The Rev. Billy Graham Was Truly an American Original

February 21, 2018 Michael Olesker

In this 1981 photo, the late Rev. Billy Graham (left) is shown greeting First Lady Nancy Reagan and President Ronald Reagan at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton Hotel. (Wikipedia)

As the Rev. Billy Graham goes to his grave, worshipers of all faiths may wonder which version of a heaven, and which manifestation of God himself, await him.

Graham is dead today, at 99, and venerated as a remarkable figure: not only a religious crusader, but a man who reached into the corridors of secular power – Oval Offices, corporate boardrooms, ballparks packed with the faithful – all the way from Harry S. Truman’s time almost to Donald J. Trump’s.

Only failing health slowed him and finally stopped him.

Across the cable news stations, they speak of him now in almost universally reverential terms. It’s a measure of Graham’s spiritual journey – and America’s.

In Graham’s early years of national attention, newspapers and magazines casually referred to him as a “hillbilly holy roller.”

Time magazine, then in the fullness of its post-war power and cultural influence, mockingly declared: “He takes his listeners strolling down Pavements of Gold, introducing them to a rippling-muscled Christ who resembles Charles Atlas with a halo, then drops them abruptly into the Lake of Fire for a sample scalding.”

The young preacher Graham was given to telling overflowing audiences, “Heaven is a literal place. Christians go there the moment they die, and there will be wonderful reunions as loved ones are recognized up there.

“What a glorious place it will be – with streets of gold, the gates of pearl – and the tree bearing a different kind of fruit every month. Think of that – you farmers – 12 crops a year!”

Toward the end of his years, the message evolved into something a little more metaphorical, and the voice itself somewhat more muted. When he spoke to an overflow crowd at Oriole Park on July 7, 2006, his delivery was quieter, his voice foggier, his assertions more earth-bound.

“God is a spirit, not a body like yours and mine,” he said that day.

Across nearly three-quarters of a century, he became more acceptable to mainstream critics, though there were those who questioned the alliance of church and state. But to his credit, Graham — who was a great champion of Israel — crossed both political party lines, all Protestant lines, and racial lines, too, when much of America still wrestled with ancient divisions.

One blot that stays with him is Richard Nixon. The Watergate era tapes reveal President Nixon’s poisonous anti-Semitism, including a 1972 conversation where he bemoans “total Jewish domination of the media” to Graham.

“They’re the ones putting out the pornographic stuff,” Graham replied. The Jewish “stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain,” he added.

The revelations infuriated many Jews, and Graham, who at first said he didn’t remember saying such things, apologized in 2002 when the tapes were released.

“My remarks did not reflect my love for the Jewish people,” he said. “I humbly ask the Jewish community to reflect on my actions on behalf of Jews over the years that contradict my words in the Oval Office that day.”

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been re-issued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.