It outlines Graham’s strong stance against segregation, his efforts to include blacks on his team, his friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. and his 1960 tour of Africa. While it’s certainly representative of Graham’s work and message, it comes off as an odd bit of PR. It probably had more context 35 years ago, but today a booklet exhorting how “Franklin Graham Loves Latinos” would seem a bit patronizing.

Still, it is an accurate record of Graham’s stand for civil rights:

“Christians should banish Jim Crow from their midst for one reason primarily: because it is right to do so. Race discrimination is a blatant denial of the fundamental gospel we preach and profess. As Christians, we must dare to obey the commandments of love, and leave the consequences in God’s hands. … The rift must be healed by Christians working in love.

“Men and women of religious conviction should declare themselves firmly on the race question—not with inflammatory words but with creative and conciliatory action. But we professing Christians have difficulty doing this because our commitment is so shallow. We refuse to let him awaken in us that deep love and concern for others which reach across all barriers in response to the commandment, ‘Love thy neighbor.’ When we do, we usually discover it is easier than we had thought.” (Reader’s Digest, August 1960)

“Though Graham has never, to my knowledge, spoken out on behalf of the poor, it seems legitimate to conclude that his almost exclusive emphasis upon soul saving is his passionate center, even his authentic obsession.” (emphasis mine)

The author, Harold Bloom, is making the correct point that Billy Graham has focused on telling people about Jesus above all else. But he also makes a very incorrect statement, assuming that Graham has never “spoken out on behalf of the poor.”

You don’t have to look far to come across one of Graham’s most quoted statements about social justice:

“As Christians we have a responsibility toward the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden and the many innocent people around the world who are caught in wars, natural disasters and situations beyond their control.” (from Billy Graham: God’s Ambassador, among other sources)

As you did deeper you come across many other examples. A 1985 Christianity Today article is chock full of quotes about helping the poor:

“We’re going to see this deficit making a tremendous impact on this country’s economy, and it’s going to affect everyone. … We’ve been living way above our means. And this inequity (between the wealthy and the poor within the U.S., and between America and most of the rest of the world) is going to have to change somehow, whether voluntarily or by law. You can’t have some people driving Cadillacs and others driving oxcarts and expect peace in a community. There is a crying need for more social justice.” (emphasis mine)

He went on to add: “The solution is beyond me, but I’ve found about 250 verses in the Bible on our responsibility to the poor.” It is perhaps true that Graham has not focused on social justice and poverty for his entire career. In the 1970s he started the World Emergency Relief Fund to respond to disasters and in the 1980s he began to have a wider focus, speaking out against nuclear proliferation and encouraging a Christian response to social justice issues:

“I had no real idea that millions of people throughout the world lived on the knife-edge of starvation and … that I have a responsibility toward them. I’ve come to see in deeper ways some of the implications of my faith and the messages I’ve been proclaiming.”

“For me, it’s not just accepting Christ as Savior and Lord, but being a Christian every day. I want to emphasize the price you have to pay, and the changes that must occur in your life.”

And for Billy Graham that’s where real change happens for the poor. Not through political action or demonstration, but through the life-changing transformation that can only come when a person believes in Jesus Christ. Graham has definitely put salvation above all else, but that’s because he sees it as the only true solution to every problem plaguing mankind. But to say he’s never spoken out on behalf of the poor is simply wrong.

While his son Franklin Graham makes headlines for calling abortion murder, Billy Graham has a gentler, more understanding tone. There are four separate My Answer columns in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s spiritual help section addressing abortion, and each one, though firm, still drips with grace.

Billy Graham has also criticized the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, saying they have gone too far and hurt their own cause. “The tactics ought to be prayer and discussion,” Graham told TIME magazine. In 1993 he took heat from anti-abortion leaders for participating in the inauguration of Bill Clinton. Graham defended the action by pointing out that presidents need God’s guidance and that the Bible commands us to pray for them.

But despite his grace-filled stance, Billy Graham still clearly condemns abortion and has called it murder himself. In his 1992 book Storm Warning he said, “We can demonstrate God’s love, but we must never think that we can solve one moral crisis by condoning another, especially the crime of murder, for unrestrained abortion is nothing less than that.”

Fully aware of the decisiveness of the issue, Graham has in many ways sought a middle ground where it’s possible to be against abortion but still show love and grace to those facing such hard decisions. In the 1970s Graham, along with C. Everett Koop and Francis Schaeffer, was instrumental in founding Care Net, a network of crisis pregnancy centers.

Finally, there is the testimony of Billy’s third daughter, Ruth Graham. In a 2005 interview with Beliefnet about her book, Legacy of Love: Things I Learned from my Mother, she spoke about her daughter’s unplanned pregnancies and referred to mistakes in the lives of the Graham children, including herself: “So we’ve experienced a lot as Grahams. We’re not perfect.”

She went on to applaud the mothers willing to choose adoption over abortion:

“No life is a mistake. God has plans for each life. And there are no illegitimate children—there are only illegitimate acts. And I believe that birth mothers are very courageous. They are living in a society that tells them they don’t have to carry to life. It’s legal in this country to have abortion, but they choose life. They lay down their lives; literally, their reputations, their figures, their school careers, sometimes their families kick them out. And the Lord said that there’s no greater love but that a man lay down his life for his friends, and these young women lay down their lives for their children. And I applaud them.”

Her words and her life experiences exemplify the kind of grace Billy Graham has shown to the issue of abortion. He has stood firmly against it, but no so firmly that there isn’t room for grace and love.

“Our concern since God laid the matter on our hearts some year ago has been not so much to talk as to act, to set an example which might open new paths and stir the consciences of many. There is no segregation in our Crusades, even in the South.”

At a conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. commented:

“Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend, Dr. Billy Graham, my own work in the civil rights movement would not have been successful as it has been.”