Like many of the great American performers of
his generation, Billy Graham got his start in vaudeville. ChicagoÕs Youth
for Christ was designed to appeal to GIs back from World War II and kids
just off the farm. They put on quite
a show, featuring flashing electric bowties and neon Òglo-sox,Ó a praying horse
that knelt at the cross, trombones, and even a Òconsecrated saxophone.Ó
The handsome young
Southerner was a hit. ÒThe preaching windmillÓ was just off the farm himself
(or talked like it) and he was selling prime real estate: Paradise. Soon he had
his own radio show, and was touring with the Crusade for Christ, saving
souls by the dozens, or at least entertaining them, and collecting their coins.
He was doing the LordÕs work.
He had always had big
plans. They were about to get bigger.
Billy Graham had come
to the Lord via Mordecai Ham, a preacher on the Southern revivalist Òsawdust
circuit.Ó Ham was all fire and brimstone. He would set up his tent on the
carnival grounds at the edge of town, attack the ÒdevilÕs instrumentsÓ (local
bootleggers and, of course, the Jews), and then call the sinners forward to be
saved.
Graham leapt out of his seat, into the light.
He had found his vocation. Having little desire to be a small town tent preacher, Billy enrolled in the Florida Bible Institute, where he rubbed shoulders with an older generation of more respectable revivalists. ÒBilly would do anything for them,Ó his wife recalls; Òliterally shine their shoes.Ó This devotion paid off, and with the right connections he made his way to Wheaton College in the Chicago suburbs.
Up North. He brushed the sawdust off his knees, and started looking around for finer shoes to shine.
Billy Graham was touched by Destiny three
times: first by the bony finger of Ham, summoning him to the front of the tent.
Secondly by the Aurora Borealis in Illinois, where he fell to his knees under a
ÒSecond ComingÓ sky, relieved at last of his lingering doubts. And thirdly by
the hand of the Maker himself--William Randolph Hearst.
It was Hearst who gave him his true calling.
The Crusade for Christ opened in Los
Angeles the same week that the Russians tested their first atomic bomb. This
fresh menace gave Graham his text: ÒCommunism is inspired and directed by the
Devil himself, who has declared war against Almighty God. Did you know that the
Communists are more rampant in Los Angeles than any other city in America?Ó
When Hearst heard these words (through his
maid, the story goes), his heart was made glad. And so, verily, he dispatched
the famous two-word memo to his newspaper empire: ÒPuff Graham.Ó
Puff they did. Billy Graham departed Los
Angeles a national celebrity, with a holy mission. Promote the American Way of
Life.
It was a good fit. From the beginning heÕd
had a greater interest than the mere saving of individual souls. He wanted to
restore fundamentalism to its rightful place in American life. The religious
fervor that had illuminated (some would say darkened) the American landscape in
the glory days of D.L. Moody and Billy Sunday had dimmed. A questioning,
secular mood had come with the depression and war. The fires of revivalism were
banked except in the South, the historic heartland of protestant Christianity.
GrahamÕs intention was to restart that fire, and if that meant sucking up to
AmericaÕs rulers, well, that was right and proper too.
Render unto Caesar.
Graham was henceforth CaesarÕs.
HearstÕs tabloids lofted him like wings to
Washington, DC, the very seat of power, and Strom Thurmond introduced him to Henry
Luce, who saw in this young striver what America needed, and prepared him a
place on the cover of Time. The flashy ties were soon gone. The countrified
bigotry of his forebears was set aside (it was never a good fit with the
eagerly cosmopolitan Graham). Soon he was speaking to packed stadiums, and his
message was CaesarÕs:
In Paradise, there are Òno union dues, no
labor leaders, no snakes, no disease.Ó
But here, below: ÒChristianity needs a show
of strength and force; we must maintain the strongest military establishment on
Earth.Ó
None of that other cheek stuff. Jesus came
Ònot to send peace but a sword!Ó The military-industrial complex liked that
one.
The dangers were at home as well as abroad.
Joe McCarthyÕs suggestion that the Fifth
Amendment be suspended for leftists inspired Graham to new heights of boyish
enthusiasm. ÒThen letÕs do it!Ó he exclaimed. Especially since he knew,
personally, of Òover eleven hundred social-sounding organizations in this
country that are communist or communist-inspired.Ó
Truman, that shifty little haberdasher,
didnÕt like him, but Eisenhower did. Graham made a special trip to Europe to
encourage the General to run. And gave him a red [sic] Bible to cherish.
Failing to prevent KennedyÕs election, Graham
cheerfully played golf with him. He had abandoned redneck anti-Catholicism
publicly (not always privately) seeing it as inimical to AmericaÕs imperial
destiny. He was not about to denounce the Pope, who was after all a man of
consequence.
Lyndon Johnson loved him, and why not?
ÒNobody could ever make Lyndon Johnson feel he was right quite like Billy
Graham could,Ó says Bill Moyers; who also describes how ÒthereÕd come this light in BillyÕs
eyesÓ when Johnson discussed the bombing of North Vietnam.
As for those pesky protesters, Graham was always willing to cast the first stone. ÒThe FBI and the President know who they are and what they are up to. Congress has no more urgent business than to pass laws with teeth in them.Ó
Billy Graham has always remained true to his
original vision, which was to restore religion to its rightful place as a
pillar of American power. To do that, he recognized early on, one had to honor
that power. Render to it. Become one with it.
No problem. He was with Lyndon Johnson on his last night in the White House, and he was waiting in the foyer the next morning when Nixon arrived.
Lyndon was fun, but Billy Graham found his true soul mate in the gimlet-eyed little quaker from California. ÒThere is no American I admire more than Richard Nixon,Ó he said. He was steadfast in his syncophancy until the very end. Even when the tapes showed that Nixon had in fact been lying all along, Graham saw no defect in character. ÒIt was all those sleeping pills, they just let a demon power come in and play over him.Ó
It would be wrong to suggest that Graham fell
in step with the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. He helped create it. It
would be wrong to suggest that he went along with the atrocities of the Vietnam
War. He helped sanctify them. He advised Nixon to bomb the dikes, and flew to
Vietnam to encourage the troops to ÒskinÓ a Viet Cong.
And in many cases, most of them undocumented,
they did.
Even My Lai didnÕt trouble him unduly. ÒWe
have all had our My Lais in one way or another É with a thoughtless word, an
arrogant act, or a selfish deed.Ó
But wait. WerenÕt these simply the normal, if
appalling, attitudes of the Silent Majority?
Absolutely. But Billy Graham was far from
silent. He spoke directly to more people than any other man before or since,
and always with the same theme: Heaven or Hell, America or Communism. Graham
assembled, instructed and emboldened this majority.
Graham has been criticized for anti-Semitism,
after the release of the Nixon tapes revealed he and Nixon grumbling privately
about the Jews and their ÒstrangleholdÓ on America.
But this is off the mark. Some of GrahamÕs
best friends were Jews. ÒThey swarm about me. They donÕt know how I really feel
about what they are doing to this country.Ó He had long ago shucked off, along
with the sawdust, the strident anti-Semitism of his revivalist forebears. His
was the private, mainstream, polite kind. He would never have said such things
publicly.
The same with racism. He spoke out against
segregation, understanding that Southern apartheid was an embarrassment to a
nation that sought world hegemony. It was no longer CeasarÕs plan.
He was even friendly with Martin Luther King,
though he refused to attend or support the March on Washington, and often
criticized the Civil Rights Movement for going Òtoo far and too fast.Ó
Petty bigotry was not his style. Imperial power was more to his taste. He restored protestant fundamentalism to its central place in American life when it was in danger of being overthrown by the restless secularism of the post-war era, and by the liberatory upheavals of the 1960s. He stood guard, reminding Americans that even though, individually, they were in peril of Hell, as a nation they were beyond reproach, as long as they obeyed their betters, followed orders, and quit their God damned complaining.
Render unto Caesar.
Billy Graham prepared the way for the New
Right, which was only sleeping, and is now in power. He was their John the
Baptist. It was he, in fact, who saved George Bush Jr. from demon rum,
beginning his transformation from a drunken vicious stumbling fratboy to a
sober vicious stumbling President. For that alone, he deserves a place of honor
in this book.