Graham died at his home
Wednesday morning from natural causes, a family spokesman told ABC News.
Born in 1918 in Charlotte, North Carolina, William
Franklin Graham Jr. was the oldest of the four children of William and Morrow
Graham. He was raised on a dairy farm, and little in his childhood suggested he
would become a world-renowned preacher.
Then at 16, Graham attended a series of revival meetings run by
outspoken evangelist Mordecai Ham. The two months he spent listening to Ham’s
sermons on sin sparked a spiritual awakening in Graham and prompted him to
enroll at Bob Jones College. When the conservative Christian school’s strict
doctrine didn’t align with his personal beliefs, he transferred to the Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity
College of Florida) and joined a Southern Baptist Convention church. He
was ordained in 1939.
Graham received additional training at Illinois’ Wheaton College,
where he met his future wife, Ruth McCue Bell. They were married for 64 years,
until her death in 2007, and had five children.
After serving briefly as the pastor of the First Baptist Church in
Western Springs, Illinois, Graham launched his first radio program,
“Songs in the Night,” in 1943. Although he left a year
later, Graham liked the idea of sharing his message with a wide audience. As
noted on his website, Graham took Jesus Christ literally when
he said in Mark 16:15: “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every
creature.”
Graham was still in his early 30s when entered the public
spotlight by giving a series of well-attended “sin-smashing” revival meetings
that were held under a circus tent in a Los Angeles parking lot. The press took
interest in the charismatic young preacher and began writing articles about
him. To get his message to even more people, Graham founded his own ministry,
the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
Graham viewed the Bible as the infallible
word of God. He believed that Jesus led a sinless life and that all
men were lost and would face God’s judgment. Most importantly, he was convinced
he must use “every modern means of communication available” to spread the
Gospel throughout the world, and did so in print, on radio and television,
online and in person.
Graham’s sermons promoted evangelism and railed against “godless communism,” drugs,
sex and violence. And for the next five decades, his electric personality
connected with audiences in more than 185 countries.
Graham was the first evangelist of note to speak behind the Iron
Curtain, and during the Apartheid era he refused to visit South Africa until
the government allowed integrated seating at his events. He published dozens of best-selling books, including Angels:
God’s Secret Agents and The Jesus Generation, and wrote a
weekly column that was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers.
Graham received numerous honors, including the
Horatio Alger Award, the George Washington Honor Medal, the Ronald Reagan
Freedom Award and the Congressional Gold Medal. A highway in Charlotte bears
his name, as does part of Interstate 240 near his home in Asheville, North
Carolina. In 1989, he became the first clergyman to be granted a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame for his work as a minister.
Graham also had a major effect on the civil rights movement of the
1950s and ’60s. His early crusades were segregated,
but once the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown v. Board of Education
ruling in 1954, which found public school segregation unconstitutional, Graham
integrated the seatings at his revival meetings.
Graham befriended the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. as well, and together they preached to more than 2
million people in New York City. When questioned about his views on faith and
race, Graham argued there was no scriptural basis for segregation.
As his message spread, Graham was granted personal audiences with
royalty, dignitaries and many sitting presidents, from Harry S. Truman to
Barack Obama. Three presidents were even on hand
in 2007 for the dedication of the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte.
Despite being a registered Democrat, Graham opposed the candidacy of John F.
Kennedy, and actively encouraged other religious
leaders to speak out about the dangers of having a Roman
Catholic in the White House.
Though beloved by millions, Graham was not without his detractors.
Some fundamentalist Christians took issue with his ecumenical approach to
evangelism, and after his 1957 crusade in New York, opponents of Graham’s more
liberal theology began calling him “the Antichrist.” According to the
biography Billy: A Personal Look at Bill Graham, the World’s Best-Loved
Evangelist by Sherwood Eliot Wirt, one Christian educator even said
that Graham was “the worst thing to happen to the Christian church in two
thousand years.” More recently, detractors blasted Graham’s continued belief that
homosexual behavior was a “sinister form of perversion,” and
his intolerance against the very presence of gay and lesbian couples within
Christianity.
As his health began to fail, Graham decided to announce his
retirement in 2005. His final sermon, “The Cross ― Billy Graham’s Message To America,” called
for a national spiritual awakening.
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
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