A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  If Graham’s stand on racial issues was not all his critics wished, it was at least tolerably consistent: Integrate crusades, treat people of all races in a fair and loving manner, and avoid disruptive protests. His stance on the other great issue cleaving the country—the war in Vietnam—was less clear, even to him. As a matter of policy, he doubted the corporate body of the church should take explicit political stands, and he questioned especially whether pastors and leaders of denominations and such bodies as the National and World councils had the right to make political statements as if they were speaking for their entire constituencies. He also doubted that most ministers had the requisite expertise to offer an opinion on many nontheological issues. “I fear,” he observed, “that if the church, as the church, begins to try to dictate in politics, we’re way off the main track.” In part this stemmed from theological conviction, commendable modesty, and deeply ingrained deference to authority. It probably also reflected his recognition that clerical spoutings irritated his friend, Lyndon Johnson. “A President of the United States told me,” he volunteered, “that he was sick and tired of hearing preachers give advice on international affairs when they did not have the facts straight.” As American involvement in Vietnam grew deeper and more tortuous, Graham found himself pulled in contradictory directions. On one side, his still-staunch anticommunism, his loyalty to the President and official national policy, and his long-standing admiration for the military made it difficult to question his government’s actions. On the other side, his compassion for the enormous suffering being visited on Vietnam and the young soldiers who had been sent to defend it, the moral murkiness of his country’s presence and role in that faraway conflict, and his frustration at American unwillingness or inability to bring the war to a satisfactory conclusion undermined the assurance he liked to feel about U.S. policy. He was convinced the President anguished over the war: “He carried a tremendous burden for the boys in Vietnam. He felt he was personally responsible for boys being killed.” Aware that Graham would be addressing church leaders from around the world at the Berlin Congress, Johnson had told him before that meeting, “Billy, if anyone asks you about Vietnam, you say the President of the United States wants peace and will go anywhere in the world to talk peace.” Graham remembered that “he pounded the table so hard as he spoke that I said, ‘Mr. President, I am the only other person here and you don’t have to convince me.’”

  Armed with the confidence that his President wanted to do the right thing, Graham let it be known that he wanted to visit the troops at Christmastime 1966. White House staffers thought this could be a big plus for the administration. An official invitation from General William Westmoreland followed shortly afterward, and the President asked Graham for a full report when he returned. Despite his willingness to go, Billy recognized that his visit could be interpreted as approval of government policy and kept his plans quiet until shortly before he left. In London a BGEA committee planning for the 1967 television campaign registered its own hope that he would hold off mentioning the trip as long as possible, since it “might cause controversy in some sections.” On his arrival in Vietnam, Graham studiously disavowed any political predisposition. His only purpose in being there, he insisted, was “to minister to our troops by my prayers and spiritual help wherever I can.” He added, however, that “millions of people view [the war] with frustrated impatience” and indicated his and his association’s willingness to support pacification programs to help Vietnamese people whose lives had been disrupted by the conflict. Billy remembered the trip as a harrowing one: “Much of the time we were there, it was cloudy and rainy, and we had to fly into these little places where they didn’t even have an airport—just a grass strip. Once, conditions were so bad that we couldn’t get anybody to fly us. They said, ‘You shouldn’t fly in this weather,’ but I was scheduled, and I said we should go, no matter what the risk. We finally found this colonel who had guts enough to fly us. Several times, it looked like a bad mistake. Once, we came straight toward a mountain in dense clouds. We were in one of those two-motor planes with the big hole in the back, and this colonel pulled it up as hard as he could and the back end scraped the trees. I looked over at Bev Shea and he was just sitting there. He’s never afraid of anything. Nothing ever bothers him—no nervousness at all.”

  The trip did not quiet all Graham’s misgivings. In his first encounter with reporters, he confessed that he continued to view the war as “complicated, confusing, and frustrating,” adding that “I leave with more pessimism about an early end to the war than when I arrived. How can we have peace? I don’t know. I don’t have any answers. I had hoped there would be some formula, but I don’t see it. I don’t know how it could end.” Perhaps because he or someone else had found this assessment too downbeat, Graham gave the Associated Press a more positive statement the following day. “The stakes are much higher in Vietnam than anybody realizes,” he said, especially for the Western world. “Every American can be proud of the men in uniform who are representing our nation on that far-flung battle front. They are paying a great price for the victory they are almost certainly winning there.” And the following day, as part of a greeting relayed from servicemen to their families, he reported that he had found the troops to be “extremely religious,” manifesting both high morale and high morals.

  In late January Graham and Cardinal Spellman, who had also made a Christmas visit to Vietnam, came to the White House to report to the President and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. According to Joseph Califano, who apparently sat in on the meeting, both clerics stressed “the incredibly high morale of the troops.” Graham recalled, however, that this news did not completely mollify the President, who pressed them for some insight: “Now, what do you think? We can’t go on with this thing. The American people are not going to take it. We’ve got to get out of it. How do we do it?” Spellman was decidedly hawkish and favored an all-out military push. Graham claims he begged off from giving any political or military advice but did agree that “the American people are getting restless over this thing.” In his conversations with the press after this meeting, he again reminded reporters that Johnson had not started the war but had inherited it from Kennedy and that while he would make no judgments as to whether it had been proper for America to make a commitment to South Vietnam, he felt there was an obligation to “see it through to a satisfactory conclusion.”

  Because he was out of the country during most of 1967, Graham found it relatively easy to steer clear of the explosive controversies surrounding Vietnam, though he was interrupted by protesters in London the night he preached on “The Cause of War” (which he identified as lust), and reporters usually tried to elicit some statement from him whenever he held a press conference. In the few public statements he did make, he typically maintained a slight proadministration bias. And after Martin Luther King began to speak out against the war, interpreting it as another injustice wrought by a sinful system, Graham scolded him for what he regarded as “an affront to the thousands of loyal Negro troops who are in Vietnam.” However Graham perceived his own stance, the White House considered him a valuable ally. When a Gallup poll revealed widespread public opposition to the draft lottery, on the grounds that lotteries are associated with gambling and that many felt “it isn’t right to gamble with lives,” Johnson aides recommended substituting equal service for lottery and suggested that the President ask friendly religious leaders “to speak out on the misconception—especially Billy Graham.” Later in the year, after most Western media outlets charged South Vietnam officials with wholesale rigging of what had been touted as free elections, Graham preached a radio sermon in which he used his familiar tactic of down-playing the seriousness of an offense and deflecting blame by pointing to a wider range of offenders. It would have been naive, he asserted, to expect the elections to be entirely fair and aboveboard. But wasn’t it remarkable that these courageous people were even trying to have elections—after all, Britain held no elections during World W
ar II! It was also likely, he thought, that some journalists were being unfair: “Many of the reporters are hostile, and will report the slightest rumor—and build headline-catching stories out of nothing.” Besides, he reminded his listeners, “There are many areas in America where shenanigans go on on election day. Whatever you think of the merit of the war, I believe we should give the Vietnamese the same benefit of the doubt that we give ourselves.” Some doubtless found even in such oblique remarks a sign that Graham’s ties to the White House had short-circuited his critical acumen, but he insisted he had not been compromised. After George Romney’s notorious reference to having been “brainwashed” by American military leaders during a visit to Vietnam, Graham observed, “I underwent the same briefings as Mr. Romney, and I wasn’t brainwashed. I even lived with General Westmoreland for a time. All the men were trying to do was give us the facts. I didn’t feel like they were trying to sell me a bill of goods.”

  Illness kept Graham from returning to Vietnam for Christmas 1967, and he made even fewer public statements on the war during 1968 than in previous years. He recommended, however, that the President and his administration must decide, and quickly, whether to take whatever steps might be necessary to follow through on their commitment, or admit that America had failed in that commitment and pull out—the first time, apparently, that he considered a conclusion other than military victory or negotiated peace. Despite this growing ambivalence over the war, in a patriotic burst that must have given young Franklin Graham something to think about, he declared, “I hope my son, who is nearing draft age, will gladly go and be willing to give his life.”

  As troubling as the war was, Graham seemed fully as disturbed by the protests and riots at home, predicting that terrorism and guerilla warfare would soon engulf the nation. Indeed, he did not see how the American dream could survive without a drastic shift in direction and thought it likely that “in less than ten years there will be internal chaos and a political tyranny in the form of some sort of left-wing or right-wing dictatorship, even if there is no war.” Other observations were less Armageddon-like in tone but carried echoes of some off-the-mark statements he made during the early years of his ministry. In a warm endorsement of the muscular Christianity espoused by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, he implied that the disruptive war-protest movement could have been avoided if America’s youth gave more attention to sports. “I think athletics turn the great energy of young people in the right direction,” he said. “People who are carrying Viet Cong flags around the country are not athletes. If our people would spend more time in gymnasiums and on playing fields, we’d be a better nation!” He also minimized the dangers and horrors of the war by making the statistically spurious and astonishingly blithe comment that “we say that the slaughter in Vietnam has been terrible but we lose more people in one month on the highways of America than the total Vietnam war has cost us. So it’s far safer to be fighting in Vietnam than driving on the highways!”

  Graham returned to Vietnam at Christmas, this time at the importunate invitation of General Creighton Abrams, Jr., who replaced Westmoreland. Perhaps hoping to gain some leverage with a Congress that consistently refused to provide the manpower and weaponry they felt they needed, the military accorded Graham full VIP treatment. He preached nearly twenty-five times, occasionally teaming up with Bob Hope, who flew in each day from Bangkok to entertain the troops. On Christmas Day he hopped by helicopter to several fire posts along the Cambodian border. Whenever possible he also visited military hospitals, taking time to talk with every patient in each unit and praying with those in intensive care. Once again he found morale “unbelievably high” and assured the home folk that American soldiers “know why they are fighting in Vietnam, and they believe what they are doing is right.” He also perceived an improved political situation and reported to the President that “the change in the Vietnam situation since I was there two years ago is like night and day. I came back enthusiastically optimistic about the prospects of Vietnam becoming a strong free nation in Southeast Asia. I am certain that history is going to vindicate the American commitment if we don’t lose the peace in Paris.” He found the military situation equally encouraging and told reporters. “There is no question: the war is won militarily.” When the Charlotte Observer received this bit of intelligence on wire-service dispatch, someone in the newsroom wrote in the margins of the printout, “This statement has been made before by lesser evangelists but greater generals.”

  Graham’s optimism regarding the end of the war was of a piece with his evergreen prediction that revival loomed just on the edge of the horizon, but it also stemmed from an aching hope that his tormented friend in the White House might find some relief from his burdens. He estimates that he spent perhaps twenty nights at the White House, at Camp David, and on the LBJ Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, including several visits after Johnson left Washington, and his recollections indicate that Johnson was more candid with him than Nixon ever was. He marveled at Johnson’s enormous capacity for work, recalling that sometimes, after they talked far into the night, Johnson would have a massage, usually asking Billy to read the Bible to him while the masseur kneaded and pounded his ponderous frame. Then, instead of sleeping, he would go back to his bedroom and spend hours working through a great stack of papers he needed to process before morning. Graham readily acknowledged the President’s rough, blustery, calculating, bullying side, but he also saw a warm and tender Lyndon Johnson who like himself was concerned to do some great thing, if not for God, then for his country. He conceded that the programs of the Great Society were motivated in part by political aims and by a desire to leave a tangible personal legacy but insisted that “on a scale from one to ten, I’d say about eight that it was a . . . very deep conviction that he had, that he wanted to do something for the underprivileged and the people that were oppressed in our society, especially black people.” Even after he left the White House, when no photographers were around to record and publicize his actions, Johnson showed a personal concern. “I used to think it was sort of a political thing,” Graham confessed, but “I visited the ranch a number of times after he left office and he still had that compassion. He would fill his car up with little black children and take them for rides and stop at the store and buy them candy and pick them up in his arms. He just had this built-in compassion for them. This had no political motivation whatsoever. He also had a great feeling for the Hispanic people. His compassion for the poor and the blacks was a very real thing.”

  When Lyndon Johnson announced on March 31, 1968, that in the interest of national unity, he would not seek reelection, Billy Graham was one of the few Americans not surprised. Nearly a year earlier, before public confidence in his handling of the war dipped to abysmal levels, before Bobby Kennedy revealed his intention to seek the Democratic nomination, Johnson confided to Graham that he did not expect to run for a second term. That decision, Graham has contended, stemmed less from weariness with the struggle than from fears about his health. “My people don’t live too long,” Johnson had said. “My father died when he was about my age. I don’t think I could live out another term, and I don’t want the country to have to deal with that.” Such fears were not rare for Johnson, according to Graham. “He thought a great deal about death, and he talked to me about it several times.” As part of these conversations, Graham quite naturally took the opportunity to speak to the President about the state of his soul. “I had a number of quiet, private talks with him about his relationship with the Lord,” the always-on-duty evangelist recalled. “One of them was not long before he died. We were sitting in his convertible Lincoln, where he’d been chasing some of the deer right across the fields. We were stopped, looking out, and the sun was sinking. We had a very emotional time, because I just told him straight out that if he had any doubts about his relationship with God, that he’d better get it settled. I said, ‘Mr. President’—I still called him ‘Mr. President’ then; before he became President, I called him Lynd
on—‘According to what you say, you don’t think you have much longer to live. You’d better be sure you’re right with God and have made your peace with him.’ He bowed his head over the steering wheel and said, ‘Billy, would you pray for me?’ I said, ‘Yessir,’ and I did. He was very reflective after that. We must have sat there for another hour, hardly talking at all, just looking at the sunset.”

  Later during that same visit, Johnson told Graham that he wanted him to preach at his funeral and gave him the choice of presiding over a memorial service in Washington or the burial at the ranch. Graham said he felt more comfortable at the ranch, which seemed to please the President. He led the preacher over to a small grave plot and said, “I want to be buried right here. My father’s grave is right there, my mother’s right there.” Then he stopped and looked Graham in the eye: “Billy, will I ever see my mother and father again?” Graham provided him with the promise that gives Evangelical faith its greatest power: “Well, Mr. President, if you’re a Christian and they were Christians, then someday you’ll have a great home-going.” Johnson pulled out a handkerchief and began brushing tears from his eyes. Then he decided that others needed to hear what he had just heard. Returning to discussion of the funeral, he said, “Obviously, there’ll be members of the press here. I don’t know how many, but maybe they’ll come from around the world. Billy, I want you to look in those cameras and just tell ’em what Christianity is all about. Tell ’em how they can be sure they can go to heaven. I want you to preach the gospel.” He paused. “But somewhere in there, you tell ’em a few things I did for this country.” As he recalled this memory, Graham smiled with obvious affection for a flawed but titanic figure who had also been his friend. His voice trailing off as he looked into the distance, perhaps catching an afterimage of a Hill Country sunset, he summed up Lyndon Johnson with head-shaking understatement: “He was quite a combination.”