A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  Overall, Graham was optimistic. He thought the proportion of Protestant clergy now supporting Nixon (an estimated 76 percent) would probably increase, and expressed satisfaction that the Catholic bloc vote would not be quite as solid as he once supposed. He also reported that he had written to his mailing list, which included two million American families, urging them to organize their Sunday school classes to get out the vote. He suspected the majority of these people were registered as Democrats or Independents, but because of his well-known friendship with the Vice-President, he felt a concerted effort to stimulate the vote might produce a significant swing in Nixon’s direction and was encouraging other religious organizations likely to be favorable to Nixon to follow his lead. He urged Nixon not to give up on southern and border states. In spite of lingering southern animosity toward Eisenhower for forcing compliance with federal court-desegregation orders, Graham felt the more conservative platform of the Republican party, combined with the religious issue, “could well put some of these states in your column.”

  Graham also had some tactical advice for Eisenhower. In a confidential letter sent after the convention, he urged the President to stump the southern states on Nixon’s behalf. “With the religious issue growing,” he observed, “I believe you could tip the scales in a number of key states from Kentucky to Texas. I believe Nixon has a fighting chance only if you go all out.” In a characteristic flight of hyperbole, he said, “I know this would mean two months of hard work, but I believe the rewards to the nation would be as great as when you led the armies at Normandy.” He further suggested that the President, whom he once again compared to Lincoln, not limit his efforts to the hustings. “It is also my opinion,” he volunteered, “that you must win the battle in the coming special session of Congress. It seems to me that you could send so many dramatic messages to Congress that you could keep Kennedy and Johnson off-balance and capture the headlines during that period.”

  Perhaps unfortunately for Nixon’s campaign, Graham was holding crusades in Europe during most of August and September, but he assured the Vice-President that the election would not be far from his thoughts. He would be on the transatlantic phone constantly, he said, and “would be delighted to be of any service I possibly can.” In a remarkable change from the days in which he begged for the approval of his ministry by politicians, Graham suggested that Nixon’s cause might be helped by a trip to Montreat as soon as possible after the European tour ended. Such a visit, he wrote, “would certainly be a dramatic and publicized event that I believe might tip the scales in North Carolina and dramatize the religious issue throughout the nation, without mentioning it publicly. This is just a suggestion, and we would be delighted to cooperate in it if you think it has any merit.”

  The highlight of Graham’s two-month European tour was a seven-day crusade in West Berlin. In what the East Berlin government unsurprisingly regarded as a direct affront, the crusade’s closing rally was held in a huge tent set up in front of the old Reichstag building, just three hundred yards from the Brandenburg Gate. The Berlin Wall would not be erected for another year, but the Communist government dispatched 150 police officers to the Brandenburg Gate and sent scores of others to patrol other crossing points in an effort to discourage East Germans from attending the services. However much they might deride the content of his messages, they respected his ability to draw huge crowds, and they knew that his ever-present anti-Communist rhetoric could only be detrimental to their efforts to maintain ideological uniformity. An East German daily charged that “whenever the American imperialists begin their provocative act, wherever the policy of the Washington and Bonn warmongers is shaky, Billy Graham and his ‘staff officers’ are sent.” East Berlin mayor Waldemar Schmidt warned that if the tent remained in place, West Berlin would “suffer the consequences,” without specifying just what that might entail. West Berlin mayor Willy Brandt curtly indicated he had no intention of calling for the tent to be moved, but Graham minimized tensions by refraining from any mention of politics in his sermon to the 25,000 people, many of whom were East Germans who had made it through the police blockade.

  Though he remained quiet on the eastern front, Graham made good on his promise to stay abreast of the election campaign at home. Most of his colleagues in the New Evangelical camp would probably vote for Nixon no matter whom the Democrats put forward, but Kennedy’s religion led them to view the 1960 election as particularly portentous. In a sermon preached at Park Street in June and subsequently published, Harold John Ockenga articulated concerns he felt all Protestant Christians ought to share. While acknowledging that a Catholic had every right to run for the presidency, he observed that a keystone of American democracy is the separation of Church and State, and that the Roman Catholic Church had not been a notable champion of that particular principle. He noted that “a prominent candidate in this coming election” had insisted that “whatever his religion was in private it could not take precedence over his oath as President of the United States,” but he pointed out that several Roman Catholic publications had sharply criticized the unnamed candidate for such statements. A strong individual might ignore such criticism, Ockenga admitted, “but the pressures would always be there for him to succumb, especially when there is the possibility of excommunication for disobedience and such excommunication could mean the loss of his soul.” If the American Catholic hierarchy were to acknowledge that America is a pluralistic society and bring pressure on the Vatican to renounce policies aimed at exerting control over the temporal realm, then Americans might have little to fear from a Catholic president. But unless and until that happened, Protestants would do well not “to aid and abet [the movement toward Roman Catholic domination of America] by electing a President who has more power to advance such a goal than any other person.”

  In a speech entitled “Protestant Distinctives and the American Crisis” and reprinted as a tract, Graham’s father-in-law painted a similar picture. Catholics observed American rules and conventions regarding religious freedom, Dr. Bell contended, only because they had to. He characterized the Roman Catholic Church as “a political system that like an octopus covers the entire world and threatens those basic freedoms and those constitutional rights for which our forefathers died in generations past” and warned that “once a nation becomes 51% Catholic, the pressure increases, and as the percentage rises in favor of that Church, tolerance recedes and oppression intervenes.” He pointed to suppression of Protestant beliefs and practice in Italy and in various Latin American countries, adding ominously, “Rome never changes.”

  Ockenga and Bell were hardly voices crying in a wilderness. In the Fundamentalist camp, John R. Rice, Bob Jones, Sr., and Carl McIntire predictably sounded even more strident notes, and the executive director of the National Association of Evangelicals wrote a moderate but clearly pessimistic booklet entitled A Roman Catholic President: How Free from Church Control? The NAE also sent a “Plan of Action” letter to Evangelical pastors, suggesting they emphasize the dangers of Roman Catholicism as well as the evergreen threats of Communist infiltration and general spiritual and moral decay. “Public opinion is changing,” the letter warned, “in favor of the Church of Rome. It is time for us to stand up and be counted as Protestants. We dare not sit idly by—voiceless and voteless—and lose the heritage for which others have died.” Christianity Today conjured similar visions of dark days ahead if a Catholic occupied the White House, and a BGEA flyer advertising the inaugural issue of Decision magazine reminded Evangelicals of their responsibility to participate in government. “We Christians,” it asserted, “must work and pray as never before in this election or the future course of America could be dangerously altered and the free preaching of the gospel could be endangered.” On the campus of Evangelical colleges, students expressing a preference for Kennedy were open to accusations of spiritual laxity. At Wheaton College prejudice made the short leap to overt discrimination, as students favoring Nixon were permitted free use of the college service
to tout their candidate, while the few Kennedy backers were charged regular rates to mail their literature.

  Not all such forebodings came from Evangelicals and Fundamentalists. A group of Protestant clergymen led by Norman Vincent Peale and calling themselves the National Conference of Citizens for Religious Freedom asserted that Kennedy could not withstand the Roman hierarchy’s determined efforts “to breach the wall of separation of church and state.” G. Bromley Oxnam, chairman of the Methodist Church’s Council of Bishops and president of both the Federal and World Council of Churches, and Presbyterian Eugene Carson Blake, president of the National Council, both acknowledged they were “uneasy” that a Roman Catholic president could strengthen Catholic influence in government and society and felt it might be difficult for him to square his political duties with obligations to his church when it came to such matters as parochial schools, birth control, and the separation of Church and State. They did, however, profess an admiration for Kennedy and said they would consider voting for him.

  If pressed on the matter, Billy Graham could contend that he was not personally responsible for any of these statements, even those produced by his own organization but he shared at least some of these apprehensions. In his letter urging Eisenhower to take a more active role in supporting Nixon, he expressed concern that if Lyndon Johnson were to become vice-president, Roman Catholic Mike Mansfield would be in line to become Senate majority leader. With Massachusetts congressman John McCormack as floor leader in the House, Catholics would hold two extremely powerful positions. “The Roman Catholic Church,” Graham warned, “will take advantage of this.” A few days later, reporters quoted him as saying that “a man’s religion cannot be separated from his person: therefore, where religion involves political decision, it becomes a legitimate issue.” When asked if the religious issue would be important in this election, he replied, “Yes, I have been informed by political experts that it will be deeper than in 1928 [when Roman Catholic Al Smith ran against Herbert Hoover] because people are better informed.” He added that “some Protestants are hesitant about voting for a Catholic because the Catholic Church is not only a religious, but a secular institution which sends and receives ambassadors from secular states.” Seeing his own words in print, however, caused second thoughts, and he quickly sent statements to both Time and Newsweek denying he had John Kennedy in mind when he made these observations about religion and politics.

  Despite this waffling, Graham’s interest in the religious issue stemmed less from fear of Kennedy’s Catholicism than from awareness that raising the specter of religious bigotry could help Kennedy’s campaign. He also recognized that some objections to Kennedy were just what they were portrayed to be—bigotry—and that troubled him. He told Nixon early in September that he was “detaching myself from some of the cheap religious bigotry and diabolical whisperings that are going on. I am not so much opposed to Kennedy as I am FOR YOU.” He also strongly urged Nixon not to participate in any such attacks. “At all costs,” he urged, “you must continue to stay a million miles from the religious issue at this time.”

  As Graham feared, Kennedy adroitly turned his Catholicism to his own advantage. In a bold move, his religious adviser, James Wine, a Presbyterian elder and former official of the National Council of Churches, arranged a September meeting with a large group of ministers in Houston, a hotbed of anti-Catholic sentiments. A master at handling hostile questions in extempore fashion, Kennedy faced his antagonists head-on and gave them unambiguous, reassuring answers about his relative allegiance to the Constitution and the Roman magisterium. Repeatedly and without hesitation, he made it clear that if in his role as president he faced a conflict between his obligation to America and his obligation to the Vatican, either he would give precedence to his obligation to America, or he would vacate his office. The Houston meeting was a pivotal event in the campaign, and Graham knew it. He told Nixon that Kennedy’s tactic seemed to be working, and that a high-ranking Democratic leader had told him Kennedy might be elected solely on the religious issue. Graham recommended that Nixon put his enemies on the defensive by having Eisenhower, Senator Jacob Javits, and Thomas Dewey point out that the Democrats had led both Protestants and Catholics into a political trap by highlighting religious prejudice. In view of a fusillade of criticism the press and some liberal religious leaders had launched against Norman Vincent Peale after he both endorsed Nixon and questioned whether Kennedy could govern free of Vatican control, Graham felt it imperative that he not make any public statement on the religious issue. “Not only would [the press and liberal religious leaders] crucify me,” he explained, “but they would eventually turn it against you, so I must be extremely careful. I have been avoiding the American press the last few weeks like the plague. But when I arrive home next week, I will make statements that will by implication be interpreted as favorable to you without getting directly involved. As the campaign moves on, I may be forced to take a more open stand if I feel it will help your cause, but we shall wait for the developments.”

  Graham’s public reticence masked intense private concern over the election. With the exception of a three-day crusade aimed at Hispanics in New York City, his fall schedule was light, and he spent at least part of his free time concocting political strategy. In an October 17 letter marked “confidential and urgent,” he offered several concrete suggestions for Nixon’s consideration. First, he counseled, the Vice-President should take a strong position critical of Cuba’s turn toward communism, an issue on which Kennedy was scoring the administration. In what seems an astonishing willingness to manipulate foreign policy for partisan political advantage, Graham recommended that Nixon urge the President to take some dramatic action, perhaps even to break diplomatic relations with Cuba. His other recommendations involved rhetoric more than policy but reflected relish at being part of the competition. When Kennedy talked of the loss of Cuba and the Congo to communism, he counseled that Nixon should mention the countries that went Communist under Democratic administrations. “I believe there are at least twenty countries. This would be tremendously impressive and would shut the mouth of your opponent on this point.” Candidates and office holders get an abundance of unsolicited advice, but Nixon and his staff apparently took Graham’s counsel seriously. In a memo regarding Graham’s suggestion that he take a harder line on Cuba, Nixon told his aides, “I think [this] makes a hell of a lot of sense. . . . Please note the paragraph where he is talking about the Cuban situation. I would like you, Len [Hall], to go over and have a chat with the President about that situation. I don’t know whether anything can be done about it, but it does show what the reactions are.”

  Graham continued to be vexed that Kennedy had turned his Catholicism and a perception of religious prejudice to political advantage. To offset this, he felt Nixon simply had to persuade some leading Republican to show that Democrats were deliberately using the religious issue to “(1) solidify the Catholic vote, (2) split the Protestants, (3) make a martyr out of Kennedy, and (4) obscure the more basic issues in the campaign.” Graham regarded this plan as a deliberate and cynical strategy: “Protestants and Catholics alike have been caught in a deliberate political trap set for them.” Graham urged Nixon to speak out on the need for spiritual revitalization and greater dependence on God and prayer. “I wonder if you couldn’t say in your next debate that whoever is elected, he is going to have to depend upon God for wisdom, striking a note of humility and saying frankly that you don’t have all the answers but that whoever is elected should look to God for strength, guidance, and leadership, as Washington and Lincoln did. Many of my advisers believe that a few statements along that line would convince tens of thousands of the uncommitted.” He also recommended that “you must somehow show that if Kennedy wins, this is going to be a personal repudiation of Eisenhower. [A Kennedy victory] will be one of the greatest propaganda weapons that Khrushchev ever had.” In closing, Graham revealed his belief that the same combination of prayer and pragmatic technique used in
his crusades was appropriate to the political realm as well. “You will be interested to know,” he said, “that thousands of prayer meetings have been organized across America to pray about this election. I am certain that during the next few days you are going to sense supernatural wisdom in answer to prayer. I have a sneaking suspicion that by midnight on November 8, we are all going to be rejoicing. In the meantime, a great deal of hard work and praying needs to be done.”