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Billy Graham
1918–2018 · 100 years Tier I
His father made him drink beer until he was sick
He was born in the downstairs bedroom of a Charlotte dairy farmhouse, the oldest of four, and grew up hanging off tree limbs doing the Tarzan yell, which his father later credited with turning him into a preacher. When Prohibition ended in December 1933 the same father made him and his sister drink beer until they threw up. Neither of them touched alcohol again. A local youth group rejected him for being too worldly. At 16 he was converted at a Mordecai Ham revival in Charlotte. One semester at Bob Jones College nearly ended in expulsion, with Bob Jones Sr. warning him that the most he could ever amount to was a poor country Baptist preacher out in the sticks.
He transferred to the Florida Bible Institute, where he canoed to an island in the Hillsborough River to practice preaching at birds and cypress stumps, was ordained in 1939, and finished an anthropology degree at Wheaton in 1943. His first crusade drew 6,000 people to Grand Rapids in 1947. The Los Angeles tent meetings of 1949 were booked for three weeks and ran eight, with the Hearst papers carrying them nationally. New York in 1957 went 16 weeks. He turned down a million-dollar NBC contract, preached in Durban in 1973 at the first large mixed-race gathering held in apartheid South Africa and said there that apartheid is a sin, and finished with 417 crusades in 185 countries and, by his organization's count, 210 million people heard in person. Twelve consecutive presidents gave him private audiences.
In 2002 the declassified Nixon tapes caught him in a 1972 Oval Office conversation agreeing that Jews held a stranglehold on the American media and suggesting that a second Nixon term might let them do something about it. He apologized and said he had no memory of it. A 2009 release had him calling a group of Jewish journalists the synagogue of Satan. On race he moved early and then stopped short. He pulled down the segregation ropes at a Chattanooga rally in 1953 and put King in his New York pulpit in 1957. In 1958 he let a segregationist Texas governor introduce him in San Antonio over King's written objection. He posted bail for King in 1963, and after the Riverside speech he attacked him publicly for criticizing American foreign policy.
Hydrocephalus slowed him from 1992 and he spent his last quarter-century at Montreat, largely silent in public. His sons fought over the burial — Ruth wanted the mountains at The Cove and Ned backed her, Franklin wanted the Charlotte library, and Franklin won. He died there on February 21, 2018, at 99, and became the fourth private citizen and the first religious leader to lie in honor in the Capitol rotunda. He was buried beside Ruth in a plywood casket that inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary had built and nailed a cross to. A bronze of him entered the Capitol in 2024. Whether the political endorsements issued in his name at the end were his own is still argued.
Lifespan
Billy Graham's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
Songs in the Night
other
The Chicago radio program he took over, with George Beverly Shea singing 1944 -
Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
company
He ran it until 2001, when Franklin Graham took over 1950 -
Los Angeles crusade
speech
Booked for three weeks, ran eight, and made him a national figure 1949 -
New York crusade
speech
Sixteen weeks, with Martin Luther King Jr. in the pulpit beside him 1957 -
International Congress on World Evangelization
company
2,700 delegates from 150 nations, and the start of the Lausanne Movement 1974 -
Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham
book
Titled for the hymn he used at the altar call 1997
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1934 aged ~16 Converted at 16 during Mordecai Ham's revival meetings in Charlotte
- 1939 aged ~21 Ordained by Southern Baptist clergy at Palatka, Florida He had been practicing his sermons on birds and cypress stumps from a canoe.
- June 1943 aged 24 Graduates from Wheaton College and marries Ruth Bell
- 1948 aged ~30 Writes the Modesto Manifesto and becomes the youngest college president in the country He was 29 when he took over Northwestern Bible College in Minneapolis.
- 1953 aged ~35 Pulls down the segregation ropes at a Chattanooga rally He told the ushers to leave them down or hold the revival without him.
- 1957 aged ~39 Preaches 16 weeks in New York with King in the pulpit
- 1973 aged ~55 Tells 100,000 people in Durban that apartheid is a sin It was the first large mixed-race event held in apartheid South Africa.
- 2002 aged ~84 The Nixon tapes are declassified and he apologizes for what is on them
- 2005 aged ~87 Preaches his last crusade, in New York
- February 21, 2018 aged 99 Dies at Montreat at 99 He lay in honor in the Capitol rotunda a week later.
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