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Let's also remember that in America a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. As far as I know, the President has not been formally charged with a crime. Mistakes and blunders have been made. Some of them involved moral and ethical questions, but at this point if I have anything to say to the President it will be in private.

Dr. Graham, have you had second thoughts about stating publicly that you voted for Nixon?

I am a Democrat, but I thought Mr. Nixon was the best qualified man to be President. Secondly, he and I had been personal friends for over twenty years. I hardly knew Senator McGovern, though I know Sargent Shriver very well and consider him to be a close personal friend. Mr. Shriver has been in my home and I have been in his.

One of the famous examples in church history is Ambrose of Milan, who publicly rebuked the Emperor Theodosius when he came to church and told him he couldn't come in until he had made a public confession for certain things. What about this?

That's not a proper parallel, though I greatly admire Ambrose for his courage. Ambrose was a political as well as a religious figure. I am not a bishop, as was Ambrose, nor is President Nixon my subject, as was Theodosius. As I have already stated I have no proof that the President has done anything illegal, and I would have no ecclesiastical power over him to do anything about it if I did have proof. I think the President comes into the church with the same status as anyone else: either a sinner saved by God's grace or a sinner in need of that grace.

You say there is no crime for which the President could be censured directly or obliquely. What about the sin of misleading the people by making such a statement as, "I have ordered John Dean to make a thorough investigation; he reports that nothing is wrong"; or "I ordered Ehrlichman to make his investigations, and he reports nothing wrong"; or "I am going to tell the full story." This has been going on for twelve months now and there's more to come. Is this not censurable?

If the President knew and withheld the information, then he might be accused of obstructing justice. But I do not know the full story. The full story as he knew it should have been told. It may have been told—he may have told all he knew at that moment. I don't know! The mass of information and contradictions is so confusing that I cannot make a fair judgment at this time except to say that apparently someone has committed perjury, and bearing false witness, or telling a lie, is a sin. I'm not privy to what has been going on; I'm not a confidant or counsel to the President on such matters.

What do you think about the idea of a religious service in the White House on a regular basis?

I wish the President could set an example and go to a local congregation, but since the assassination of President Kennedy it's a problem for a President to go where he wants. The Secret Service gets nervous. And then we had a period when people demonstrated on every conceivable subject, and many church services might have been torn apart by this type of thing. President Nixon wanted to avoid that. Those who wrote that there had never before been services in the White House just didn't know their history. I conducted services at the White House for President Johnson as well as at Camp David and the LBJ ranch.

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October (Web-only) 2008, Vol. 52