Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks on February 11, 2009
The ‘25 Things’ meme is sweeping the nation (or at least Facebook), with an estimated 5 million people taking part. So maybe it’s time for 25 Things About Billy Graham:
- Billy Graham’s first formal sermon lasted eight minutes and included four separate sermons, the only ones he knew.
- As a senior in high school a young Billy Graham found himself in a dark classroom with a girl who begged Graham to have sex. Instead of rounding the bases, Graham made like Joseph and ran away.
- In 1964 Billy Graham’s name came up as a potential presidential candidate. His wife, Ruth, put a stop to any consideration of forsaking his call to evangelism: “If you run, I don’t think the country will elect a divorced president.”
- Though close with many U.S. presidents, Billy Graham actually went skinny-dipping with Lyndon Johnson.
- In 1937 Billy Graham fell in love with Emily Cavanaugh and proposed to her in the summer. She had to think about it and eventually said yes in the fall. But by 1938 she was having second thoughts and in the spring she dumped Billy Graham for one of his classmates, Charles Massey.
- Billy Graham spoke at the TED technology conference in 1998.
- Billy Graham served as a pastor to Western Springs Baptist Church in Western Springs, Ill., for a year in the 1940s. It was the only time he would officially pastor a local congregation. During his time there he changed the name to the Village Church since there were few Baptists in the area.
- In 1979 the Mexican Navy detained Billy Graham for trespassing. At the time he was wearing nothing but a borrowed swimsuit belonging to George H.W. Bush.
- In 1948 Billy Graham became the youngest college president in history as president of Northwestern College in Minneapolis.
- As early as the 1950s Billy Graham held integrated crusades, at one point tearing down ropes that separated white sections from black sections, causing the head usher to resign in protest.
- Billy Graham was knighted in 2001.
- Martin Luther King Jr. insisted Billy Graham call him “Mike.”
- As a child, Billy Graham went to church only “grudgingly” and the minister at his family’s church reminded him of a mortician.
- The first time Billy Graham shared his testimony was with a group of about ten prisoners. The experience “reinforced my conviction that I would never become a preacher.”
- Billy Graham attended Bob Jones University for one semester and upon leaving Bob Jones Sr. predicted nothing but failure for Graham.
- At Florida Bible Institute Billy Graham would paddle out to a small island in the Hillsborough River to practice his sermons and preach to the alligators and birds, like a St. Francis of Florida. If the animals wouldn’t stop to listen, he’d preach to a captive audience of cypress tree stumps.
- Throughout his life Billy Graham participated in nine presidential inaugurations and in 2009 passed on the hat he often wore to those inaugurations to Rick Warren who offered a prayer at Barack Obama’s inauguration.
- On his wedding night Billy Graham had trouble falling asleep in the bed, so he crawled out of bed and fell asleep on the floor. In the morning Ruth woke up to find her new husband gone—it took her a few minutes to find him curled up on the floor, sound asleep.
- During World War II the U.S. Army rejected Billy Graham for the chaplaincy program because he was three pounds underweight.
- In the 1970s Billy Graham attended various rock festivals, protests and love-ins in order to better understand and connect with young people. To maintain anonymity, he attended “incognito” (meaning he donned a hat, sun glasses, and a big sweater).
- Billy Graham left on a trip the day his first child was born, dismissing Ruth’s insistence that the baby would come soon and he should stay home. Billy predicted it would take another two or three weeks. Virginia “Gigi” Graham was born that evening.
- He has always tried to minimize his own prominence, to the point that he strongly resisted naming his organization after himself in 1950 and when the Billy Graham Library opened in 2007 he declared there was “too much Billy Graham.”
- In 1993 Billy Graham participated in an AOL chat session, his first foray into the world of online evangelism.
- Billy Graham once loaned money to then-president Richard Nixon. When the offering plate was passed at a 1970 crusade in Knoxville, Tenn., the president didn’t have any money on him, but Graham discreetly slipped the president a few bills. A few months later Nixon repaid the loan.
- Billy Graham is one of the few Americans who can get mail that’s simply addressed, “Billy Graham, America.”
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks on February 2, 2009
This booklet chronicles Billy Graham’s relationship with the black community. Published in 1973 by Graham’s World Wide Publications and edited by Decision magazine staff, it includes pictures, quotes and sermon excerpts. Howard Jones and Ralph Bell, associate evangelists on Graham’s team, explain in the forward that the purpose of the booklet is to express “what the ministry of the Billy Graham Team means to Black America.”
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)
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks on January 29, 2009
Billy Graham has had personal contact with ten U.S. presidents, from George W. Bush back to Harry Truman. He had close, personal friendships with a number of them, and counseled and prayed with all of them. These relationships have given Billy Graham the title of America’s pastor and access to the most powerful men in the world.
The book The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House, by TIME magazine veterans Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, profiles Graham’s relationship with each president and their families. The book goes into incredible detail, digging through personal correspondence and White House records.
The result is a 50-years snapshot of presidential politics that have tried and tested the world’s greatest evangelist. Though Graham tried to stay out of politics and offer neutral prayer and counsel regardless of political party, he didn’t always live up to that. On multiple occasions he allowed his bias to sway votes, though he would often step back from the brink and regret too much political action.
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Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks on January 19, 2009
An assassin’s bullet killed the radical civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Billy Graham heard the news on a golf course in Australia where he was holding a series of crusades. Journalists approached him with the news and asked for a comment:
“I was almost in a state of shock,” Graham wrote in his autobiography. “Not only was I losing a friend through a vicious and senseless killing, but America was losing a social leader and a prophet, and I felt his death would be one of the greatest tragedies in our history.”
Graham prayed there on the golf course with the journalists for King’s family and the healing of racial divisions. He tried to cancel his schedule and return for the funeral, but it wasn’t possible.
Billy Graham with Martin Luther King Sr. at the grave of Martin Luther King Jr.
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks on
Billy Graham and Martin Luther King Jr. have a storied history, at times partners and at times at odds. But despite their disagreements they were united on the issue of civil rights for all people. Graham insisted on integrating his crusades in the early 1950s. In 1957 Graham told Ebony magazine:
“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.”
Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks on January 13, 2009
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is often quoted as declaring, “Eleven o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America.” While King frequently used the line, he was actually quoting a 1950s Reader’s Digest article on racism written by Billy Graham.
Graham took an early and strong stand for civil rights, insisting on holding integrated crusades in Jackson, Miss., as early as 1952 (two years before the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case). During a 1953 crusade in Chatanooga, Tenn., Billy Graham himself tore down ropes diving white and black sections.
“My action caused the head usher to resign in anger on the spot,” Billy said in his 1997 autobiography Just As I Am, “But I did not back down.”
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