Hello and welcome to episode 70 of the Giants of the Faith podcast. My name is Robert Daniels and I'm the host of this show. This is part two of two of a look at the life of famed evangelist Billy Graham. In part one we looked at Graham's early life through his first major evangelistic campaign in Los Angeles. Today we'll look at the rest of his life. I feel like I should say that I'm not covering everything that Graham did in his life. He was a busy guy. There are plenty of biographies out there if you are interested in learning more about him.
We left off the last episode with Graham's first large successful campaign in Los Angeles in 1949. Before we continue on let's take a step back to 1948 when Graham was assembling his team that would go on to be the core of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Key players were Grady Wilson, Cliff Barrows, and Bev Shea - yes, Bev was a man, full name of George Beverly Shea. Graham wanted to build integrity into his team and his organization from the start. He'd seen many evangelists get brought down because of moral failures and he was determined not to do so.
One night in 1938 the team gathered at a hotel in Modesto, California, to hammer out concrete steps that they'd take to avoid any controversy. The guidelines they came up with became known as the "Modesto Manifesto" - though it was never really a written document. There were provisions for the organization - things like only working with churches that do cooperative evangelism, relying on official crowd estimates to avoid overstating their success, the way that monies raised would be handled and distributed, and others.
The group made personal integrity part of the Manifesto, as well. The most famous provision was centered around relationships with the opposite sex. Each man on the team was expected to avoid being alone with a woman other than his wife. Graham committed to never meet with, share a meal with, or travel with a woman other than Ruth. This would keep him from infidelity or even the appearance of anything inappropriate. This was greatly respected by the public and peers and played a part in Graham's decades-long appearance on the nation's most-respected lists. We only need to look at the way today's media pilloried Mike Pence when it became widely known that he follows the same practice to see how the world has changed.
1950 was a huge year for Graham. It kicked off on December 31, 1949, with a New Year's Eve meeting in Boston at the Park Street Church. Response was so great that the team stayed in Boston for two weeks. After Park Street the event moved to Mechanics Hall and then ended with a huge service on Boston Common that was attended by 50,000 people. In all, Graham preached to over 100,000 in Boston.
In July of that year Graham made his first visit to the White House. He had a 20 minute interview with President Truman, during which he shared the Gospel of salvation with the president and put his arm around Truman to pray with him. As Graham's time with Truman ended and the two stepped out of the Oval Office the waiting press corps asked Graham and Truman to kneel on the grass to reenact the prayer for their photographers. Graham quickly obliged. He later felt embarrassed at how he'd acted with the President of the United States and felt like he'd been too flippant about the whole thing. He later apologized to Truman and vowed he'd not act like that again if given another opportunity. Truman was the first of 12 presidents that Graham had the opportunity to meet with and witness to.
In 1949 Graham had been approached about hosting a radio program. He agreed and in 1950 incorporated the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association to organize and handle his radio broadcasts and to provide administration for his crusades - which were first called crusades in Columbia, South Carolina. The first episode of his radio program, Hour of Decision - was broadcast from Atlanta on November 5, 1950. It ran until 2016 and reached people all over the world. Interestingly - at least to me, Hour of Decision was only 30 minutes long.
In 1952 Graham requested, and was granted, the opportunity to travel to Korea to spend Christmas with the American soldiers there fighting the Korean War. He spent quite a bit of time there - ultimately preaching 14 sermons to over 7,000 soldiers.
Up until this point in our narrative all of Graham's crusades in the Jim Crow South were segregated. In 1952 Graham had said publicly that there is no Biblical basis for segregation and he called for Baptist colleges to admit black students. Nonetheless, his team followed the custom of segregation for whatever locale they were in. That changed on Easter Sunday, 1953. Graham had been invited to Chattanooga for a crusade and had even had the Warner Park Field House built for the occasion. He had declared that none of his crusades would be segregated again and he instructed the event stewards to take down ropes that had been setup to separate blacks from whites. One of the stewards refused and so Graham was pictured taking the ropes down himself. From then on, Graham was a great advocate for racial harmony. He always did regret not being more vocal sooner but he was admired greatly by blacks at the time for the stances he did take.
1954 brought the Billy Graham crusades to an international audience. After spending the previous few years touring the United States, Graham took the show to London, England. From March 1 through May 29 he preached to crowds in London. More than 2 million people attended. From London Graham hit major European cities like Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, and more. He returned to Europe in 1955 revisiting some of the same cities and expanding to even more. Graham said that is LA in 1949 put them on the map in the US, London in 1954 did the same thing internationally.
In 1956 Graham launched the Christianity Today magazine. His aim was to provide theologically conservative content that would bring evangelicals together. For most of its publication history Christianity Today has remained politically centrist but that has all changed in the last decade. From 2015 to 2022 every dollar that its employees made in political contributions went to Democrats. In 2020 that magazine called for the removal of Donald Trump from office. It praises the decidedly un-Christian Barbie movie and Taylor Swift as unifying forces in the United States. That said, there are still plenty of theologically conservative pieces written and sharp-eyed listeners will have seen that CT has been a source for this podcast on several occasions.
Despite Graham's desire to avoid controversy he did step in it a few times. He was often seen as too ecumenical in his practices. For example, Graham never signed the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy that was produced by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (which was headed by RC Sproul and other prominent conservative Christians). He didn't publicly endorse it, either, though he did privately. Graham believed that he should not break trust with organizations - Catholic, mainline liberal, or otherwise - that would not approve of his endorsement. He was seen as too willing to bow to the opinions of these non-Evangelical groups and not willing enough to draw a line around Biblical fidelity.
This is a criticism that I agree with. It does little good for Graham to have preached the Gospel to people and then send them to Catholic and mainline churches for discipleship. I agree with the criticism that Graham's organization was too focused on salvation "decisions" - with the relevant air quotes - and could have done much more to steer folks to local Bible-believing churches.
Another source of controversy came from remarks that Graham made in 1982 while touring the Soviet Union. He was there for six days, preaching and speaking at a disarmament conference. He made the public comment that he saw no evidence of religious persecution by the Soviet government and that religious freedom was greater than he expected. This despite the fact that the Soviet government was militantly athiestic, had killed 2 million Jews in its history, had seized the property of many religious organizations, and had infiltrated and undermined the churches that it did allow to operated. Back home, Graham's statements were seen as pandering to the Soviet government so that he could come back and do a full crusade their. Graham denied this and said that behind closed doors he had pushed for societal change to Soviet officials.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s Graham had too many crusades and accomplishments to list here. A smattering of them includes converting George HW Bush, his 1991 Buenos Aires crusade that reached 20 countries via television, his 1992 visit to North Korea and his 1992 Moscow crusade.
His health began to fail in the second half of the 90s. In 1995, just before a crusade in Toronto, Canada, Graham collapsed. He was 76 years old and he publicly announced that his son, Franklin, would take over for him when he either died or became too ill to work. His health prevented him from appearing at a conference of 10,000 evangelists that he'd convened in Amsterdam in 2000 and in 2001 he was unable to attend George W Bush's inauguration.
Graham's last crusade came in 2005 in New York City. It was his 417th. It was a three day event held in June in Flushing Meadows Park and was attended by over 240,000 people.
He lived out the rest of his days mostly quietly. His wife Ruth died in 2007. Billy died on February 21, 2018 at 99 years old. He had done very much to make the name of Jesus famous throughout the world. His organization continues to spread his Gospel message and to influence Christians throughout the US and the world. Graham was one of the most influential men of any stripe in the 20th century and certainly is a Giant of the Faith.
Thanks for listening. Until next time, God bless.
RESOURCES
The Billy Graham Library: https://billygrahamlibrary.org/blog-billy-graham-and-the-florida-bible-institute/
iDisciple: https://www.idisciple.org/post/the-impact-of-one
Christian History Institute: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/issue/billy-graham
Billygraham.org: https://billygraham.org/about/biographies/billy-graham/
The Billy Graham Library: https://billygrahamlibrary.org/billy-graham/
Christianity Today: https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/evangelistsandapologists/billy-graham.html
My Hero: https://myhero.com/billy-graham
The Gospel Coalition: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/interview-billy-grahams-best-biographer/
Inspirational Christians: https://www.inspirationalchristians.org/evangelists/reverend-billy-graham-ordinary-man-extraordinary-call/
Christianity.com: https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/mordecai-ham-outspoken-evangelist-11630588.html
Aunty Faith: https://auntyfaith.com/2020/09/01/the-biography-of-mordecai-ham-the-southern-revivalist/
Florida Backroads Travel: https://www.florida-backroads-travel.com/temple-terrace-florida.html
WUSF: https://www.wusf.org/news/2018-02-21/rev-billy-graham-found-evangelical-voice-in-temple-terrace-tampa
Christian History Institute: https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/the-modesto-manifesto