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Actually, anyone who thinks Graham hasn't admitted the frailty of his humanity hasn't been listening to his message. His words shock but don't surprise not because of what anti-Semitism is, but because of what sin is.

Melone spends most of her column attacking Graham for his "incomplete" apology. That's also the focus of an article in The Jewish Week. Anti-Defamation League head Abraham Foxman "rejected the apology as 'mealy mouthed,'" the paper said. "He does not address the ugliness, the sinisterness, of his beliefs," Foxman told the paper … All of a sudden he has lost his memory and says these things don't reflect his view? Whose views do they reflect? … It's so sad that an icon of the church doesn't have the guts to say that what he said is horrible and that nobody should believe it."

Beliefnet editor Steven Waldman makes a similar case. "Rather than saying he doesn't remember making such comments, Graham should admit that he did hold such views back then—and explain how and why he outgrew such beliefs," Waldman writes. "If he were to offer that kind of honest description of his own moral and mental evolution, it would provide a pathway to more tolerant thinking for those still mired in reflexive hatreds, and an implicit forgiveness for others who once held those views and are now ashamed. He can face honestly who he was, or deny it. If he faces it, he will go down in history as an even greater man than we thought he was prior to the release of the Nixon tapes."

Readers may wonder about Waldman giving a man like Graham advice on maintaining his legacy, but one can't deny that Beliefnet has done an amazing job on this news story. Not only do they have a timeline of Graham's relationship with Jews, they also have actual audio clips from the 1972 tapes. They're almost impossible to understand, but there they are.

Beliefnet also has a column by the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land, who makes several points: Graham is still "one of the greatest preachers and leaders in all of Christian History," but he isn't perfect, the comments allow Americans, and evangelicals in particular, to examine their hearts for lingering racism and prejudice, and the comments are an opportunity to remind the Jews that "there is no group in American life more supportive of the Jewish people in general and the state of Israel in particular than the evangelical Christian community."

Without a doubt the best article on the Graham situation is also at Beliefnet, written by someone who knows what he's talking about: Graham's biographer, William Martin. He's adamant that the 1972 comments were an aberration.

In five years of intensive research into Billy Graham's life and ministry, including extensive access to his archives at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, followed by an additional decade of close attention to matters pertaining to the evangelist, I never found a hint of such sentiments. It would not have been particularly surprising had there been such evidence, given that some evangelical and fundamentalist leaders, particularly in the generation preceding Graham's, were prone to accept, and sometimes voice, anti-Semitic stereotypes that were more common in the general culture than is the case today. But if they were there, I did not find them. For that reason, as well as for abundant evidence that Graham evinced a broader and more generous spirit as he aged and as he moved in ever-widening circles, I recommend that these statements, uttered in casual conversation on February 1, 1972, not be seen as revealing "the real Billy Graham," kept well hidden for the rest of his 83 years.

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March (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46