All right? And so this is by the late '40s and by 1952, 53 he had come to the conviction that he would no longer tolerate segregation in his meetings.
So he insisted upon integrated meetings. He encountered enormous opposition. He was commonly called a communist traitor, a traitor to his race. I mean, you know, he-- he took a lot of opposition, it was a courageous position. By the late 50s and into the mid-60s, however, he seemed to step back and he became, um, worried about two things - one, violence in the street, Watts, for example, and he wasn't alone. I mean, Robert Kennedy, you know, was worried too. So he wasn't alone in his but he was growing worried about, uh, black power. And so they began to call for law and order. You know, the solution to our problem is not Christ but, well, Christ is a part of it, but we certainly need law and order. So in a sense, he's moving backward in the mid-60s. Um, and then also he becomes very worried later on about Martin Luther King's opposition to the Vietnam War. Graham supported it. He supported Nixon in the early days. So there are a couple of reasons.
By the early 70s, however, he had this complete turnaround and he comes, by the early 70s, to be-- he strongly insists upon colorblindness. Now, today, we see that as a problem, as part of the problem, but in the early-- early 70s that was perceived as a progressive position, absolute color blindness. In fact, I think in one of his best sermons where he was actually quite eloquent was preached in Durban South Africa in 1973. The first integrated meeting since apartheid and there he insisted, he said, "Christ was a brown man. He wasn't black. He wasn't white. But the point is he transcends all these colors." It's a kind of colorblindness message and he held to that 'til end of his life.
Chris: Do we have, uh-- we must have a record that he interacted with Martin Luther King?
Graham: He did. It was not-- I would say it was an unsteady relationship and one since these are kind of like, you know, you know, two big German shepherds in the ring. I mean, these are two of the most prominent figures in American culture and I think the relationship was wary, not weary, but wary for both of them. Graham is an Evangelist, King as a reformer and they were both some of the other, but fundamentally, their approaches are different. And so there's a certain wariness and there was a public cooperation, uh, from about 1957 on, when Graham invited King to come to his Crusade. But there definitely were times after 1957 where Graham drew back from King; King drew away from Graham. I think we can only imagine what would have happened if Graham and King had really worked together, but the plain sad historical truth of it is they didn't. They didn't oppose each other but they didn't work together, with the one exception where, in '68, King came out, he came out publicly and strongly opposing the Vietnam War as I mentioned and Graham challenged King quite directly on this point. But when King was assassinated, Graham was very clear that King was one of the, you know, the great moral leaders of the age.
Chris: Okay, we'll have to think about that. Process all that, a little bit. Thank you.
Graham: Yeah.
Chris: Grant, Billy Graham--
Graham: It is a complicated story.
Chris: Sure.
Graham: A lot of ways we wish that it weren't, but the history often isn't. You just have to deal with it as it is.
Chris: Grant, Billy Graham set up the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and you write that “he originated it to regularize his finances but that from the outset, it was more than that. It enjoyed providential legitimation for it handled the disposition of money that had been received providentially." Would you tell us the role of this organization in what Billy Graham aspired to do and did do?
Graham: Well, first, I'll say the-- it came to be called the BGEA and then insiders deleted the E. And so they just called it the BGA, you hear that all the time. So let's say the BGA is understudied. It's one of the most important features of Graham's career and we don't-- we have not received a sustained study of it. You need someone with a business career, really, to look at it because it was an extremely well-oiled machine, um, and the main purpose of it was to handle the finances, to receive the finances, the public accounting to make sure that there is nothing illegitimate. Graham received a lot of criticism in his life. Some of it was warranted. But the one thing he was never criticized about was finances and because of the BGA, totally upfront public. Okay.
So the money would come in usually in small quantities, mom-and-pop. There's a continual revenue stream and it would be sent, he would say on the radio program, you know, “send your contributions” or Cliff Barrels, and so he would say, "Send your contributions to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Minneapolis, Minnesota," then those lines, "That's all the address you need. Just Minneapolis, Minnesota," and, you know, people did by the millions. I think it's worth noting the Graham organization and ministry, always survived on small contributions from large numbers of people, mom and pop, grandma and grandpa, never survived with big grants. He didn't want big grants. He wants contributions. And so that's what the BGA was there for.
Chris: Okay. You quote Billy Graham as saying quote here, "I intend to go anywhere sponsored by anybody to preach the gospel of Christ if there are no strings attached to my message. I'm sponsored by civic clubs, universities, ministerial associations, and councils of churches all over the world." Then you add, Grant, "When his life and words are considered in their entirety, Graham clearly did not mean that correct belief was unimportant, but some items of belief are more important than others. The question was how to work with people of divergent views in the common cause of Christian evangelism." How did Graham do this and what were the effects?
Graham: Almost, uh, well, I won't say from the outset but certainly by the early 1950s and very clearly by the mid-1950s, he would say, "I work with anyone who works with me and then there were two qualifications. If they don't ask me to change my message," and then he would add, "and if they accept the deity of Christ." Well, in practice, he didn't stress the deity of Christ and he was willing for that to be presupposed. He understood that people understood the deity of Christ in different ways. So he didn't make an issue of that. Um, what he did make an issue of, "Just don't ask me to change my message and let's talk about Christ. Let's talk about changing the world." So he worked with Mormons. He worked with liberal Protestants and with Catholics and he tried to work with Fundamentalists to his right ,and that did not work. Fundamentalists would not work with him, but he tried. So he just tried to open his arms and say, you know, there's a big tent here because, in a sense, he didn't put it this way, but it was, "We've got bigger fish to fry than to fight with each other." And to a remarkable extent, um, he succeeded.
He even said I'll work with Jews. Now, of course, this is tricky. I mean, he's calling people to faith in Christ and then Jews couldn't go that far, but they could go with him in his affirmation of God and morality and patriotism. So he had lots of good relationships even with Jews.
Chris: Right. Thank you for that. We are talking with Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Listeners, if you have not yet done so, please visit storyoamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the signup tab.
Grant, I think our listeners have great interest and that's understated, generally in this question - how religion is involved in politics? You dedicate a chapter to investigating Billy Graham's involvement in politics. You write this in that chapter, "By virtually all accounts, including otherwise sharply critical ones, Graham proves impervious to the temptations of greed and lust but political power was another matter." Tell us, Grant, what we need to know about Graham and American presidents and American politics.
Graham: Hmm. I'm amazed by that sentence that I wrote. Wow. Okay, I'll stand by that. I'm surprised by that but I think I got it there right. There's not a trace of sexual impropriety in his life. And as I said, there is not a trace of financial impropriety. There is a great deal of evidence, overwhelming evidence, that he fell into partisanship in ways that he would later, uh, severely regret. And he admitted that, I mean, he said, this-- these are my words but effectively, he said it is like the moth to the flame. He said, "I just couldn't stay out of it." And the real issue is that politicians gained a lot by their association with him. They gain, let's go back to our word here, legitimation. By having their picture on a cover with Billy Graham, they knew perfectly well that there would be millions of people say, "Well, you know, this guy is endorsed by Billy Graham. He must be okay." So they gained and he gained at a very human level. He would not acknowledge this but I think it's pretty obvious that he enjoyed association with power. He didn't exercise power himself except within his organization, and it wasn't that he wanted to, you know, be the Secretary of Defense or something like that, but he enjoyed being with people who had power, he enjoyed the association with the glamour, the allure of power. So he got something out of it.
And then if he were pressed about it, he would admit that he did hang out a lot with famous people and powerful people and his defense of this was, hey, the rich need God just as much as the poor, the powerful need God just as much as the weak. I mean, why not? I mean, you know, they need a pastor, and presidents need a pastor. So that was part of it. Then he would also have the argument that overseas, internationally, people took him and his message more seriously if they saw that he had the ear of the president and he did. He did have the ear of the president and it is undeniable that especially overseas people found that very, very impressive. And again, “if the president of the United States listens to Billy Graham, then I should to.”
Chris: Right. What's the list of presidents that he was an unofficial adviser to? Can you give us that and then maybe an anecdote or two, uh, of him interacting with presidents? Whether it's Truman or Nixon or Eisenhower or Reagan, give us a sense of that.
Graham: Yeah, he personally met every president of the United States in the course of his life. Uh, one president, the first one that he met was Truman and the relationship was disastrous. Truman, uh, intensely disliked Graham, personally. Uh, and Graham disliked Truman. He didn't say so but there was, uh, no compatibility there at all. There are reasons for that. Um, but Graham got along with all the other presidents. He was-- I think his closest friend in his whole life except for two or three immediate associates, his closest friend was Lyndon Johnson and they were what we call “pals.” They were buddies. There was a camaraderie there. They just enjoyed being with each other. And at one point, Johnson said, "Billy consider the White House your motel whenever you're in Washington, you don't need an invitation. Just ring us up and you know, there'll be a room for you." So he was very close to Johnson personally. He was close to Richard Nixon, which was probably the most unfortunate thing that ever happened to him. He was entangled in his friendship with Nixon and, uh, he lost perspective. I think that's all we can say. And later he knew that. But he did. He lost perspective with Nixon.
After that, he was fairly close with Reagan and with the senior Bush, these were all personal friends, but also, often isn't noted is that his wife Ruth was close to the Presidents' wives and so it wasn't just one way but very often, the four would vacation together. That's a whole another story that needs to be told.
Chris: Okay. Great. Let's see. You write in the same chapter that over the course of his public ministry, Graham "displayed three distinguishable outlooks towards the American dream - challenging America, embracing America, and transcending America." Would you elaborate on each briefly?
Graham: He always from the beginning to the end, um, challenge, uh, America's misdeeds as a nation. Now, exactly what those misdeeds were changed according to the times and say in the 1950s, he warned Americans about being soft on communism. And, uh, in the 1960s he continued to worry about that but they were soft on communism in Vietnam. Now, he changed his mind about this. He, uh, he backed off on his support of the Vietnam War and that's another story. But then in the 60s, he would talk about materialism and, you know, juvenile delinquency, the rise of divorce, such things. And then later on, he talked about racism and militarism and by the end of his career, I'd say his central concern with America was militarism like Eisenhower, the military-industrial complex. Graham said by the 1980s that our greatest dangers, he said we're going to destroy the-- we're going to destroy civilization if we keep going, not just America, America and the Soviet Union. That's the challenge part.
The embrace part is that, I would say by the 60s and especially in the 70s, he had grown to become very comfortable with the American way of life. He was the Grand Marshal of the Rose Parade, for example, in 1970. And so here he is, he's in this convertible, you know, and the roses and, you know, and all the other people that are celebrities and he's waving and gives every indication that America's a pretty good place and not a whole lot that do draw back from. And then say this last through the 70s, he becomes, well, there was a magazine article, an article in the New York Times. They called him “America's chaplain.” He intensely disliked that but it's true. He disliked it because he knew it was true. Okay.
By the end of his life, though, I'd say from the '70-- the later 70s and the 80s and 90s, um, he took this posture of transcending in which he tried to say the gospel is bigger than us, it's bigger than America, it's bigger than any country. Christ transcends the gospel. One of the lines that he would repeat, over the years was if you hitch your wagon to any particular political party, when that party falls, your wagon will fall. And if you want the gospel to succeed, you got to unhitch from the political parties from America. And, I mean, at one point, he even said, "America should be more like Canada." He said, "Canada doesn't go around trying to police the world." Well, that, a little bit tongue-in-cheek there, but his larger point is is that we have a message that's bigger than the nation.
Chris: Right. Regarding this last point of transcending, I noted that you quote him as admitting "I used to make the mistake of almost identifying the kingdom of God with the American way of life," which is, sort of, captures that-- that sentiment that you explain there.
Grant, talk to us about Billy Graham and war, peace, and global justice, which you call long and complex, but I think it's important enough to our listeners to get a 30,000-foot level - allowed by our time constraints.
Graham: Um, let's focus on war and peace, uh, and, uh, their-- the short of it is he moved from a posture of a guy whose strident spread-eagled patriotism in the 50s to, as I have said, an advocacy of the mutual disarmament, demilitarization and it's important to stress “mutual.” He never wanted the US unilaterally to disarm. But he said we have to work with the Soviet Union. And, indeed, by the 80s, he would say that what the US and Soviet Union are doing is like two little boys, uh, standing in a tub of gasoline and playing with matches. We're going to destroy the world.
Now, that's the late Graham. The early Graham was quite different. The early Graham saw communism as the greatest threat and though he did not call for, uh, well-- I was gonna say he didn't call for war. He supported the Korean War, in the beginning. He supported the Vietnam War, in the beginning, in both wars, he backed off as time went on but still he would-- he felt that, uh, communism was a terrible threat, militarily, religiously in every way and we have to confront it. And so there's that strident, confrontational side of Graham, but it gradually abated as he grew older and I think the reason he came to have a more-- he was never a pacifist but he had a more pacific view of the world is just that he traveled the world so much and he just came to see so much suffering. A lot of people see it and they don't-- it doesn't register. But he saw suffering around the world and it touched him and changed him, he became a changed man.
Chris: Thank you. In telling this part of the story in the book, you write this, which I think was a fantastic capture of it. You wrote, "Graham seem to be hearing the voice of a new Jesus." That's how you put it.
Graham: Yeah, yeah.
Chris: Grant, in an absolutely fascinating and enlightening part of your book, you state this: "The pastor as evangelist needed an audience, which is to say, he needed an audience in order to be who he was. The pastor and the audience created each other." What can you tell us about why the people came, who they were, the conversion process at his events, at his crusades and why they committed while there?
Graham: From the outside and here I draw upon the letters that people wrote to him afterward. So this isn't just speculations, it's listening to the letters. And from the outside, many of them would talk about how, uh, they came because there was something amiss in their lives and they usually couldn't put their finger on it. Um, “my life is just off the rails” and sometimes in very specific ways, “I've fallen into crime”, for example, or adultery or this or that but more often, it was a sense-- just a general sense that life is lost its meaning and then Graham preached about a second chance in Christ, you know, you come to Christ and you can start over. And again and again, this is what they would talk about is that second chance. Now, that's at the spiritual level. I think we can back off then we can analyze it a little more and as historians and we can say that it was also was a spectacular event in the precise sense of that. It was exciting. Graham comes to town, you know, tens of thousands of people come to the meetings. All buses are going to town. There's all this advertising all around town, billboards, bumper stickers, people are talking about it. And so then you go to a meeting and there's all the music and the crowds and, you know, so there's all of this. It is an event.
I went to a Graham meeting, myself, when I was only 12 years old. It was the only time I've ever been to Graham meeting, 12 years old, but I still remember it. What I remember about, A, is that Graham was a very funny preacher and they're-- actually I can remember one of the jokes he told and I don't remember anything else about the sermon. But I was a kid, grew up in a little town in Missouri--
Chris: What was the joke?
Graham: Oh, well, [laughs] it's probably-- it won't be funny if I tell it, but he was talking about puppy love and he said parents never take puppy-- he's talking about young teenagers. He said, "Parents never take puppy love seriously, but it's extremely real to the puppy." Okay? Well, there are just gales of laughter at this and it doesn't come off all that great when I tell it all these years later but in the context of the setting it was funny, but he was great. He told a lot of jokes and sometimes just straight-up jokes, self-deprecating jokes. He was a master of self-deprecating humor. And, of course, when you analyze that, that only works if you know that you're very famous and powerful. If you don't have, you know, accomplishments behind you then a self-deprecating joke isn't a joke, but he could joke about himself and people like that and it was genuine. I think he really did see his own career as amazing himself as much as anyone else. “How did this happen? I'm just a country kid.”
So he told jokes about himself and people laughed about it. So that was part of the appeal, his humor, the music, the crowds and then when people come forward, they would repeatedly talk about a new life they found.
Chris: And so, what was the conversion process to-- for lack of a better word, maybe that's not the right word. But at the-- at the crusade, what happened physically when somebody was converted and then what-- and why did they do it? What did they have to do?
Graham: This too. It's a very important process and I mean, we haven't studied enough. It can be analyzed, religious studies, scholars have analyzed it some but not enough.
Typically, typically, he would come to the end of a sermon and he would ask people to make a commitment to Christ and he-- more than that, he would say, "I want you to stand up and walk to the front." Now, this was a stroke of genius. He didn't invent this but he stressed it, you need to stand up and walk to the front. In other words, it doesn't count if you just have a conversion in your heart. And it really doesn't count if you just sort of put your finger up. What you need to do is make a palpable, visible movement. So what does that do? Well, it solidifies it in your own life and it solidifies it in the eyes of people around you. So, if you're standing up you're telling people around, "I need something," and he understood that. So people then walk to the front and he would offer a short prayer and then there are counselors.
Now, there's many counselors and sometimes or as many counselors as they were converts. He never called them converts. He called them inquirers. Okay. But there are as many counselors as inquirers and the idea was, in fact, that for every inquirer there would be a counselor and the counselor would offer a small gospel of John and a decision card. Uh, people could write down their name, phone number, and then in principle, later on, a counselor would contact the inquirer and say, "How's it going?" You know, and, "Have you found a church?" And there, again, Graham was shrewd. It isn't good enough just to come forward and even sign a card that's not good enough. What you need to do is an affiliate with a church. I mentioned Jews earlier, he even said, quietly, affiliate with a synagogue if you're Jewish, but that wasn't a big part. But the point is you need to make a concrete affiliation. And so this-- this is the process and I look at it and I think about it and what's striking about the whole process is the stress upon making things visible and palpable where you can measure it.
Chris: Okay. Thank you. That paints a great picture for us, uh, let's see. You mentioned letters-- in the book you say, uh, this about the letters that came and the letters that were written by him in response that "They flowed as an unending river from all parts of the world." Despite admitting in your book that letters to him and from him, merit a book themselves, would you be willing to paint the picture here perhaps as small as time allows, you know, we don't have a lot of time but give us a sense of this letter phenomenon.
Graham: If I were ever to write another book about Graham, I'm not. I promise you. But, uh, but if I were ever to do that, I would write it about the letters. I think that's this, actually I think that's the single most important part of studying who Billy Graham was because who he was was entirely a product of how he connected to people and we don't know how he connected with people until they tell us and they did and they told us in the letters. As I said they came in by the millions. I don't know how many, most of them were discarded but a few thousand have survived and I've sampled them systematically and I would say the majority of the letters, uh, simply expressed thanks to Graham, coming to town, preaching a message that meant a lot to me. Uh, by large minority of the letters talked about a conversion of some sort, not usually in any dramatic sense. These are not Pentecostal meetings, but rather, you know, "I changed my life. I came to Christ. I professed faith." So this would be a large minority of the letters.
Um, other strains that you get within the letters are people who talked about very-- some very serious misdeeds whether you think of them as sins or crimes, um, straying, a lot of letters referring to adultery and, um, less of them actually referring to fornication but a striking number of them referred to adultery and to addictions, problem with alcohol. It would be prominent. So, you know, it's a mix, now what is fascinating to me? Why are they sending these to Graham? They know he's not going to read them. I mean, he's getting millions of letters – it’s like riding the president of the United States. And many of the letters are long and they're detailed and handwritten. So why do people do this? Um, it is kind of a confessional. It's a Protestant version of the Catholic confessional, I think. Um, but there are a lot of possible reasons but clearly, people found a lot of meaning just in the act of writing the letters.
Chris: Well, if you're not going to write the book, hopefully, somebody listening--
Graham: I hope so. Maybe you, Chris. That's good project for you.
Chris: Okay, thank you. Here, as we wind down a few more questions. As you write about his identity in the book how Graham viewed himself; on the one hand you write this: "Though hardly anyone called Graham vain, flashes of vanity abounded." And then the other side of the coin, "Graham's personal humility seemed to atone for the excesses of self-promotion." Would you help us understand what Billy Graham thought of Billy Graham?
Graham: Now, that's a wonderful question and, um, it's one of the most complicated features of his career. Extremely ambitious and you have a sense that he just worked hard but in the obvious sense that he wants to promote himself and he was never shy about promoting himself. And the other time-- but at the same time he was a deeply humble man, and everybody who was around him and me too, I mean, I had four extended visits with him and each time, I came away, just kind of overwhelmed by this personal humility. And insofar as I can explain it, I would say it was his sense that God had called him to a mission and that he was good at it. But it's always God has called me, God has enabled me and actually, it's the sense that "If I don't do what I'm called to do, then I have failed God." And so he never, you know, he never put it exactly this way, but it was like an Olympic runner like the Eric Liddell, you know, line, "God made me fast and God takes pleasure in watching me run," and I think this was it. There's nothing in it myself. I'm just a kid from the-- from the farm, he keeps saying. He said that over and over. He's just a farm kid and he'd say, "I'm not--" you know, "I'm not an academic. I'm probably not all that smart. I mean, you know, nothing like that," but he said, "God gave me a job and I'm good at doing that job."
Chris: Okay, fair enough. Well explained. I guess here at the end, uh, the last question would be this. So here we are 2020, almost 21, he has been dead several years, uh, in his prime, it's been several decades. So he is no longer with us. Obviously, the historical record is clear. He had an effect on America. He had an effect on Americans; he occupies a very particular place in American history and in American religious history. From your vantage point now, Grant, as an expert on him, in the scholarly sense, would you share any lessons or takeaways from this book either in terms of important historical transformations that you have charted over American history in regards to religion and religious people acting in it, or in terms of helping us better understand the present moment?
Graham: In answering these, I reveal a certain, I suppose, a political orientation of my own in the sense that I think that what we learned, number one, from Graham is the dangers of political entanglement. Um, and he became aware of it and strongly regretted it and I think that's a message that is worth noting and he withdrew from the Christian Right. He never was part of it. He opposed and he said, "I will not support it because politics, explicit partisan politics does not belong in the pulpit." So I would say for me, anyway, that's one lesson is the danger of the explicit partisan entanglement with the church.
Um, the second lesson, though, is actually comes from, a very-- the penultimate question you asked about the relation of ambition and humility. And that is, in Graham, we see a man of deep personal humility, but one who also felt that he had a call. And humility was no excuse for not fulfilling that call, you do the job that God has called you to do.
Maybe there's one more and that is, I would say, he understood the person-- the importance of personal probity, uh, sexual fidelity with his wife, financial integrity, um, and honesty with, you know, within as much as possible and person spoke that much sometimes, you know. He would overstate what he-- what he meant to say. But within reason, the conviction of the necessity of telling the truth.
Um, and then personal holiness. I mean, he took very very seriously personal devotions, reading Bible, prayer, all of these things were part of his conviction that it matters how the Evangelist lives.
He never said this but I would say, you know, there was a TV commercial, it says, "What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas." Graham felt that was absolutely wrong. What happens in Las Vegas does not stay in Las Vegas. It does matter how the individual lives.
Chris: Okay, thank you. And I guess I'll have one last personal question. Do we know anything from the historical record about how he shouldered the burdens of what he learned as America's Pastor? I'm thinking specifically of the letters. He didn't read them as you say, but certainly, he knew people were writing him. Certainly, he knew who he was addressing and what sort of things people were coming to the altar with, right? That the burden of a pastor although he didn't pastor his own church and get to know people intimately, in some senses, perhaps he knew more of human suffering because of his immense reach. Is there anything in the historical record that tells us how he shouldered those burdens?
Graham: He sampled the letters, certainly, as far as humanly possible. I mean, for many years, they came in semi-trucks each day. So all you can do is a sample and actually, his wife was a very important part of his story, Ruth Bell Graham, and she read samples of the letters too. So, in that sense, he came to know, uh, about the suffering, um, but also, though Billy worked hard, he also was very careful about vacations. This may surprise us, he spent a lot of time sunning himself, you know, on beaches. He loves beaches and just, you know, getting a suntan and I want to stress, I mean, he worked hard and yet he knew how to pace himself. So he understood the importance of a weekend, the importance of a vacation, he understood the meaning of a sabbatical. And so a lot like Ronald Reagan in this sense. We read that Reagan was very strict about, you know, his personal recreation, you know, exercise and all this. Well, Graham was too. He was a calisthenics-exercise-nut, we would say and so Graham knew how to balance, you know, work with play and exercise and I think that, you know.
Chris: Okay. Fair enough. We've been talking with Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke University and author of America's Pastor, Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Here at the conclusion of this episode, we trust that listeners understand more about what religion has done to America and what America has done to religion and have a deeper appreciation of religious freedom as a governing principle in the United States, seeing to its protection as an indispensable part of the fragile American experiment in self-government.
Don't forget to visit storyofamericanreligion.org and register for future podcast notifications under the signup tab.
Grant, thank you so much for being with us and doing the hard work, for writing a book that helps us all understand America better.
Graham: Right. You asked wonderful questions, Chris. So thank you so much.
