A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  A year passed, and Stephan’s fiancée decided she did not want to marry him. A devout Christian who fully accepted Billy Graham’s exhortation to make everything of consequence a matter for prayer, Stephan began to ask God for help in finding a wife. As he told it, the image that kept coming to his mind and heart was that of GiGi Graham. Because he thought it might be unseemly to approach a girl so young, Tchividjian hesitated making direct contact. “He would start to write,” GiGi recounted, “but he’d always tear up the letters. I never received anything from him—card, flowers, nothing.” Unaware of what was going on in Stephan’s mind, GiGi was dating T. W. Wilson’s son, Jim. Shortly after her seventeenth birthday, she and Jim went off to Wheaton, both assuming they would eventually marry. Early in the fall, Billy and Ruth received a letter from Stephan Tchividjian asking permission to seek their daughter’s hand in marriage. If they consented, he asked them to forward his enclosed letter of proposal to GiGi. If they disapproved, they were to destroy the letter and never tell their daughter he had written.

  Ruth and Billy, who had been praying for someone like Stephan, could not help feeling God had given them an even better answer than they had hoped for. They agreed to let GiGi know of the proposal, but not immediately, lest the certain emotional turmoil disrupt her schoolwork. Better to wait until the Christmas holidays. Still, hints must have been dropped, because GiGi said she somehow knew something was going on and, feeling she was going to have to face some momentous decision, began to pray for guidance. As soon as she got back to Little Piney Cove, she asked, “Mother, what’s going on?” Ruth conceded that they had something to discuss but thought it better to wait until the next morning, after a good night’s rest.

  GiGi pressed: “Mother, someone wants to marry me, doesn’t he?”

  Ruth was taken aback. “How did you know?”

  GiGi admitted she had nothing concrete to go on but spilled out her hunches. “I don’t know, but he’s not American, is he?” Then, “Stephan Tchividjian has asked for my hand in marriage, hasn’t he?”

  “When Mother said yes,” GiGi recalled, “I knew it was serious. I told her, ‘I need to do some real praying, and I need to see him.’ But Mother said, ‘No. You are in love with Jim. If Stephan arrived, you are not emotionally involved with him, and you will make the wrong decision.’”

  Ruth’s response, if correctly remembered, seemed to reveal that she felt confident about what the right decision would be and was concerned only with strategy. Billy apparently felt no qualms on either score. When GiGi got him alone in the kitchen and told him she needed to see Stephan, he said, “No problem,” and dialed the Tchividjian home, forgetting it was the middle of the night in Switzerland. After a few moments on the telephone, he informed Ruth that Stephan would be joining them for Christmas.

  “I spent the next few days either on my knees or sitting in my window seat,” GiGi recounted, “seeking God’s direction. I wanted to give Stephan an answer when he got there and not go through the regular courtship routine. I prayed that the Lord would tell me what answer to give, but no answer came. The night before he was to come in, I asked Daddy if I could drive to the airport to pick him up. I hadn’t driven much, and Daddy didn’t think it would be safe, since there was snow on the ground. I asked, ‘If the snow has melted and it’s a pretty day, will you let me do it?’ And he said, ‘Okay.’ Well, it was a clear, beautiful day. All the way to the airport, I prayed and prayed, but of course I got no answer. Then when the plane landed and he stepped out, the answer came: ‘Yes.’ That’s all. I didn’t feel any love or any other emotion. Just ‘yes.’ When we got in the car, I told him, ‘Stephan, the Lord has told me to say yes.’ He expected that I would want to finish my education, but we talked about it with Mother and Daddy, and because of Daddy’s schedule, they thought it would be better if we got married in Europe in May. That took Stephan by surprise.”

  Meanwhile, Jim Wilson had been in the dark. GiGi remembered going down the mountain to the Wilsons’ modest home and breaking the news to the unsuspecting young man. “It was the hardest thing I ever did. I wanted to throw my arms around him and tell him how sorry I was, but I asked the Lord to control my emotions. I was acting in obedience. Jim also wanted God’s will for our lives, and he handled it with absolute grace and maturity. He and Stephan had a long talk, and he was so impressed by Stephan.” For all his maturity, however, GiGi admitted that “it took Jim awhile to trust a girl again.”

  Would GiGi recommend a similar course of action for her own seven children? “I think it’s crazy,” she said with a laugh. “It had to be an exception. Stephan was older. I can’t see a seventeen-year-old getting married to another seventeen-year-old. My children think the whole story is crazy, and they have no desire to follow in my footsteps.”

  Graham spent the first half of 1963 in a series of crusades and rallies in France and West Germany, with the now-standard set of European reactions: denunciation from leftist politicians, condescending opposition from clerics of the state churches and liberal theologians, secular skepticism from journalists and intellectuals, and sufficient enthusiasm from Evangelicals and the general populace to guarantee larger-than-expected crowds and expressions of grudging admiration from former critics. The major event of the second half of the year was a return engagement in Los Angeles, the scene of his first great crusade. This time, instead of a tent set up on a vacant lot, Graham held forth in the Coliseum, the nation’s largest stadium. For most of the three-and-a-half weeks, crowds of between 30,000 and 60,000 people, most representing or invited by members of the 3,500 participating churches, heard Graham preach. Then, at the last service, 134,254 souls jammed into the sprawling stadium, while an estimated 20,000 others milled around disappointedly outside. It not only eclipsed the 1962 Soldier Field assembly as Graham’s largest American crowd but set a record for the Coliseum that according to television commentators at the 1984 Olympics, still stands, commemorated by a bronze plaque bearing a bas-relief sculpture of the evangelist’s head.

  In Fundamentalist eyes, the Los Angeles campaign set another, less glorious record, when Graham acquiesced in the choice of Methodist bishop Gerald Kennedy as the chairman of the crusade’s general committee. Though the position was largely honorary—most of the real oversight of the crusade was done by Graham’s team and the local executive committee, which was usually dominated by Evangelicals—Kennedy was, in truth, a surprising choice. His theology was frankly liberal—he had once ventured that he doubted the deity of Christ and admitted he had never believed in the Virgin Birth. Fundamentalist critics also charged him with leftist political views “of the rankest sort,” noting that he belonged to such “Communist front” organizations as the National Council of Churches and the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Allowing such a man to have a prominent public role in an evangelistic crusade, critics charged, marked “the farthest reach yet into the apostasy for Crusade leadership.” Graham chose not to trouble himself with Fundamentalist carpings, but Robert Ferm, his chief apologist, pointed out that Kennedy had been appointed by local churchmen, that the actual conduct of the crusade would be controlled “by Mr. Graham and our Team only,” and that he found it difficult to believe Kennedy would have accepted the post “if he did not believe in the basic Christian truths.” Further, in the spirit of pragmatism that had long typified professional revivalism, Ferm observed that “it is so easy to find someone who believes all the fundamentals but who won’t work.” Kennedy was working, the crusade was succeeding, souls were being saved, and that, dear brothers, was that.

  But pragmatism was not the only factor at work. Graham’s fundamental beliefs and theological method had changed little, but as he put it in an article for Christian Century, “[A]fter a decade of intimate contact with Christians the world over I am now aware that the family of God contains people of various ethnological, cultural, class, and denominational differences. I have learned that there can even be minor disagreements of theology, methods, and motives
, but that within the true church there is a mysterious unity that overrides all divisive factors. In groups which in my ignorant piousness I formerly ‘frowned upon’ I have found men so dedicated to Christ and so in love with the truth that I have felt unworthy to be in their presence. I have learned that although Christians do not always agree, they can disagree agreeably, and that what is most needed in the church today is for us to show an unbelieving world that we love one another.”

  Graham’s ever-widening acceptance of others who professed to be Christians manifested itself not only in his continued association with the World Council of Churches—he attended its general assembly in New Delhi in 1961 at the council’s invitation—but also in an improved relationship with Catholics, especially after John XXIII assumed the papal chair. Following John Kennedy’s election, he scrupulously avoided any statements that could be construed as anti-Catholic, a relaxation of wariness that bothered some of Graham’s colleagues. Robert Ferm, a man of catholic spirit but emphatically Protestant theology, exemplified the ambivalence some team members felt about consorting with Catholics. Whenever Graham’s supporters or critics inquired about the evangelist’s apparently weakening resistance to papist wiles, Ferm was quick to draw a firm baseline. “Certainly Catholic priests do not attend [crusade services],” he told a Kansas minister who had heard rumors of apostate fraternizing at the Chicago crusade. “[They] have not been invited to participate in any way. Nor would they do so if they were invited. They know altogether too well the gospel that Mr. Graham preaches.” That knowledge, Ferm felt certain, explained why priests sometimes discouraged parishioners from attending Graham’s meetings. “As you know,” he wrote, “Roman Catholicism flourishes on ignorance. As long as people are not informed, Catholicism can prosper. It is only when people are informed that the hierarchy of the Roman Church gets into trouble. That is why it is so important for each one of us to be constantly active in informing people of the teaching and the political aspirations of the Roman Communion.” Ferm admitted that Graham seemed to admire Pope John and what he was trying to accomplish in the Roman Church but felt it should be remembered that this particular pope was “a rare exception . . . and one of the few concerning whom a particularly complimentary statement might be made.”

  Observers who applauded Graham’s softening attitude toward liberal Protestants and Catholics found his stand on racial issues less satisfying. To be sure, he maintained his commitment to “non-segregated” crusades—he shied away from the term integration lest he be associated with civil rights radicalism—and even in the South, he insisted that black leaders be seated on the platform and have a visible role on the program. Though he expressly told Martin Luther King he did not intend to join him in the streets (and has claimed King felt that to be a wise and prudent course of action), he called for the prosecution of whites who attacked blacks who were peacefully demonstrating to obtain the rights that should unquestionably be theirs. Still, he stopped short of articulating any practical course of action that churches or communities might take to ease racial discrimination, and he cautioned that although confrontational marches and freedom rides were effective, they might create resistance that could never be broken down. “Jim Crow must go,” he told a press conference just prior to his 1962 Chicago crusade, “but I am convinced that some extreme Negro leaders are going too far and too fast.” Even while Dr. King languished in the Birmingham jail in the spring of 1963, Graham told a New York Times interviewer that his “good personal friend” would be well-advised to “put on the brakes a little bit,” that his timing was “questionable,” and that blacks and whites alike would benefit from “a period of quietness in which moderation prevails.”

  In the summer of 1963, Graham not only refused to take part in the March on Washington, the most memorable civil rights demonstration in American history, but challenged King’s most arresting image: “I have a dream that my four little children one day will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Graham had no quibble with the dream, but his theology and philosophy of change left no room for such a vision of harmony. “Only when Christ comes again,” he said, “will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” In the meantime even proximate harmony could be achieved only by “Christians working in love from both sides.” Graham’s apparent discounting of human efforts to achieve social justice and his criticism of clergymen who make “the race issue their gospel” dismayed black churchmen. A Presbyterian pastor who actively supported the Coliseum crusade in Los Angeles nevertheless lamented that Graham chose neither to condemn racism nor to advocate equal rights during the campaign, despite the national preoccupation with these issues. The president of the National Association of Negro Evangelicals lamented that “Dr. Graham consistently fails to appreciate the intensity of this great social dilemma which cries out to be met head-on.” As for Graham’s contention that forced integration would not work, the black clergyman said simply and accurately, “It has worked time and time again.”

  When a racist cabal set a bomb that exploded in a Sunday-school room of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four little black girls, Graham not only shared in the revulsion felt throughout the nation but joined Drew Pearson in spearheading a fund drive to rebuild the damaged church. On the strength of this effort, and because of his long-standing policy on integrated crusades, BGEA associate evangelist Howard Jones and another pro-Graham minister, Ralph Bell, were able to persuade the National Association of Negro Evangelicals to pass a resolution commending Graham for his efforts on behalf of racial justice and harmony, but the sentiment was far from unanimous, and it is doubtful the resolution would have passed without active lobbying by Jones and Bell. Two years later, Bell would join BGEA as a full-time associate evangelist.

  Apart from his unavoidable entanglement in the race issue, Graham was far less involved in social and political matters during the Kennedy administration than in the previous decade. He decried the Supreme Court’s decisions to ban devotional Bible reading and prayer from public schools but commended Kennedy for opposing federal aid to parochial schools. He continued to describe Communist advances as an apocalyptic threat that was “almost surely a sign of the Second Coming” and regarded “a virile, dynamic, orthodox Christianity” as the only philosophical weapon with “any possibility of combatting the Communist conspiracy,” but he repudiated John Birch Society founder Robert Welch’s charge that America’s pulpits were filled with legions of covert Communists, noting that he had never met a single minister in the United States whom he suspected of being a Communist. As a further sign of his retreat from the hard-line anticommunism he espoused in the 1950s, he recommended that the United States send massive quantities of surplus food to Communist China during a 1961 food shortage. “We are not at war with the people of China,” he said. “I feel we have a moral and spiritual responsibility to share our surpluses with them. We cannot compromise with their ideology, but we should feed them when they are hungry.”

  In part, Graham’s diminishing dogmatism reflected a growing awareness, nurtured by travel and association with a wide range of religious and political leaders on six continents, that the Manichaean dichotomies of Fundamentalism were a bit too neat, that people and positions and motives were often more complicated than he had once believed. But at least part of his lower political profile stemmed from the fact that his man, Richard Nixon, had lost the election, and the winner, John Kennedy, still regarded him with some reserve. The two men exchanged Christmas greetings and sat next to each other at the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, and Graham recalled that Kennedy told him he was the only Protestant minister he felt comfortable with, but he admitted he was never in the First Family’s private quarters, and visited the Oval Office no more than three or four times. It was said that the President could mimic the evangelist’s distinctive manner of speaking, that he “gritted his teeth sometimes”
when they were together, and that Jackie Kennedy saw no reason whatever to cultivate closer ties with the Graham family. The coolness was mutual. In January 1963, Graham implied that four years of Kennedy leadership would be quite enough by gratuitously remarking that “John Connally has the necessary abilities to be President of the United States, but I’m not making an endorsement. I’m just giving advice to the Democratic Party.”

  Despite their limited contact, Graham respected Kennedy and doubtless hoped for a closer relationship in the future. In that spirit he had grave misgivings about Kennedy’s trip to Texas in 1963. Not long before the trip, he tried to contact the President through Senator Smathers. When he told Smathers of his fear, based on conversations with his many friends in Texas, that the situation in Dallas would be tense, perhaps even dangerous, Smathers assured him that “the President probably already knows that,” but indicated he would convey the message to Kennedy. Graham never heard from the White House and decided he was being unnecessarily apprehensive. “I had such a strong feeling about it,” he recalled, “but then it occurred to me what a ridiculous thing it was, and I didn’t pursue the matter any further.” A few days later, while playing golf with T. W. Wilson at a club near Montreat, Graham received word that the President and Governor Connally had been shot. They sped to a nearby BGEA-owned radio station, where Graham went on the air while Wilson called Parkland Hospital in Dallas. By a fluke of timing, they learned Kennedy was dead before the national media released the news. Graham recalls that he withheld confirmation of the death until the major networks announced it; Wilson remembers holding a scribbled note to the glass on the booth where Graham was speaking and believes the evangelist may in fact have been the first to tell a public audience, however small, that the nation had lost its leader. In the days that followed, Graham was, of course, repeatedly asked for comments on the tragedy. The death of the young President, whom he described as “intensely interested in spiritual things,” was, he conceded, “a terrible thing,” but he hoped some good might yet come of it. Noting the marked increase in the number of people who attended church on the Sunday following the assassination, he observed that “we must have a terrible shock sometimes to rouse us out of our spiritual neglect and apathy.”