A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  Graham and President Eisenhower had regular, if not particularly frequent, contact. The evangelist visited at Gettysburg, where the former general gave him a private tour of the battlefield where Morrow Graham’s father had been wounded. Before his foreign trips, Graham tried to drop by the White House to let Eisenhower know where he would be going and to learn if he needed to watch for any special diplomatic opportunities or pitfalls. When he returned he typically sent a long report on what he had observed or requested the opportunity to discuss “an urgent matter” or to deliver “extremely vital information” to the Commander-in-Chief. After major crusades he routinely dropped the President a line, letting him know the size of the crowds and assuring him that most of the people he had met in the crusade city admired and prayed regularly for him. Graham made no attempt to mask either his delight at their relationship or his political leanings. Once, after Eisenhower gave him a ride in the presidential limousine, he called the brief excursion “an unforgettable experience that I shall cherish the rest of my life.” In the same letter, he noted that he had recently heard Republican congressman Walter Judd speak in Asheville. “I told him afterward,” he noted, “that if he could give that same address on all the television networks, we wouldn’t have to worry about Congress remaining GOP-controlled this fall.” Like any politician interested in reelection, the President kept up his end of the exchanges, but the tone and content of his letters suggest that genuine affection nourished the friendship at least as much as perfunctory, pragmatic politics. By the summer of 1955, Graham, who signed his letters with such effusive tributes as “still thinking you are the greatest President in American history, I am cordially yours,” was comparing Ike to Lincoln and urging him to seek reelection in 1956. “You have,” he pledged, “my unqualified support.”

  Contact with the White House led naturally to further exposure to Nixon, whose fervent anticommunism and Evangelical associations (though a Quaker, Nixon had been converted by evangelist Paul Rader, and his parents were active in California Evangelical circles) attracted Graham to him. Their similarity in age also made it easy to develop what would become a long and fateful friendship. While many found it difficult to admire or even to trust the Vice-President, Graham quickly became an enthusiastic booster and solicitous counselor. In the summer of 1955 he observed that “[Nixon’s] sincerity, strong convictions, and humility are evident and catching. Your speech is also sparked with a sense of humor that is all-important.” These winsome qualities, he thought, bode well for the Republican ticket in the 1956 election, and he revealed that he was suggesting to friends in “high ecclesiastical circles” that Nixon be invited to address various religious assemblies during the following year. He also hoped he might benefit firsthand from the Vice-President’s charm and wit. “Anytime that you have a few days this winter,” he volunteered, in an uncommon show of scheduling flexibility and willingness to travel, “we can take a swim or play a game of golf in Florida or, better still, in Hawaii.”

  By October, when Nixon was standing in for Eisenhower, who had suffered a heart attack, Graham had already begun to envision him as a candidate for president, if not in 1956, then certainly in 1960. Given that likelihood, he felt the Vice-President needed to pay close attention to his public image. “Governor Dewey said to me a few weeks ago,” he confided, “that you were the most able man in the Republican party. He has great confidence in you but seems to be a little fearful that you may be taken over unwittingly by some of the extreme right-wingers. He feels that in order to be elected President of the United States, a man is going to have to take a middle-of-the-road position. I think he is right!” He then cautioned Nixon against drawing too heavily on his anti-Communist credentials. “In my opinion, there is so much goodwill bubbling out of Moscow that the issue of Communism is no longer as potent as it was politically in the U.S.” The Reds were still a menace, he conceded, but it might not be wise to harp on it too loudly. That said, he promised, “You will have my constant prayers and I will put in a word here and there and use my influence to show people that you are a man of moral integrity and Christian principles.” In his reply a short time later, Nixon indicated he had taken the evangelist’s counsel to heart. “I think your political advice was right on the beam,” he said, “and, as you probably have noted, I have been trying to follow the course of action you recommended during the past few weeks.”

  The frequency and informality of these exchanges grew as the election approached. The evangelist called the Vice-President “Dick” and remained “Cordially yours, Billy.” Nixon reciprocated the familiarity, and the two men cemented their friendship with further notes and golf games and gifts. Once, after Nixon sent a set of three “Mr. Vice-President” golf balls, Billy gushed in gratitude that prompted a non sequitur “How thoughtful of you. No wonder you are one of the youngest Vice-Presidents in history.” Graham did not restrict his praises and favors to private communication. He told U.S. News & World Report that Nixon was “very respected around the world as a man of the people” and arranged to have the Vice-President, whom he characterized as “a splendid churchman,” speak at major Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian conferences in North Carolina during the summer, even supplying him with an unsolicited speech he thought Nixon might want to use. He also offered to invite several key religious leaders, including a Methodist and an Episcopal bishop, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, and the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (South), to have lunch with the Vice-President at the Graham home in Montreat. Graham felt exposure to these and other religious leaders would help Nixon immensely. “Very frankly,” he said, “you are in need of a boost in Protestant religious circles. I am asked about you almost everywhere I go in religious circles. I think it is time that you move among some of these men and let them know you. There is nothing like personal contact. They will become completely sold on your sincerity and ability, just as I have been.” He assured Nixon, however, that the trip would not be a weekend of sackcloth and ashes. In addition to promising him “three air-conditioned rooms with a king-sized double bed,” Billy offered to be his host at “the exclusive Biltmore Club in Asheville, where General Eichelberger and I have lockers side by side.”

  After the Republican convention in San Francisco in August, Graham wrote Eisenhower that he was “absolutely convinced” that the contrast between the decorum at the GOP gathering and the raucous disorder at the Democratic convention in Chicago “won millions of thoughtful Americans. As you, Mrs. Eisenhower and the Nixons were bowing in prayer, all of us seemed to sense that here were dedicated people to a cause that cannot lose. I shall do all in my power during the coming campaign to gain friends and supporters for your cause. As always, you have my complete devotion and personal affection.” On the same day, he told Nixon, “There is no doubt about it that the Democrats are going to use every trick in the bag, but in my opinion, you do not have to stoop to the gutter with them to win.” Once again, Graham made no official public endorsement, but such pointed comments as his lament that divorce no longer seemed to disqualify a person from being a presidential candidate—Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic nominee was divorced—left little doubt where he stood. After the election Graham wrote not only to congratulate Nixon on the victory and commend him for “adhering to highest moral and spiritual principles” but also to note, in easy-to-decipher code, that “this campaign has lifted your prestige higher than ever. I think some of the possibilities we talked about concerning the future are definitely in the making.” Then, in a reference that made it clear that at least some of his political views were grounded in his understanding of the Bible, he added, “Some of the things that are now happening in the Middle East are highly significant from the Bible point of view. I hope the U.S. does not make a serious mistake at this crucial hour of history.” In a subsequent letter, he raised a similar point, observing that “it is amazing how these scriptures are being fulfilled before our very eyes. Sometimes, perhaps we will ha
ve opportunity to go over these again privately, because it may help you in determining future courses of action, in case added responsibilities are yours.”

  Graham was not alone in his efforts to inject Evangelical Christianity into the veins of the body politic. In Washington a seldom-publicized organization, International Christian Leadership (ICL), set up a “Christian embassy” under the low-key but effective direction of Abraham Vereide, known in Evangelical circles as Mr. Christian of Washington. Vereide’s primary strategy was to organize breakfast prayer groups for government leaders and workers and, more dramatically, to conduct “spiritual installations” for government officials entering new positions or feeling the need for a spiritual booster shot. In 1953 Vereide also organized the first annual Presidential Prayer Breakfast. These breakfasts brought leading Evangelicals together with some of the nation’s most powerful figures. At the 1954 edition, which doubled as the opening meeting of ICL’s annual conference, Eisenhower, several cabinet members, and a flock of influential senators and congressmen attended; featured speakers included hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, Richard Nixon, and Chief Justice Earl Warren. Billy Graham did not speak, but he was prominently present, and at the close of the session, George Beverly Shea led the six hundred guests in singing President Eisenhower’s favorite hymn, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”

  While Graham and Vereide and others worked the corridors of political power, Harold Ockenga, Carl Henry, and a small cadre of men more oriented to scholarship tended a new young sapling in the groves of academe. When Charles Fuller first spoke to Ockenga about using his radio ministry to generate income to found an undergraduate school of evangelism and missions, Ockenga (who held a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh) countered with a vision of a first-rate graduate seminary to fill the gap created when Princeton moved into the liberal camp and to equip Evangelicals for the formidable task of articulating and defending conservative Christianity in the face of liberal theology and secular materialism. The idea captured Fuller’s imagination, and in 1947 Fuller Theological Seminary welcomed an inaugural class of thirty-nine members—an impressive number in itself, and all the more so because it included students from Harvard, Dartmouth, Berkeley, and USC—to its Pasadena campus, a lovely facility acquired by Fuller at a good price from a millionaire’s estate. Its founding fathers expansively predicted it would soon achieve a status comparable to that of another Pasadena institution, making it “a Cal Tech of the Evangelical World.” A decade would pass before Billy Graham established a formal tie with Fuller Seminary as a member of its board of trustees, but his admiration for its founder and faculty translated easily into unabashed enthusiasm for the new school and its mission. He liked being plugged into a serious academic institution, and the men at Fuller relished the visibility their ties with him provided their little school.

  Despite his confidence in the faculty and students at Fuller, Graham worried that their impact would be too long in coming and began to dream of a way to present the beliefs and concerns of the New Evangelicalism to America’s pastors, who could, in turn, communicate them to their parishioners. In the service of that dream, in 1956 he established what would quickly become the most widely read serious religious journal in the nation, Christianity Today. Early in 1951, Fuller professor Wilbur Smith, whom he greatly respected, wrote to him of the need for “a periodical so important that it would be absolutely indispensable for every serious-minded Christian minister in America.” Such a publication would, in Smith’s vision, contain exposition of Scripture, explication of biblical prophecy and its application to current affairs, reviews of important books, and religious news. It would also, he insisted, pay “no attention to trash.” At that hectic point in his career, when he was trying to hold crusades, run the Northwestern Schools by telephone, keep BGEA afloat, and prepare a weekly radio broadcast, Graham had been in no position to act on Smith’s suggestion, and it is not clear he gave it much consideration. As he became more solidly established, however, and began to be criticized by liberal churchmen, particularly in the Christian Century, which the secular media seemed to regard as a kind of semiofficial voice of Protestant Christianity, he began to reflect on the need for a comparable publication to represent an Evangelical perspective. Late in 1953, as he told it, he got out of bed in the middle of the night, went to his desk, and started writing down ideas for an Evangelical publication, similar in format to Christian Century, that “would give theological respectability to Evangelicals.” He made a list of the various departments the magazine should have, decided to call it Christianity Today, and even drew up a tentative budget. The next morning, he shared his ideas with Ruth, who suggested they “make it a matter of prayer.” When prayer produced no negative indicators, Graham took the matter to Dr. Bell, who had founded the Presbyterian Journal; his father-in-law was enthusiastically receptive. Billy’s crusade experience had convinced him that many ministers in mainline denominations held Evangelical convictions but were timid about expressing them lest more liberal colleagues hold them up to scorn. Also, the fragmentation so characteristic of Fundamentalists and Evangelicals often left them isolated and unconnected to those sharing their beliefs and values. “Evangelicals needed a rallying point,” Graham recognized; “perhaps a dynamic magazine could help.”

  A full schedule of crusades, including Harringay, moved the project to Graham’s back burner during 1954, but with BGEA’s underwriting the cost of his travel and correspondence, Nelson Bell diligently contacted hundreds of Evangelical leaders to gauge the interest in such a magazine and to identify potential editors, writers, and financial supporters. With few exceptions, he found generous encouragement. By 1955, Graham was ready to move, and it was clear he had been thinking about the character of the publication. In a letter to Fuller professor Harold Lindsell, he elaborated on his plans. The magazine would, he wrote, “plant the Evangelical flag in the middle of the road, taking a conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to social problems.” It would be critical of both the National and World Council of Churches when that was appropriate but would also commend them for their good work rather than align itself in unvarying opposition, in the manner of Carl McIntire’s journal, the Christian Beacon. It would, of course, promulgate a high view of biblical authority, but “its view of inspiration would be somewhat along the line of [The Christian View of Science and Scripture] by Bernard Ramm,” an Evangelical scholar’s book that challenged the belief that the Bible could be taken as authoritative on scientific matters and left open the possibility that a divinely guided form of evolution might have played a role in the origin of species and the development of humankind. Graham’s positive assessment of Ramm’s controversial book was significant in that despite his unshakable confidence in the trustworthiness of Scripture, he was wary of making stronger claims for the Bible than the Bible makes for itself and was opting for an approach sure to draw fire from many Fundamentalists. Graham felt it was crucially important to “present a positive and constructive program” rather than to use “the stick of denunciation and criticism. . . . We would attempt to lead and love rather than vilify, criticize, and beat. Fundamentalism has failed miserably with the big stick approach; now it is time to take the big love approach.”

  As part of its mission to influence national policy, the magazine would emanate from Washington, D.C. Graham had seriously considered moving BGEA’s offices to Washington—he thought it would be impressive to tell his radio listeners to write to “Billy Graham, Washington, D.C. That’s all the address you need.” It was even more important, he believed, for the capital to serve as the new journal’s home base. “I felt a magazine coming from Washington would carry with it an unusual authority. We also wanted our editor to mingle with congressmen, senators, and government leaders so he could speak with firsthand knowledge on the issues of the day.” Certainly, the editors must have felt they were at the center; from their tenth-floor offices at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Fifteenth Street
, they looked down on the White House lawn and the Treasury building.

  Graham felt confident that tens of thousands of pastors would welcome such a publication, but he realized it would take years to build a substantial subscription list, and Evangelicals did not have years to spare. In one of the boldest aspects of the entire enterprise, he resolved to send the magazine free of charge for two full years to every minister and ministerial student in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as to English-speaking missionaries on foreign fields—a total of nearly 200,000 unpaid subscribers, the largest list of Protestant ministers ever assembled for any purpose. He was prepared to throw his weight behind the new venture and expected to be part of “a silent non-published group of men who actually control the paper,” but he did not think it should be a BGEA house organ, and his association would not be able to foot the entire bill. He persuaded old friends Howard Butt and John Bolten to pledge sizable sums, and he wrung substantial amounts from such newer supporters as shoe magnate Maxey Jarman and advertising executive Carl Fleming, but the angel whose wings would cast the largest shadow over the publication was J. Howard Pew, the president of Sun Oil Company and an active Presbyterian layman whom Billy had met through Nelson Bell. Despite his admiration for and self-proclaimed expertise in the theology of John Calvin, who advocated a theocratic state, Pew was an ardent conservative who virtually identified Christianity with his own version of pure laissez-faire economic individualism and who insisted the church should keep itself strictly free of entanglement in controversial social issues. He was also a fervent anti-Communist and had recently severed long-standing and close ties with the National Council of Churches because he felt its policies would “inevitably lead us into Communism.” He believed the ministry of liberal denominations contained “a few Communists, a larger percentage of Socialists, and a still larger percentage of what I might term fellow travelers.” Pew was far more of an ideologue than Billy Graham—he believed the United States should break off diplomatic relations with all Communist countries and drive them from the United Nations—but he approved of Graham’s anticommunism and of a magazine that would attempt to raise the level of scholarship in the ministry, on the apparent assumption that when people truly understood the Bible and classical Reformation theology, they would come to agree with him. Even Pew’s critics conceded the sincerity of his convictions, but the near fanaticism with which he held them was bound to create problems for an enterprise committed to standing in the middle of the road. Still, CT, as the magazine soon came to be known in Evangelical circles, would probably never have seen the light of day had it not been for Pew’s confidence in Billy Graham and his willingness to plow large sums of money into virtually anything the evangelist recommended. When Graham assured him in April 1955 that “I am determined to see this vision that I believe is from God carried out and properly controlled,” Pew agreed to stand in the gap for whatever amount might be needed to get the magazine started and to keep it in operation for its first several years. He pledged $150,000 for each of the first two years and continued to provide major support of the magazine for several additional years.