The Power And The Glory of Billy Graham
How a towheaded kid from North Carolina became God’s best salesman.
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Billy Graham, a member in good standing, despite his poor attendance record, of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, has spoken to more people about Jesus Christ, in person and electronically, than any other human being, living or dead. He has appeared before over fifty million people in person and has gathered in over 1,500,000 “inquirers” to sparkle in his heavenly crown. His crowds appear to be as large and the proportion of inquirers as high today as in the fifties. His weekly Hour of Decision radio broadcast is heard over 900 stations around the world, and he sends telecasts of three or four crusades a year into over 300 metropolitan areas, making them available to a potential 90 per cent of the world’s television audience. His Decision magazine, published in six languages and braille, has a circulation of almost four million, the largest of any religious monthly, with almost twice the combined circulations of Esquire, Harper’s, Atlantic, and Texas Monthly. Several of his books, published in many languages, have sold over two million copies apiece, a fact that helps explain the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth among Doubleday editors when Graham left them last year for Word, Incorporated, of Waco. His film company, World Wide Pictures, has produced, in addition to documentary records of crusades and numerous short films, such commercially successful efforts as Time to Run, The Restless Ones, The Hiding Place, and Gospel Road, an account of the life of Jesus set to the music of Johnny Cash, Joe South, and John Denver. His syndicated column is carried by over 200 daily newspapers with a circulation of 29 million.
In recognition of these accomplishments, Graham has been Time’s “Man of the Year,” was named in the Gallup poll’s “Ten Most Admired Men in the World” every year between 1951 and 1974 (the poll has not been taken since 1974) and placed second to Nixon or Kissinger from 1969 to 1974. For two years in the mid-fifties, more newspaper and magazine copy was devoted to him than any other person in the U.S., including President Eisenhower. In an informal survey by the liberal ecumenical publication, Christian Century, conducted to see how many religious leaders were known to American churchgoers, Graham ranked sixty-two percentage points ahead of his nearest colleague. He has received the Big Brother Award for his work on behalf of the welfare of children, been cited by the George Washington Carver Memorial Institute for his contributions to race relations and by the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith and the National Conference of Christians and Jews for his efforts to foster a better understanding between heirs of the biblical faiths.
He has been a friend of movie stars, athletes, and politicians, including every president since Truman, been honored by the police, military chaplains, the American Football Coaches Association, and the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and is the only living person depicted in stained glass in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. He has been saluted as “Salesman of the Year” (and decade) by various organizations, named “Mr . Travel” by Travel magazine, selected
by the Fashion Designers of America for its “Best Dressed List,” received a Horatio Alger Award, recognized as an honorary Indian chief, been Grand Marshal of the Tournament of Roses Parade, appeared on Laugh-ln, had his handsome visage stamped on a glass decanter (others so honored in the line included Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin Franklin, and the Apollo XIII crew), and designated “Greatest Person in the World Today” by contestants in the 1976 Miss U.S.A. Beauty Pageant in Niagara Falls. Less tangibly, but more importantly, Billy Graham has come to function as what one writer calls, ” A kind of symbol of consensus among many who think of themselves as the ‘decent people’ of America.”
William Franklin Graham, Jr., grew up on a prosperous dairy farm in Charlotte, North Carolina. His parents hoped their firstborn might enter the ministry but acknowledged it seemed a long shot. Though certainly no scoundrel, “Billy Frank” was not only high-spirited but more devoted to baseball than to the Bible. When he was sixteen he made a “decision for Christ” under the preaching of the fiery Southern evangelist Mordecai Ham, but his life underwent no striking change. The following summer he worked for the Fuller Brush Company and became an exceptional salesman. “Sincerity,” he would later say, “is the biggest part of selling anything—including the Christian plan of salvation.”
When Billy finished high school he enrolled at ultrafundamentalist Bob Jones University, but after a year of mild friction over the school’s peculiar regulations, both he and the school’s administration decided he would be happier somewhere else. Still hoping for a baseball career, Graham enrolled in Florida Bible Institute at Temple Terrace, near Tampa and the spring training grounds of several major league teams. Unhappily, his athletic abilities did not match his aspirations and, no doubt influenced by his strong fundamentalist environment, he began to consider the ministry. Apparently, he was still not a spiritual stand-out; in fact, a young woman he loved broke up with him because she did not think him sufficiently devout. Not long afterward, while wandering alone on a golf course late at night, he had a moving religious experience on the eighteenth hole and made a firm commitment to become a preacher. After a successful revival at a Baptist church near Tampa, he was ordained a Baptist minister and went on to attend Wheaton College in Illinois where he received a B.A. degree in anthropology in 1943 and married Ruth McCue Bell, whose father, Dr. L. Nelson Bell, had been a medical missionary in China from 1916 to 1941.
While in his first pastorate in a Chicago suburb, Graham took over a local weekly broadcast called, “Songs in the Night,” which consisted mainly of his preaching and songs by a young man named George Beverly Shea. In 1945 he signed on with Youth For Christ, a fledgling, but phenomenally successful, organization that specialized in weekly rallies offering young people a wholesome blend of entertainment, patriotism, and Christianity—its slogan was “Geared to the times, but anchored to the Rock.” “We used every modern means to reach the ear of the unconverted,” Graham recalls, “and then punched them straight between the eyes with the Gospel.”
As YFC’s first field representative, Graham traveled over a million miles between 1945 and 1949, including several trips to England and Europe. While converting thousands of young people, he also formed valuable ties with evangelical leaders throughout the hemisphere. In the process he began to assemble the team that is still with him today—George Beverly Shea, Cliff Barrows, George Wilson. Then, in 1949, came the revival that was to make Billy Graham a national celebrity. At the invitation of a group of Christian businessmen, Graham and his team erected the tent they called the “canvas cathedral with the steeple of light” (a Hollywood searchlight) and opened the “Greater Los Angeles Revival.”
The team was better prepared for this revival than for previous ones and had begun to utilize the techniques of organization that his predecessors had developed and perfected over the previous century. Attendance was good and decisions came at an acceptable rate. Then, during the fourth week of the meeting, William Randolph Hearst, who had admired the young evangelist’s work with Youth For Christ, sent the editors of his influential chain of newspapers a simple telegram: “Puff Graham.” And they did. A flood of publicity followed, including feature stories in major news magazines and wire services. Crowds and conversions mounted, reaching a total of 350,000 in attendance and 3000 decisions by the end of eight weeks. A few weeks later Henry Luce went to Columbia, South Carolina, to hear Graham in a crusade and pledged the support of Time, Life, and Fortune.
In November 1950, at the urging of two successful advertising men, Fred Dienert and Walter F. Bennett, whose agency handled several religious accounts, Graham launched a weekly radio broadcast simulating a crusade service on 250 ABC affiliates. By the end of the year, the Hour of Decision was receiving the highest Nielsen ratings ever of any religious program, and within five years would be heard on hundreds of stations around the world.
Graham and his associates predictably claim that only divine assistance can account for his unparalleled success. It is worth noting, however, that he possesses in abundant measure three additional advantages that appear essential to evangelistic stardom: a simple non-denominational theology; a rational and efficient organization; and a distinctive personality and public style.
Like all authentic evangelicals, Graham believes the Bible is the true, inspired, and infallible word of God, and as such, the final authority for Christian faith and practice. He acknowledges it contains a great deal of symbolic language and recalls with minor embarrassment a “rather foolish” attempt to delineate the exact dimensions of heaven in one of his youthful sermons. Similarly, his early descriptions of hell and the devil burned more brightly than those of today, and he waffles a bit on the nearness of the Second Coming: “It may be this year, it may be a thousand years from now.” It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that Billy Graham is going soft on doctrine. Those who wish to have fellowship in his crusades and other ventures must accept the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the atonement, and the resurrection as literal facts. He clearly believes heaven and hell are real places, that the devil is a real person, and even acknowledges that “a few times, but very few,” he has personally and successfully commanded “a spirit of divination” (a demon) to come out of a person. And despite his sensible refusal to set dates, he clearly believes The End is a good deal nearer than it ever has been before: “There are about twenty-eight signs that Jesus said to watch for,” he told Newsweek, “and every one of them is happening.”
Though his proclamations have become shorter and more polished, Billy’s basic message has not changed through the years. Unlike Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller, who urge us to be as great as we can be through positive and possibility thinking, or Oral Roberts, who promises something good is going to happen to us, or Reverend Ike, who assures us we’ll never lose with the stuff he uses, Billy Graham starts on a downer: sinful humanity in rebellion against God. In sermon after article after book he gloomily—and at far greater length than I’m about to quote—ticks off the fruits of this rebellion:
The population increase is frightening . . . our city streets are turned into jungles of terror, mugging, rape, and death . . . Racial tension is increasing throughout the world. . . Communism is a
dangerous threat . . . God is generally ignored or ridiculed …
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