Billy Graham's relationship to President Richard Nixon was a tricky one, Charles Colson said in this exclusive interview before his death in 2012. As special counsel for Nixon before his own conversion to Christ, Colson often assisted in arranging meetings between Nixon and Graham. As a result, he witnessed interactions between the two men, which he shared with Christianity Today editor in chief Mark Galli.
In what type of settings would you have interacted with Billy Graham and President Nixon?
Graham came in to do church services on Sunday mornings. He also came in on a number of occasions just to visit with the president and stop in and see some of us at the various offices. On many occasions when I was with them, I would ask the president if he wanted me to leave and he generally said yes. I can think of few other people that Nixon ever spent time with totally alone without someone sitting with them. They had that kind of an intimate relationship; he trusted Billy completely.
What do you think of William Martin's assertion, “No president ever made such a conscious, calculating use of religion as a political instrument as did Richard Nixon”?
Part of my role as Nixon's assistant was to mobilize the religious community, find those disaffected Democrats and win them over. It was said at the time that it was the first time there had been this sort of concerted effort to get religious people into the White House.
I asked many religious leaders for access to their mailing lists. Even in 1972, it was pretty sophisticated to do this. We were aiming at a 20-million-voter database so we could identify by precincts. Graham had a list of evangelicals that was pure gold, and we asked him for it. His assistants checked with Billy, came back and said to me, “Nope, Mr. Graham says he does not want to do that.” Even for his good friend Richard Nixon, who took him into his confidence and went to his crusades, flew him on Air Force One, and cruised with him, he would not give up that mailing list. That was good.
I'm getting two pictures here, one in which Graham seems to want to support Nixon and one of Nixon using Graham politically to try to understand the religious community better.
You're getting two pictures because that's the way men like Nixon and Graham in positions of great power and influence communicate. If I were to ask a very prominent person to do something for me that I thought was going to be hard, I would start out by saying, “I don't think anybody in your position should ever be forced to make a decision like this, but if you were so disposed . . .” You give them an out immediately, and Nixon did that skillfully. He would say, “I know people in ministry can't make partisan endorsements. Of course you can't do that, Billy. But it would be nice if you put a word in over here with this fellow.”
Was there any indication that Nixon was a Christian?
I talked to Nixon after he left the presidency and tried twice to raise the question of Christ and got cut off both times. Now that doesn't mean a thing, because having worked with him, he would be unlikely to talk about this with me. He would be very likely to talk about it with Graham, especially when he was going through his Watergate experience. Graham told me, “He prayed to receive Christ,” and I believe him. I really do. I think Nixon was hungry for it. I think he might have prayed in a crisis moment. Whether anything came of it I cannot tell you. Nixon was such a private man. Graham was one of the guys that he let right inside, as close as you can get. I hope when I get to heaven I'll see Richard Nixon, and it may be because of Graham. He's the only person who possibly could have done it.
Graham told me, “He prayed to receive Christ,” and I believe him. I really do.
How did Graham’s personality fit with Nixon’s?
I don’t want to say he had naïveté, but even in his most unguarded moments you see someone who has a really pure heart. And it is the most unlikely combination that Nixon would really take to this guy. I think he envied Billy Graham in some respects for this purity, for this innocence.
How might Graham have adapted to being a friend of a president?
What I saw in Graham was what I now recognize as holiness. And he handled himself with that kind of decorum. Obviously, Graham realized he failed when Nixon made anti-Semitic comments. Let me soften that somewhat, because you’d have to understand Nixon’s dialogue. Nixon would engage in these rants at the liberal media, Georgetown Jewish set. They were two equals meeting eye-to-eye, which is what made him so effective.
In hindsight, I wish in his relationship with some presidents he would have wanted something and tried to get it. If he’s really a friend to the president, he is going to be a prophet also. I don’t think he ever tried to be a prophet with Nixon, or I would have known it. And he refused publicly to do it with the Clintons. But there will always come a moment of truth when you have to be prophetic.
