Anisa Khalifa: There are few North Carolinians who have been more influential than Billy Graham.
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Billy Graham: But world peace will only come when the nature of man has been transformed, and when they recognize the Prince of Peace as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God is going to intervene.
Anisa Khalifa: The Southern Baptist pastor and evangelical had a prolific career spanning six decades. He traveled across the U. S. and to countless countries preaching Christianity to millions of people.
Billy Graham: But I know that I'm going to heaven tonight and I don't have a single doubt about it.
Anisa Khalifa: His prominence sparked friendships with several American presidents, but his home was always in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. And this month, a statue of Graham was unveiled in the U. S. Capitol, one of two that each state is allotted in the building.
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Speaker Mike Johnson: Billy Graham finally takes his rightful place on these hallowed grounds of American democracy.
Anisa Khalifa: Graham's impressive career wasn't without controversy or change. So, how should we remember the man often called America's pastor? I'm Anisa Khalifa. This week on the Broadside, my colleague Charlie Shelton-Ormond talks with Graham biographer Bill Martin about why the preacher's influence is still felt today.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Bill Martin met Billy Graham for the first time in 1975. It was in Jackson, Mississippi. Graham was getting ready for one of his crusades, an evangelical Christian service that always drew a massive crowd.
Bill Martin: So before the service started, as was his custom, Mr. Graham spent the hour before the service in a small trailer back behind the stands, visiting with friends, dignitaries, others, and those others on that occasion included me. It was strange to be in such a small space with Billy Graham. He seemed somehow out of scale. He had this impeccably tailored suit, instantly recognizable features, now made up for television to be more observable. The familiar North Carolina accent, the almost sheer, undeniable presence of the man, left me feeling like it would be more comfortable to talk to him in a larger room, like maybe the Astrodome. His sheer presence, and I mentioned that to the team, and they just chuckled. And they said, Yep, you can't miss it. It's just, it's just there.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Bill Martin is the Senior Fellow in Religion and Public Policy at Rice University's Baker Institute in Houston. He's also the author of a detailed biography on Billy Graham. It's called A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story. Bill says when he started his work on the book back in the 1980s, Billy Graham had a specific request.
Bill Martin: He didn't use the title Reverend Graham, and many evangelicals don't use Reverend because Reverend appears in the Bible only one time and it's referring to God. He says, just call me Billy. He knew everybody in the world, but he still seemed surprised that people thought him special.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Bill eventually took a cue from the pastor's staff and settled on Mr. Graham, a comfortable middle ground between Reverend and Billy as he got to work on the biography.
Bill Martin: I considered fairness a cardinal virtue, and he started out, he said, you can show what the wrinkles are, and there are wrinkles, or there are spots, whatever the term he used, he said, Don't be afraid of that. You talk about the good and the bad.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So let's go back to the 1940s and 50s, uh, Billy Graham is gaining a lot of popularity with what he called, quote, crusades and big tent revival preaching for large audiences really across the country. If I were to walk into one of these big tents for a Billy Graham revival in, let's say, 1952, what would I find?
Bill Martin: Well, you likely would be impressed with the size of the tent. The one that, for his famous crusade in 1949, he was actually using a Ringling Brothers three-ring circus tent. And you'd see many, many chairs, a sea of chairs. But when the service started, Cliff Barrows, his song leader, would warm things up with a trombone, played the trombone, he would lead the singing, and the pulpit in those years and afterwards often there was a facade on it that made it look like an open Bible. And then Billy Graham would pace up and down on this long stage, and it was estimated that he would walk a mile per sermon.
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Billy Graham: We're not going to heaven because we're good. We're not going to heaven because we work. We're not going to heaven because we pay. We're going to heaven because of what he did on the cross. And all I have to do is receive it.
Bill Martin: He made listeners feel like he was talking to them. He had those piercing eyes. He would walk the stage, he would lean over, put his hands on his knees and tell them that the judgment of God was ready. He said, I've learned to look straight at them, make a change of pace and tone, keeping their interest. Then he would raise his hands like two pistols or his clenched fist and then bring it down on the Bible and say, not Billy Graham, but the Bible says, then in those years he would talk, he would run through a catalog of sins that people were guilty of and that were troubling the world.
And often he would wind up, typically like, God is giving this city one more chance to repent and answer the great call, and then would come the invitation: Just as I am, without one plea, but that thou blood was shed for me, and that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
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Billy Graham: A man of any race can believe, a man of any nationality, of any language can believe, and that's all God says you have to do to get to heaven, just believe!
Bill Martin: He toned down his preaching in later years because of the demands of television. And you can't walk a mile very easily and look people straight in the eye on television.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: And a notable thing about the crowd inside these tents starting, you know, around the mid-'50s was that they were integrated. And again, this was the mid-'50, you know, this was a big deal at the time. During this, what was Graham's stance on segregation?
Bill Martin: Well, having been raised in North Carolina, he accepted segregation, not thinking this is a good thing, bad thing, but just as this is the way we do it. Of course, the civil rights movement was beginning and gathering steam, and he, in his heart, knew, we should not be, uh, segregating my services when I'm talking about the love of God who loves all people.
A memorable time was in 1953, he was holding a crusade, probably then just a revival, in Chattanooga, and there was a segregated, there were ropes for the colored section. And he went personally down and took those ropes down and said, we will not have a colored section anymore. It's not clear how much impact that had immediately, but it did change his attitude. And pretty soon he was saying, and particularly after 1954 with the Supreme Court decision on racial integration, uh, he never then allowed there to be segregation in his services, no matter where they were.
A key situation with race came in the Madison Square Garden services in 1957, which were having this huge television, uh, impact by then. He invited Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was leading the marches in Montgomery, to come up on the stage with him and lead a prayer. And he said, Dr. King is leading this great movement, and we're pleased to have him here to lead a prayer with us. Embracing him as a friend. Now that cost Billy Graham a lot of support in the South. But he was willing to let it go. My image I use is, Billy Graham was never out in front of the parade on these issues. But he was always ahead of his unit, and he was leading it in the right direction.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So integrating his services, ushering Martin Luther King Jr. with him on stage, these were big deals. But it seems like Billy Graham also had his personal limits to the civil rights movement. He didn't necessarily put his full support behind everything tied to the movement. For example, he didn't attend the march in Selma, Alabama, with Martin Luther King Jr. What were his limits in regards to the civil rights movement?
Bill Martin: His limits were perhaps less religious than matters of decorum. He was always very polite. He'd been raised in that Southern tradition. He didn't want to roil the waters. He didn't want to alienate his own people. He struggled. He struggled with this. He told me later he thought that he should have been doing more, but he was doing what he could and that's why I was using that image of, he was ahead of his unit.
He was bringing them along, but he didn't, he didn't want to get out there and be making people angry. He didn't want to ruffle feathers. So it was, this was something that he wrestled with in his own mind. He thought he could do the best by doing what he was doing in his crusades and let that stand. It was, again, not everything that the Black community wished for, but more than they got from many others.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So in the 1950s and 60s, Graham has gained a lot of prominence and has become close friends with, it seemed, whoever was in the Oval Office as president. Um, it seems like presidents really wanted to be in Graham's good graces. What did this dynamic look like between Graham and American presidents?
Bill Martin: It didn't start out well. Billy Graham, when he was a young preacher, particularly when he was holding a crusade in Washington, he so much wanted Harry Truman, President Truman, to show up to write a letter of support. And Truman just wouldn't do it. And finally, through a congressman, he was able to have an audience with President Truman. He took along Cliff Barrows and a couple of other members of his team. They knew that President Truman liked to go down to Key West and wore white buck shoes. So they all got white buck shoes and they wore white suits. So they came in there looking like a gospel quartet, you know, and speaking with the president.
And he told them some things that he was thinking about. And he was cordial with them, but that's about it. And they said, can we pray? And Truman said something like, I guess that can't hurt. So they got in a circle and prayed and had their arms around President Truman. And then they said goodbye. But when they came out, there were reporters there and were saying, What happened? What happened? He said, well, he told us some things, and he actually said some things that he wasn't supposed to have shared, but it didn't matter too much, but he said, and we prayed together. You did? Uh, we'd like to get a picture. Could you recreate that prayer? Well, I suppose we could. So they went out on the White House lawn. And they knelt down again, one knee down, like a gospel quartet.
Well, the next day, all over this country, there were front pages of newspapers showing Billy Graham and his three friends kneeling in the White House and that they'd prayed for President Truman. Truman was livid. And from that time on, he said that decisively turn down any other requests from Billy Graham. All he wants is the publicity. That embarrassed Graham and his friends so much. They just said, we were so naive. Years later, long after Truman had retired, Billy Graham made a special trip to Independence to tell him, to apologize. And Truman said, Oh, I know they should have told you. It's fine. Don't worry about it. But, uh, it stung.
But one of the most interesting relationships was with Lyndon Baines Johnson. Billy Graham had met him and sent him a note and said, let me know if I can be of any help. And shortly after he became president, after the tragic assassination of President Kennedy, he summoned Billy Graham to come meet with him in the White House. And what they thought would be, might be 15 minutes, turned out to five hours. Uh, these two farm boys, both of which had risen to the pinnacle of their professions, found out they had a lot to offer each other. And then when they went to the swimming pool there in the White House, he said, you just went as you were, which is to say, naked. He had remembered that.
It helped LBJ, he had the sense to know this Billy Graham is a very popular, well-loved figure. It's helpful to me to be his friend, so that people in the South and other places will say, if LBJ is Billy Graham's friend he must be a good person. He may be a Christian person, and that may mean that his policies are good policies, maybe even Christian policies. LBJ understood that, but it was a genuine friendship.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: And what did Graham believe in regards to the relationship between church and state, you know, between pastors and presidents? How did he view his role as an advisor, as a confidant to presidents like LBJ?
Bill Martin: I think he thought he was serving God. I think he thought he was serving them, that he was helping them, that how could encouraging them in their spiritual lives and those things, how could that be a harm to the nation? He said at other times later, particularly that he'd gotten too involved in politics and shouldn't have done that. But I think along the way he felt like this is mutually beneficial, not so much just in an instrumental transactional kind of thing, but I am spreading the word, the teachings, the spirit of Christ to these people and how can that be wrong? How can that not be a service not only to them but to the country?
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: But that place of privilege in the Oval Office would also become the site of one of Graham's biggest controversies. That's after a short break.
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Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So we've been talking about Billy Graham's friendships with several American presidents and how he served an important role for many of them. Another president he was close to was Richard Nixon. Can you tell me about the relationship between Nixon and Billy Graham?
Bill Martin: Well, he got to be friends during the time when Eisenhower was in office. He re-knitted the fabric of fellowship that he'd once had, but it turned out to be a pall on his ministry eventually. After Watergate, he had become such a friend of Nixon. He could not believe that Richard Nixon was involved in the Watergate break-in and the stealing of things and so forth. And he just couldn't believe it.
But then when he listened to those Watergate tapes, he just was crushed. He wept. He threw up. He was more concerned about the profanity, I think, sometimes than in the attempts to suborn perjury and undercut democracy. But, uh, one of my most vivid memories, the last conversation I had with him, I saved the president til last because I knew that could be touchy. I'd sent him these, the copies of these things circulating. And I said, you need to look at these, you need to know about them, and you need to be very careful to tell me the truth, insofar as you can. Because it will come out. I want to be sure about what I'm writing. It was a hard day, but at the end of that day, he had his hands and arms up on a couch, and he said, I knew what I'd said to the President, and I knew what he'd said to me. But when I saw all those memos circulating in the background, I felt like a sheep led to the slaughter. He was coming to realization right in front of me: I've been used. And that's when he, that was when he decided, I better be very careful about this. It's dangerous to try to swim in a whirlpool. But it, of course, he still was drawn so much to politics that he, he didn't, he couldn't stay out of it.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: And in the early 2000s, there's, uh, a new wave of Nixon tapes that come out, and they include recordings of Graham talking with Nixon that involve antisemitic remarks. What did this do to Graham's image and to him personally when these came out?
Bill Martin: It pained him deeply. Because he had, when he had been in Israel, he had established friendships and people respected the fact that he wasn't trying to say, he wasn't anti Israeli, he wasn't anti Semitic. And he had been, he had been seen as a friend of Jews. And that's what he felt he was. But then when he was, when Nixon and Haldeman were getting him to talk about these things, talking about how much the Jews, how they're in charge of the media, and Billy Graham said something, like, well, yes, they've got the power, and sometimes I don't, when I'm over at the New York Times, I don't say everything that I'd like to say.
When he left, Haldeman and Nixon said, it's good that we got him to talk about the Jews. That was extraordinarily painful to Billy Graham. He went to people that he'd, you know, seminaries and things like that and just apologized, just figuratively crawling on his stomach to apologize.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: How did Graham's approach to preaching change later in his life? I imagine maybe that catalog of sins that you referenced earlier was less prominent in his sermons later in his career. Did his message change much later in life?
Bill Martin: It was still the basic message, not much question about that. When he dealt with things, for example, on alcohol, he would say he liked a little wine from time to time. People would be shocked at that, but it was true. He didn't have a problem with alcohol. In talking about homosexuality, he would bring that up and he would say, he wouldn't say he didn't think it was alright, he just said, there are worse sins. And he said, either not worse or not as bad as adultery. So he was taking some stances that, uh, he had not taken early in his ministry. And he would say, when people looked back, well, what about you said this? He says, I'm a man in process. I didn't have all the answers. I don't have all the answers now, but I'm still trying to work out these things. And so try not to judge me on a point in my past. But try to view me in what I'm trying to be now.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: So the reason we're having this conversation is recently they unveiled a statue of Graham in the U. S. Capitol. It's one of two statues that North Carolina and every state has at the U. S. Capitol. How do you think Billy Graham would regard this statue of him? What would he think of it?
Bill Martin: I think he would have said, Oh my, I shouldn't have a statue to me. There are many people who have done more than I have done. But it is a great honor. And it's a pretty nice statue. I'm very pleased. I'm honored. I'm humbled. So, I think he would have accepted it with grace.
Billy Graham was the key figure in the rise of evangelical Christianity and its morphing out of a harsher fundamentalism. And he was conscious doing that in the early 40s. He gathered with people and said, let's try for a new evangelical. He wanted to not have that hard kind of doctrine, doctrine, doctrine, but just preach the love of God, the acceptance of God, the ability of God to save those who want to be saved. And he wanted evangelicalism to move in those directions as well. And it did. Not perfectly, but who's perfect?
I think finally you just have to get right down to it. You have to get to the numbers. I used to say that Billy Graham had been the most successful preacher in the history of Christianity and say well what about the Apostle Paul? Paul was good, but he didn't have the numbers, which they would say oh, they'd be scandalized, but they loved that. Whatever you think of Billy Graham's message The numbers don't lie. He has to be regarded as the best who ever lived at what he did. A workman, as scripture said, who needeth not to be ashamed.
Charlie Shelton-Ormond: Bill Martin is the biographer behind A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham story. After our conversation, he got back in touch and told me one more detail he wanted me to know. It's a letter he still keeps handy to remind him about his experience writing about Billy Graham, and the kind of note writers dream about, especially after tackling such a daunting subject. It's from Graham's daughter, Ann Graham Lotz. It says, "Thank you for telling the story of our Father's life and ministry beautifully and accurately."
Anisa Khalifa: This episode of The Broadside was produced by Charlie Shelton Ormond. Our editor is Jerad Walker. Our executive producer is Wilson Sayre. Audio of Billy Graham is from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The Broadside is a production of WUNC North Carolina Public Radio. You can email us at broadside@wunc.org. If you enjoyed the show, leave us a rating, a review, or share it with a friend. I'm Anisa Khalifa. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll be back next week.