The Upper Reaches
The Remarkable 50-Year White House Ministry of Billy Graham
by Mark Tooley
Barack Obama may be the first American president since Franklin Roosevelt whom evangelist Billy Graham never meets or counsels. America’s most famous preacher turned 90 last November 7, and although Obama tried to visit him during the campaign, the evangelist’s health precluded it. But in a meeting with Obama earlier last year, son Franklin, who has succeeded to his father’s ministry, made known the Grahams’ disagreement with Obama over abortion and same-sex unions.
Still mentally alert though frail, Billy Graham is perhaps the most influential clergyman in US history. He has been a celebrity since 1949, when his surging Los Angeles crusade persuaded the Hearst press to “puff” him nationally, and across seven decades, he has preached in 185 countries to over 200 million people. He helped launch Christianity Today magazine to encourage Evangelical intellectual life, denounced racial segregation, fostered ecumenism with Roman Catholics, and presided over a populist spiritual boom that made previously backwater Evangelicals America’s largest religious demographic.
Graham’s celebrity status, earnest confidence, and charisma gained him almost easy access to many of the twentieth century’s political giants. West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, a Catholic, assured him of his own faith in Christ’s resurrection. Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, both Methodists, eagerly hosted him in Taiwan. Jawaharlal Nehru, though a Hindu, opened doors to him in India. King Hussein offered him the hospitality of his palace in Jordan, and Golda Meir charmed him in Israel.
A despairing Winston Churchill once kept the Duke of Windsor waiting while he privately heard Graham present the gospel. And Queen Elizabeth, herself the titular head of the Church of England, was his frequent host. So, too, was the far more active head of a much larger church, Pope John Paul II. More controversially, Communist despots like North Korea’s Kim Il Sung were also his host, exploiting Graham for their own purposes.
Friend of Presidents
But Graham’s most celebrated friendships were with eleven US presidents. While his friendships with Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were the most publicized—and the most politically exploited—Graham has described Ronald Reagan, who was widely derided as a non-churchgoer during his presidency, as the president to whom he was closest. He was also especially close to the Bush family, spending the night with George and Barbara Bush on the night that the Persian Gulf War began.
The presidential associations were mutually beneficial. For Graham, they opened diplomatic doors for his international preaching crusades and also probably increased his domestic audiences. Meanwhile, the presidents received the religious blessing of America’s foremost minister, while also gaining political and spiritual counsel from a savvy public figure with a following sometimes bigger than their own.
Graham’s first presidential meeting, with Harry Truman in 1950, was notoriously disastrous. Only age 31, and wearing a pastel suit and white bucks, Graham prayed with the president and then, to the delight of an attentive press corps, reenacted the prayer on the White House lawn. Years later, he apologized to Truman for his showmanship, and he was careful to be more discreet in the future.
Graham advised the non-churchgoing Eisenhower that he should join a church when elected president, and steered him to the National Presbyterian Church, where Ike would be baptized. As president, Eisenhower hosted Graham at his Gettysburg home and led him on a battlefield tour, pointing out where Graham’s Confederate grandfather likely had fought. Ike once asked Graham to explain the afterlife, perhaps sensing his coming heart attack. Years later, while dying at Walter Reed Hospital, Eisenhower summoned Graham again, to discuss his salvation and also to ask Graham’s help in fostering a reconciliation with Richard Nixon, who was himself already a Graham friend.
Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.ird-renew.org) in Washington, D.C.
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