2 of 3

Back then, in the 1950s, mainstream Protestantism was still credible enough to produce a critic like Reinhold Niebuhr, who took Graham to task for separating saved sheep and lost goats so simplistically that he undercut the "ambiguity of all human virtues, the serious perplexities of guilt and responsibility, and particularly of guilt associated with responsibility, which each true Christian must continually face." But Graham answered credibly enough, and he changed his message and mien enough that such criticisms diminished.

For what it is worth, which may not be much, I was in the (semi-anonymous) company of people at the other end of the phone asking Graham to pronounce judgment on the American policy of bombing Cambodia at Christmas 1972. So I was among the disappointed when he called back to announce that he was called not to be an Old Testament prophet but a New Testament evangelist. He had prophesied too much to use such a dodge. For a professedly nonpolitical man, he had seemed too close to Richard Nixon, and had to suffer for the delusions that association had bred.

Since then, there have been reasons for critics from "our side" to rub our eyes as Graham has come to take risky stands for disarmament before these seemed safe and popular in politics. He shocked us by the boldness with which he turned his back on some constituencies and risked more by building ties to leaders in Communist countries, so he could preach and work for peace and justice there. Graham has not been static. He has changed, and grown. Grown: yes, that is the difference between Graham and so many who find their evangelistic voice when young. One of the gifts of the Spirit to his spirit is to have provided some core, some inner continuity, that has allowed for change without the corruption that comes to celebrities in the world of religion. Put it down boldly: In the television era, Christianity and celebrity rarely mix well. The celebrity is only as good as her last act; her next one must be ever more sensational. One creates a persona to meet the fads and fashions of the moment. Graham, however, for all his fame, keeps being who he is and doing what he did, and remaining a self, a saved sinner, a wounded healer.

Sometimes I think he was lucky to have formed his vocation just before television took over. While his association uses the medium artfully, its camera picks up on the Graham who does what he did before it came to dominate. His cameras eavesdrop on evangelistic rallies that would be the same without television. He has had to build an association, a huge one. But he has not built a denomination, a movement, a cathedral; he has permitted the building of a museum and (hurrah! say we historians) an archive and study center. But he needs no gushing fountains, no political arm, no self-centered churchlet to undercut the churches.

All to say that Graham brought neoevangelicalism, now evangelicalism, into an ecumenical orbit without having it lose its soul. Evangelicalism may have lost some of its soul in the years of its prosperity. Observers see it to be the most worldly, success-obsessed, triumphalist among the Christian movements today; and Graham must grieve over the ways it changed more to meet the world than the world changed under its influence. But Graham kept its soul and his soul in the perspective of eternity and of the needs of the whole church.

So, I have noted to fellow observers and inquirers for years, while many fundamentalists and evangelicals kept huddled in sectarian pride, Graham would refuse to come to your town unless there was broad "church federation" backing. He would not like to be on stage unless the United Methodist bishop or even, he has hoped since 1965, the Catholic bishop was there, too. When people at his rallies converted or were restored or reaffirmed, his computers would not help him establish a monopoly on their energies. He turned such folk over to the churches, and thus the church. These computers were not programmed to pick and choose just this narrow stripe of one denomination as acceptable. They trusted Christians of many sorts to nurture the Graham converts. And this he did without ever muting criticism of modernists or liberals.

next page... |  2 of 3

share this page

October (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52