William Franklin Graham Jr. (November 7, 1918 - February 21, 2018) was an American evangelical evangelical Christian, and an ordained Southern Baptist priest who became internationally famous in the late 1940s. One of his biographers has placed him "among the most influential Christian leaders" in the 20th century.
As a preacher, he held large demonstrations inside and outside the room with sermons broadcast on radio and television; some are still re-aired into the 21st century. In his six decades of television, Graham hosted the annual Billy Graham Crusades, which lasted from 1947 until his retirement in 2005. He also hosted the radio show Hour of Decision from 1950 until 1954. He rejected racial segregation. In addition to his religious goals, he helped shape the worldview of a large number of people from different backgrounds, guiding them to discover the relationship between the Bible and the contemporary secular point of view. According to its website, Graham preaches to feed 210 million people in over 185 countries and regions through meetings, including the World Mission BMS and the Global Mission.
Graham is a spiritual advisor to the US president and provides spiritual advice to every 33rd president, Harry S. Truman, 44th, Barack Obama. He is very close to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson (one of Graham's closest friends), and Richard Nixon. He insisted on racial integration for his revival and crusade, beginning in 1953, and invited Martin Luther King Jr. to preach together at a revival in New York City in 1957. He also befriended for life with other televangelists, the founding priest of Crystal Cathedral , Robert Schuller, spoken by Graham to start his own television service.
Graham operates various media and publishing outlets. According to his staff, more than 3.2 million people have responded to the invitation in Billy Graham Crusades to "accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior". Graham's evangelism was appreciated by Protestant and Roman Catholic schools as he encouraged new members to become members of these Churches. In 2008, Graham's lifetime audience estimates, including radio and television broadcasts, totaled 2.2 billion dollars. A special television broadcast in 1996 alone may have reached a television audience of 2.5 billion people worldwide. Because of his crusade, Graham preached the gospel to more people personally than anyone in the history of Christianity. Graham is on the list of Gallup's most admired men and women 61 times, more than any man or woman in history. Grant Wacker writes that in the mid-1960s he became the "Great Legitimator": "At that time his presence gave status to the president, acceptance of war, shame to racial prejudice, civility desire, disrespect to indecency, and prestige in citizenship. event ".
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William Franklin Graham Jr. born on November 7, 1918, in the bedroom downstairs of a farmhouse near Charlotte, North Carolina. He is of Scottish-Irish descent and is the eldest of four children born to Morrow (nÃÆ' Â © e Coffey) and William Franklin Graham Sr., a dairy farmer. Graham grew up on a family dairy farm with two younger sisters, Catherine Morrow and Jean and a younger brother, Melvin Thomas. When he was eight years old in 1927, the family moved about 75 meters (69 m) from their white frame house to a newly built redbrick house. He was raised by his parents in the Presbyterian Reformed Associate Church. Graham attended Sharon Grammar School. He started reading books from an early age and likes to read novels for boys, especially Tarzan . Like Tarzan, he will rely on trees and give Tarzan popular shouts, frighten horses and drivers. According to his father, the cry had made him a minister. When he was fourteen in 1933, the Ban ended in December, and Graham's father forced him and his sister, Katherine, drank beer until they fell ill. This creates a reluctance that Graham and his sister avoid alcohol and drugs for the rest of their lives.
Graham was denied membership in a local youth group for being "too mundane" when Albert McMakin, who worked on Graham's farm, persuaded him to go and see the evangelist Mordecai Ham. According to his autobiography, Graham converted in 1934, at the age of 16 during a series of revival meetings in Charlotte led by Ham.
After graduating from Sharon High School in May 1936, Graham studied at Bob Jones College, which was then located in Cleveland, Tennessee. After a semester, he felt it was too legalistic in both courses and regulations. He is currently influenced and inspired by Pastor Charley Young of Eastport Bible Church. He was almost thrown out, but Bob Jones Sr. warned him not to waste his life: "At best, all you can do is to be a Baptist preacher of a poor country somewhere in a stick... you have an interesting voice God can use your voice He can use it as strongly energy. "
In 1937, Graham moved to the Florida Bible Institute in Temple Terrace, Florida, near Tampa. He preached his first sermon that year at the Baptist Church of Bostwick near Palatka, Florida, while still a student. In his autobiography, Graham writes about accepting his "call to green 18 from Temple Terrace Golf and Country Club", which is adjacent to the Institute's campus. Rev. Billy Graham Memorial Park was later founded on the Hillsborough River, just east of the 18th green and across from where Graham often rowed his canoe to a small island in the river, where he would preach to birds, crocodiles, and cypress stumps. In 1939, Graham was ordained by a group of Southern Baptist ministers at the Baptist Penman Church in Palatka, Florida. In 1943, Graham graduated from Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, with an anthropology degree.
During his time at Wheaton, Graham decided to accept the Bible as the perfect word of God. Henrietta Mears of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood (Hollywood, California) was instrumental in helping Graham wrestle with this problem. He settled in Forest Home Christian Camp (now called Forest Home Ministries) in the southeast of Big Bear Lake area in southern California. A memorial there marks Graham's decision site.
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Family
On August 13, 1943, Graham married a Wheaton classmate, Ruth Bell, whose parents were Presbyterian missionaries in China. His father, L. Nelson Bell, was a general surgeon. Ruth Graham died on June 14, 2007, at the age of 87. The Grahams were married for almost 64 years.
Graham and his wife have five children together: Virginia Leftwich (Gigi) Graham (born 1945), an inspirational speaker and author; Anne Graham Lotz (born 1948), runs the AnGeL ministry; Ruth Graham (b.1950), founder and president of Ruth Graham & amp; Friends, leading conferences across the US and Canada; Franklin Graham (born 1952), served as president and CEO of the Evangelical Association of Billy Graham and as president and CEO of international aid organization Samaritan's Purse; and Nelson Edman Graham (born 1958), a minister who runs East Gates Ministries International, which distributes Christian literature in China.
At the time of his death, Graham has 19 grandchildren, including former Tullian Tchividjian pastor, 41 great-grandchildren and 6 great-grandchildren.
Career Ministry
While attending college, Graham became pastor of the United Gospel Tabernacle and also had other preaching agreements.
From 1943 to 1944, Graham briefly served as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Western Springs, Illinois, not far from Wheaton. While there, his friend Torrey Johnson, pastor of the Midwest Bible Church in Chicago, told Graham that his radio program, Song at Night, would be canceled for lack of funds. In consultation with his church members in Western Springs, Graham decided to take over Johnson's program with financial support from his congregation. Launched a new radio program on January 2, 1944, still called Songs in the Night , Graham recruited bass-baritone George Beverly Shea as director of radio services. While the radio ministry continued for years, Graham decided to move in early 1945.
In 1948 at the age of 29, he became president of Northwestern Bible College in Minneapolis and the youngest president of a college or university in the country, from which he resigned in 1952. Graham was originally intended to be a minister in the Armed Forces, but he suffered from mumps shortly after applying. After the healing period in Florida, he was hired as the first full-time evangelist of the New Youth for Christ (YFC), jointly founded by Torrey Johnson and Canadian evangelist Charles Templeton. Graham traveled throughout the United States and Europe as a YFCI evangelist. Templeton enrolled at Princeton Theological Seminary for an advanced theology degree and urged Graham to do it too, but he refused because he had served as president of Northwestern Bible College.
Graham scheduled a series of revival meetings in Los Angeles in 1949, where he set up a circus tent in the parking lot. He drew national media coverage, especially in the conservative Hearst chain, although Hearst and Graham never met. The crusade lasted eight weeks - five weeks longer than planned. Graham became a national figure with heavy coverage of national wire and magazine services.
Crusade
Since its service began in 1947, Graham has performed over 400 crusades in 185 countries and territories on six continents. The first Billy Graham Crusade, held from 13 to 21 September 1947, at the Civic Auditorium in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was attended by 6,000 people. Graham is 28 years old. He called them crusades, after the medieval Christian troops who conquered Jerusalem. He will rent a big place, like a stadium, park, or street. As the session gets bigger, he organizes a group of up to 5,000 people to sing in the choir. He will preach the gospel and invite people to go forward (an exercise started by Dwight L. Moody). Such people are called askers and given the opportunity to speak one-on-one with a counselor, to clarify questions and pray together. The questioners are often given copies of the Gospel of John or Bible study books. In Moscow, in 1992, a quarter of the 155,000 people in Graham's audience advanced ahead on his call. During his crusade, he often used the song of the altar call, "Just As I Am".
Graham was offered a $ 1 million five-year contract from NBC to appear on television in the presence of Arthur Godfrey, but he had arranged his previous commitments. He declined the offer to continue his revised tour. Graham held a crusade in London, which lasted for 12 weeks, and a New York City crusade at Madison Square Garden in 1957, which took place every night for 16 weeks.
Student Services
Graham spoke at the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship's Urbana Student Missions Conference at least nine times - in 1948, 1957, 1961, 1964, 1976, 1979, 1981, 1984, and 1987.
At each Urbana conference, he challenged thousands of participants to make a commitment to follow Jesus Christ for the rest of their lives. He often quotes the six-word phrase reported in the Bible William Whiting Borden, son of a rich silver king: "No reserve, no retreat, no regrets". Borden had died in Egypt on his way to the mission field.
Graham also held evangelistic meetings at several campuses: at the University of Minnesota during InterVarsity's "Year of Evangelism" from 1950-51, a 4-day mission at Yale University in 1957, and a series of week-long meetings at the Carmichael University of North Carolina Auditorium in September 1982.
In 1955 he was invited by students to lead the mission to Cambridge University, organized by the CICCU, with London theologians John Stott as his chief assistant. This invitation was greeted with a lot of rejection in the correspondence column The Times .
Evangelical associations
In 1950, Graham founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) with its headquarters in Minneapolis. The association moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1999. The BGEA Ministry has included:
- Hours of Decision , weekly radio programs broadcast worldwide for over 50 years
- Mission television specials are broadcast on virtually every market in the US and Canada
- The syndicated newspaper column, My Reply , was carried by newspapers across the United States and distributed by Tribune Media Services
- Decision magazine, official publication of the association
- Christianity Today started in 1956 with Carl F. H. Henry as his first editor
- Passageway.org, the website for the teenage discipleship program created by BGEA
- World Wide Pictures, which has produced and distributed over 130 movies
In April 2013, the Evangelical Association of Billy Graham began "My Hope With Billy Graham", the greatest outreach in its history, encouraging church members to spread the Gospel in small group meetings after showing Graham's video message. "The idea is that Christians follow the example of Matthew's disciples in the New Testament and spread the gospel in their own homes." The video, called "The Cross", was the main program in the My Hope America series and was also broadcast on Graham's 95th birthday. In an email interview with WorldNetDaily (WND), Graham wrote that "we are close to the end of the age".
Civil rights movement
Graham's early crusade was split up, but he began adjusting his approach in the 50s. During the 1953 rally in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Graham knocked down the ropes that the organizers set up to separate the audience into racial parts. In his memoirs, he tells us that he told two usher to leave the barrier down "or you can continue and have a revival without me." He warned the white audiences, "we are proud and think we are better than other races, others. Ladies and gentlemen, we will stumble into hell because of our pride."
In 1957, Graham's establishment of integration became more open when he allowed black ministers Thomas Kilgore and Gardner C. Taylor to serve as members of the New York Crusade executive committee and invited Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., whom he first met during a boycott bus Montgomery in 1955, to join him onstage at a 16-week revival in New York City, where 2.3 million people gathered at Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium, and Times Square to hear them. Graham recalls in his autobiography that during this time he and King developed close friendships and that in the end he was one of the few who called King "Mike," a nickname that the King asked only his closest friends to call him. After the King's assassination in 1968, Graham mourns that the US has lost "a social leader and a prophet". Personally, Graham advises the King and other members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Despite their friendship, the tension between Graham and King emerged in 1958 when the committee sponsored a crusade that took place in San Antonio, Texas on July 25 arranging for Graham to be introduced by state governor segregationist Price Price. On July 23, the King sent a letter to Graham and told him that allowing Daniel to speak on a crusade that occurred the night before the Democratic State "can be interpreted as your support for racial segregation and discrimination." Graham's adviser Grady Wilson replied to the King that "although we do not see it directly in every matter, we still love him in Christ." Although Graham's appearance with Daniel destroyed King's hopes of having a crusade with Graham in the Deep South, the two still remained friends and the King told the Canadian television audience the following year that Graham had taken "a very strong stand against segregation." Graham and King will also be different in the Vietnam War. After the "Beyond Vietnam" speech denouncing the US intervention in Vietnam, Graham punished him and others for their criticism of US foreign policy.
In the mid-1960s, King and Graham traveled together to the Baptist World Baptist World Congress. In 1963, Graham sent guarantees to the King to be released from prison during the Birmingham campaign, according to Long (2008), and King Center admitted that Graham had freed the King from prison during the Albany Movement, although historian Steven Miller told CNN he could find no evidence of the incident. Graham held an integrated crusade in Birmingham, Alabama, at Easter 1964 after the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, and toured again in Alabama after the violence that accompanied Selma first to Montgomery in 1965.
After his death, former SCLC official and Atlanta furture politician Andrew Young acknowledged his friendship with Graham and stated that Graham indeed traveled with the King to the 1965 European Baptist Convention. Young also claimed that Graham often invited the King to his crusade in the northern states.
Graham's faith encouraged his mature view of race and segregation; he told a Ku Klux Klan member that integration was necessary mainly for religious reasons: "There is no biblical basis for separation," Graham said. "The ground at the foot of the cross is flat, and it touched my heart when I saw the white man standing shoulder to shoulder with the black man on the cross."
Lausanne Movement
The friendship between Graham and John Stott leads to a further partnership in the Lausanne Movement, where Graham was a founder. It was built at the 1966 World Congress Graham on Evangelism in Berlin. In collaboration with Christianity Today , Graham held what the TIME magazine describes as "a tough forum, perhaps the most extensive Christian gathering ever held" with 2,700 participants from 150 countries gathered for the International Congress on the Evangelization of the World. This took place in Lausanne, Switzerland (16-25 July 1974), and the movement took its name from the host city. The aim is to strengthen the global church for world evangelism, and to engage this ideological and sociological tendency that gives birth to it. Graham invited Stott to be the chief architect of the Lausanne Covenant, issued from Congress and which, according to Graham, "helps challenge and unite evangelical Christians in the great task of world evangelization." This movement remains an important fruit of Graham's heritage, with presence in almost every country.
Many roles
Graham played several reinforcing roles. Grant Wacker identifies eight major roles he plays: preachers, icons, South, businessmen, architects (or bridge builders), pilgrims, pastors and finally his widely-recognized status as American Protestant patriarch, equivalent to Martin Luther King and Pope John Paul II.
Graham as a bridge builder deliberately reaches the secular world. For example, as an entrepreneur he built his own pavilion for the 1964 New York World Exhibition. He appeared as a guest on Woody Allen's 1969 special television, where he joined the comedians in an ingenious exchange on theological issues. During the Cold War, builder Graham-the-bridge became the first evangelist of the record to speak behind the Iron Curtain, speaking to many people in countries throughout Eastern Europe and in the Soviet Union, calling for peace. During the apartheid era, Graham consistently refused to visit South Africa until his government allowed unified seats for spectators. During his first crusade there in 1973, he publicly criticized apartheid. Graham also corresponded to the imprisoned South African leader, Nelson Mandela, for the last 27 years imprisoned.
In 1984, he led a series of meetings in the summer of the United Kingdom, called Mission England, using outdoor soccer field (soccer) as a place.
Graham is interested in developing evangelism around the world. In 1983, 1986 and 2000 he sponsored, arranged and paid for large-scale training conferences for Christian evangelicals from around the world; with the greatest representation of the countries ever held up to that time. More than 157 countries gathered in 2000 at the RAI Convention Center in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At a revival in Seoul, South Korea, Graham attracted more than one million people to a service. He appeared in China in 1988 - for Ruth, this is his return, as he was born in China to his missionary parents. He appeared in North Korea in 1992.
On October 15, 1989, Graham received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Graham is the only minister, who functions in that capacity, to receive one.
On September 22, 1991, Graham held his biggest event in North America at Great Lawn of New York's Central Park. City officials estimate more than 250,000 people attended. In 1998, Graham spoke at TED (conference) to a crowd of scientists and philosophers.
On September 14, 2001, just three days after the World Trade Center attack, Graham was invited to lead a service at Washington National Cathedral, which was attended by President George W. Bush and past and present leaders. He also spoke at a memorial service after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. On 24-26 June 2005, Billy Graham started what he said would be his last North American crusade, three days at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in New York City. But on the weekend of March 11-12, 2006, Billy Graham held a "Hope Festival" with his son, Franklin Graham. The festival is held in New Orleans, which is recovering from Hurricane Katrina.
Graham prepared a final sermon, My Hope America , released on DVD and played all over the US and possibly worldwide between November 7-10, 2013, November 7th is his 95th birthday, hoping to awaken revival.
Later life, death and warning
Graham said his planned retirement was due to his failing health; he suffered from hydrocephalus since 1992. In August 2005, Graham appeared in groundbreaking for his library in Charlotte, North Carolina. Then 86, he used a walker during the ceremony. On July 9, 2006, he was speaking at the Franklin Franklin Metro Metro Festival, held in Baltimore, Maryland, at Oriole Park in Camden Yards.
In April 2010, Graham, at 91 and with a substantial vision, listening and losing the balance, made a rare public appearance in the re-dedication of the renovated Billy Graham Library.
There was controversy over Graham's burial place; he announced in June 2007 that he and his wife would be buried together at the Billy Graham Library in his hometown of Charlotte. Graham's younger son, Ned, argued with Franklin's eldest son about whether the funeral in the library would be appropriate. Ruth Graham once said that she wanted to be buried not in Charlotte but in the mountains at Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove near Asheville, North Carolina, where she has lived for years; Ned supported his mother's choice. Novelis Patricia Cornwell, a family friend, also opposed the funeral in the library, calling it a tourist attraction. Franklin wants his parents to be buried on the library site. At the time of Ruth Graham's death, it was announced that they would be buried on the library site.
Graham died of natural causes on February 21, 2018, at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, at the age of 99.
On February 28 and March 1, 2018, Billy Graham became the fourth private citizen in US history to be honored on the US Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. Graham was the first respected religious leader. At the ceremony, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan called Graham "the American pastor". President Donald Trump says Graham is "an ambassador for Christ". In addition, Televangelist Jim Bakker salutes Graham, stating he was the greatest preacher since Jesus. He also said that Graham visited him in prison.
A private funeral ceremony was held on March 2, 2018. Graham is buried next to his wife at the foot of a cross-shaped brick path in the Prayer Garden on the northeast side of the Billy Graham Library. Graham's pine plywood box, made in 2006 by inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, concluded with a wooden cross nailed there by the prisoners.
Politics
After his close relationship with Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon, Graham tried to avoid explicit alignments. Bailey says: He refused to sign or support political statements, and he distanced himself from Christian rights... The early years of his fierce opposition to communism gave way to demands for military disarmament and concern for AIDS, poverty and environmental threats.
Graham is a registered member of the Democratic Party. In 1960 he opposed the nomination of John F. Kennedy, for fear that because Kennedy was a Catholic, he would definitely follow the Pope. Graham works "behind the scenes" to encourage influential Protestant ministers to speak out against him. Graham met with a conference of Protestant ministers in Montreux, Switzerland, during the 1960 campaign, to discuss their mobilizing congregation to defeat Kennedy. According to the program PBS Frontline , God in America (2010), Episode 5, Graham also held a meeting in September 1960 from hundreds of Protestant ministers in Washington, DC for this purpose; Norman Vincent Peale chaired the meeting. This was shortly before Kennedy's speech on the separation of church and state in Houston, Texas, which was considered successful in meeting the concerns of many voters. After his election, however, Kennedy invited Graham to play golf in Palm Beach, Florida, after which Graham recognized Kennedy's election as an opportunity for Catholics and Protestants to get closer together. After they discussed Jesus Christ at the meeting, the two remained in touch, meeting for the last time at a National Prayer Day meeting in February 1963. In his autobiography, Graham claimed to have felt "inner hunches" in the previous week. Kennedy's murder, and tried to contact him to say, "Do not go to Texas!"
Graham leaned towards the Republicans during Richard Nixon's presidency, whom he met and became friends as Vice President under Dwight D. Eisenhower. He did not fully associate himself with religious rights later, saying that Jesus did not have a political party. He gave his support to various political candidates for many years.
In 2007, Graham explained his refusal to join Major Major Moral Jerry Falwell in 1979, saying: "I am for morality, but morality transcends sex for human freedom and social justice We as pastors know little to speak with authority on the Panama Canal or the advantages of weaponry The evangelists can not be identified closely with any particular party or person We must stand in the middle to preach to everyone, right and left I have not been faithful to my own suggestions in the past I will be in the future. "
According to the 2006 Newsweek interview, "For Graham, politics is secondary to the Gospel... When Newsweek asks Graham whether ministers - do they consider themselves to be evangelists, priests or a little of both - must spend time getting involved with politics, he replied: 'You know, I think in a way that must reach the individual when he feels led by God.Many things I commented on years ago would not belong to God , I'm sure, but I think you have some - like communism, or segregation, where I think you have a responsibility to speak. '"
In 2012, Graham openly supports Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Not long after that, it seems to accommodate Romney, who is a Mormon, a reference to Mormonism as a religious cult ("The cult is any group that teaches doctrines or beliefs that deviate from the biblical message of the Christian faith.") Has been removed from Graham's Site. Analysts question whether the political support of Republican and religious rights on issues such as same-sex marriage coming from Graham - who stopped publicly speaking or to journalists - actually reflects the views of his son, Franklin, the head of the BGEA. Franklin denies this, and says that he will continue to act as his father's spokesman rather than allowing press conferences.
Pastor to president
Graham has a private audience with many seats of the US president, from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama - 12 presidents in a row. After meeting Truman in 1950, Graham told the press that he urged the president to fight communism in North Korea. Truman did not like him and did not talk to him for years after the meeting. Then he always treats his conversation with the president as a secret.
Truman did not like Graham. He wrote about Graham in his autobiography of 1974 Plain Speaking, but now we have just one evangelist, this Billy Graham, and he's gone from the block... He, well, I do not have "I have to says this, but he's one of those fake people I'm telling you. He claimed he was a friend of all the Presidents, but he never became my friend when I became President. I just do not go for people like All that he is interested in is getting his name in the newspaper. "
Graham became a regular visitor during Dwight D. Eisenhower's tenure. He is said to have urged him to intervene with federal troops in the Little Rock Nine case to gain the acceptance of black students to public schools. House Speaker Sam Rayburn convinced Congress to allow Graham to perform the first religious service on the steps of the Capitol building in 1952. Eisenhower asked Graham while on his deathbed.
Graham met and would become a close friend of Vice President Richard Nixon, and supported Nixon, a Quaker, for the 1960 presidential election. He held an August strategy session of evangelical leaders in Montreaux, Switzerland, to plan the best way to oppose Roman Catholic opponent Nixon, Senator John F. Kennedy. Although the Democrats were registered, Graham also maintained strong support for aggression against foreign threats to Communism and was deeply sympathetic to Nixon's views on American foreign policy. Thus, he is more sympathetic to the Republican government.
On December 16, 1963, US President Lyndon B. Johnson, impressed by Graham's way of praising the work of his great-great-grandfather, Pdt. George Washington Baines, invited Graham to the White House to give him spiritual counseling. After this visit, Johnson often summoned Graham for more spiritual counseling and friendship. As Graham recalls his biographer Frady, "I almost used the White House as a hotel when Johnson became President, he always tried to keep me there, he never wanted me to go."
In contrast to his more limited access to Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy, Graham will not only visit the White House but also sometimes kneel beside Johnson's bed and then pray with him every time the President asks him to do so. Graham once told me, "I never had many people do that." In addition to a visit to the White House, Graham will visit Johnson at Camp David and occasionally meet with the President when he retreats to his private ranch in Stonewall, Texas. Johnson will also be the first President to sit down to attend one of Graham's crusades, taking place in Houston, Texas, in 1965.
During the 1964 US presidential election, Republican nominations supporter Barry Goldwater sent some 2 million telegrams to Graham's hometown of Montreat, North Carolina, and sought the support of the preacher. Supporting Johnson's domestic policies, and hoping to preserve his friendship with the President, Graham rejected pressure to support Goldwater and remained neutral in the election. After Johnson's election victory, Graham's role as main White House priest was compacted. At one point, Johnson even considered making Graham a member of his cabinet and making him his successor, though Graham insisted that he lacked political ambition and wanted to remain a preacher. Graham's biographer David Aikman admits that the preacher is closer to Johnson than any other President he has ever known.
He spent the last night of Johnson's presidency at the White House, and he stayed for Nixon's first night. After Nixon's successful 1968 presidential campaign, Graham counseled, regularly visited the White House and led the president's private worship service. In a meeting they had with Golda Meir, Nixon offered Graham an ambassador to Israel, but he refused.
In 1970, Nixon appeared in Graham's resurrection in East Tennessee, which they thought was politically secure. It attracted one of the biggest crowds in Tennessee and protesters against the Vietnam War. Nixon was the first president to give a speech from the platform of evangelists. Their friendship became tense in 1973 when Graham rebuked Nixon for his post-Watergate behavior and his decency was heard on Watergate tapes. They finally made peace after Nixon's resignation.
Graham leads a presidential funeral and a presidential funeral. He led the grave ministry of President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1973 and took part in praising the former president. Graham served in the burial service of former First Lady Pat Nixon in 1993, and the funeral of Richard Nixon's death and state in 1994. During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Graham insisted that he trusted President Bill Clinton as a "spiritual person." He was unable to attend the state funeral of Ronald Reagan on June 11, 2004, when he was recovering from hip replacement surgery. This was mentioned by George W. Bush in his speech.
On April 25, 2010, President Barack Obama visited Graham at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, where they "have a private prayer."
Relationship with Queen Elizabeth II
Graham has a friendly relationship with Queen Elizabeth II and is often invited by the Royal Family for a special occasion. They first met in 1955 and Graham preached at Windsor Chapel at the Queen's invitation for the following year. Their friendly relationship may be because they share a traditional approach to the practical aspects of the Christian faith.
Display of foreign policy
Graham was outspoken against communism and supported the policy of the American Cold War, including the Vietnam War. In a 1999 speech, Graham discusses his relationship with the late North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, praising him as "a different kind of communist" and "one of the great fighters for freedom in his country against Japan." Graham went on to note that although he had never met Kim's son and former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, he "exchanged gifts with him."
In 1982, Graham preached in the Soviet Union and attended a wreath-laying ceremony honoring the deaths of World War II wars, when the Soviets were American allies in the war against Nazism. He voiced the fear of the second disaster, not against the Jews, but the "nuclear massacre" and suggested that "our greatest contribution to world peace is to live with Christ every day."
Controversial view
Discussion of the Jews with President Nixon
During Watergate's affair, there was the opinion that Graham had agreed with many antisemitic opinions of President Richard Nixon, but he denied them and stressed his efforts to build bridges to the Jewish community. In 2002, the controversy was updated when the declassification of the "Richard Nixon tape" confirms the statements made by Graham to Nixon three decades earlier. Captured on the record, Graham agreed with Nixon that the Jews controlled the American media, calling it a "grip" during a 1972 conversation with Nixon, and pointed out that if Nixon were re-elected, they might be able to do something.
When the recording was made public, Graham apologized and said, "Although I have no memories of the incident, I deeply regret the comments I made in the Oval Office conversation with President Nixon... about 30 years ago... They did it. reflects my views and I sincerely apologize for the offenses caused by that statement. "According to Newsweek magazine," [T] he was shocked by the enlarged revelation due to Graham's long-standing support for Israel and his refusal to join in call for conversion of the Jews. "
In 2009, more Nixon tapes were released, in which Graham was heard in a 1973 conversation with Nixon referring to Jews and "Satanic synagogues". A spokesperson for Graham said that Graham had never been an antisemite and that comparisons (according to the context of quotations in the Book of Revelation) were directed specifically at those who claimed to be Jews, but did not adhere to traditional Jewish values.
Ecumenism
After the 1957 crusade in New York, some of the more fundamentalist Protestant Christians criticized Graham for his ecumenism, even calling him "Antichrist."
Graham states an inclusive view, showing that people without explicit faith in Jesus can be saved. In a 1997 interview with Robert Schuller, Graham said
I think everyone who loves or knows Christ, whether they are aware or not, they are members of the body of Christ... [God] calls people from the world to his name, whether they are from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the world that is not believe they are members of the Body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something they do not have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they will be with us in heaven.
Iain Murray, writing from a conservative Protestant standpoint, argues that "Graham's concessions are the sad words of someone who once spoke on the basis of biblical certainty."
Views on women
In 1970, Graham declared that feminism was "an echo of the whole permissive philosophy" and that women did not want to be "a competitive giant pitted against a male chauvinist". He further states that the role of wife, mother and housewife is the fate of "true femininity" according to Judeo-Christian ethics; Graham's statement, published in the Ladies' Home Journal, sparked a protest letter, and was offered as a rebuttal to the formation of "The New Feminism" section of the publication added after the sit-down protest in the Journal's office demanding women's representation on the publication staff.
Graham is best known for his practice of not spending time alone with a woman other than his wife. This has been known as Billy Graham's rule.
Princess Billy, Bunny, told her father who denied her and her sisters were educated higher. As reported at The Washington Post :
Rabbits remember being prepared for the life of wife, housewife, and mother. "There was never any idea of ​​a career for us," he said. "I want to go to a nursing school - Wheaton has a five-year program - but Daddy says no.No reason, no explanation, just 'No.' It's not confrontational and he's not angry, but when he decides, that's the end. "He added," She has forgotten it.
Billy talks about his future wife, Ruth, to abandon his ambition to evangelize in Tibet for living in the United States to marry him - and that to do otherwise is "to thwart the real will of God." After Ruth agrees to marry Billy, she quotes the Bible for claiming authority over herself, saying, "then I will do the ultimate and you do the following."
Views about homosexuality
Graham considered homosexuality a sin, and in 1974 described it as "a form of evil aberrations." In 1993 she said she thought AIDS might be a "judgment" of God, but two weeks later she revoked her statement, saying, "I do not believe it, and I do not know why I say it."
Graham opposes same-sex marriage, and in 2012, he issued a full-page ad to support the North Carolina 1 Amendment, which banned him in North Carolina.
Graham's stated position is that she does not want to talk about homosexuality as a political issue. Corky Siemaszko, writing for NBC News, notes that after the 1993 incident, Graham "largely avoided the subject." However, after his death, some commentators have called Graham "homophobic".
Awards and honors
Graham is often honored by surveys, including "Greatest Living American" and is consistently ranked among the most admired people in the United States and the world. He most often appears on Gallup's list of most admired people. On the day of his death, Graham was on the Top 10 "Most Admired Man" list from Gallup, and held the highest rank of everyone since the list began in 1948.
In 1967, he was the first Protestant to receive an honorary degree from Belmont Abbey College, a Roman Catholic school.
In 1983, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by US President Ronald Reagan.
Graham received the Big Brother of the Year Award for his work on behalf of the children. He was quoted by the George Washington Carver Memorial Institute for his contribution to race relations. He received the Templeton Foundation Award for Advancement in Religion and Thayer Sylvanus Award for his commitment to "Duty, Honor, State". The "Billy Graham Children's Health Center" in Asheville is named and funded by Graham.
In 1999, the Gospel Music Association inaugurated Graham into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame to acknowledge his contributions to Christian music artists such as Michael W. Smith, DC Talk, Amy Grant, Jars of Clay and others who performed at Billy Graham Crusades. Graham was the first non-musician to be sworn in, and also helped revitalize interest in praise songs and create new favorite songs. Singer Michael W. Smith is active in Billy Graham Crusades and Samaritan's Purse. Smith sings "Just As I Am" in honor of Graham at the 44th GMA Dove Awards. He also sang it in a memorial ceremony honoring Graham in the Capitol rotunda of the United States on February 28, 2018.
In 2000, former First Lady Nancy Reagan presented Ronald Reagan's Freedom Award to Graham. Graham had been Reagan's friend for many years.
In 2001, Queen Elizabeth II awarded her honorary knighthood title. The award was given to him by Sir Christopher Meyer, the British Ambassador to the United States at the British Embassy in Washington DC on December 6, 2001.
Professorial seats are named after Alabama Samford University affiliated with Baptist, Church Growing Professor and Growth Billy Graham. his alma mater Wheaton College has his archive of papers at the Billy Graham Center. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has Billy Graham School of Mission, Evangelism and Service. Graham has received 20 honorary titles and refused at least a little more. In San Francisco, California, the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium is sometimes mistakenly called the "Billy Graham Civic Auditorium" and is considered wrongly named in his honor, but is actually named after rock and roll promoter Bill Graham.
On May 31, 2007, the $ 27 million Billy Graham Library was officially dedicated in Charlotte. Former president Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton appear to celebrate with Graham. The highway in Charlotte bears Graham's name, just like I-240 near Graham's house in Asheville.
When the end of the Crusade Graham approached in 2005, his friend Pat Boone chose to make a song in honor of Graham, whom he co-authored and produced with David Pack and Billy Dean, who digitally combined studio footage of various artists into what he called " We are a world-type "type" of production. Called "Thank You Billy Graham", the song's video was introduced by Bono, and includes Faith Hill, MxPx, John Ford Coley, John Elefante, Mike Herrera, Michael McDonald, Jeffrey Osborne, LeAnn Rimes, Kenny Rogers, Connie Smith, Michael Tait and another singer, with a short narrative by Larry King, and directed by Brian Lockwood as a tribute album. In 2013, My Hope: Songs album Inspired by Messy and Mission Billy Graham was recorded by Amy Grant, Kari Jobe, Newsboys, Matthew West, tobyMac and other music artists with new songs to honor Graham during his My American expectations with Billy Graham the outreach and publication of his book The Reason to My Hope: Safety . Other songs written in honor of Graham include "Hero of the Faith" written by Eddie Carswell of NewSong, which became a hit, "Billy, You're My Hero" by Greg Hitchcock, "Billy Graham" by The Swirling Eddies, "Billy Graham Bible" by Joe Nichols, "Billy Frank" by Randy Stonehill, and an original song titled "Just as I Am" by Fernando Ortega.
The Billy: The Early Years film premiered in theaters on October 10, 2008, less than a month before Graham's 90th birthday. Graham did not comment on the film, but his son Franklin released a critical statement on August 18, 2008, noting that the Evangelical Association of Billy Graham "did not collaborate with or not support the film." Graham's eldest daughter, Gigi praised the film and was hired as a consultant to help promote the film.
Other awards
Media depictions
- The Crown (2016 - present): Netflix series, Season 2 Episode 6. Played by actor Paul Sparks.
- Billy: The Early Years (2008): Played by actor Armie Hammer.
- Man in the 5th Dimension (1964): a short biography featuring Graham
Work
Graham's suggestion column My answer appears in newspapers for over 60 years in 2017.
Books
Graham wrote the following books; many are bestsellers. In the 1970s, for example, The Jesus Generation sold 200,000 copies in the first two weeks after publication; Angels: God's Secret Agents have sales of one million copies within 90 days of release; How to Be Born Again is said to have made a publishing history with its first print of 800,000 copies. "
References
- Aikman, David (2007). Billy Graham: Life and Influence . Nashville: Thomas Nelson. ASINÃ, B008JM5FE2. Ã, short biography
- Long, Michael G., ed. (2008). The Legacy of Billy Graham: Critical Reflection on America's Largest Evangelist . ASINÃ, B002LE87N0. scientific essay
- Miller, Steven P. (2009). Billy Graham and the Rise of the Southern Republic . University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN: 978-0-8122-4151-8.
- Schier, H. Edward (2013). "Movement of civil rights". Three Testament Battles: Because It Relates to Good & amp; Evil . ISBN: 978-1-4817-5876-5.
Note
Further reading
External links
- Official website
- Billy Graham Papers, Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College.
- 1957 event in Times Square, streaming video clips
- Monroe Billington, Oral History Interview with Billy Graham, October 12, 1983, transcript, Lyndon Baines Johnson Library
- Billy Graham at TED
- Appearance in C-SPAN
- The New York Times obituary
- Reuters Obituaries
- Billy Graham on Goodreads
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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