Billy Graham

"Why have you come to Harvard, Dr. Graham," the television interviewer asked, and without a pause, Billy Graham was off. "The college student today has a greater religious inquiry than any generation before. . .the questions they ask are totally different. . . . Today they ask 'How can I keep my intellectual integrity and believe in God?' . . . They are searching for standards, for a flag to follow. . ."

The phrases slipped out smoothly, effortlessly, just as they had moments before while Graham was answeing the same question for a press conference. They would come out again the next night when he spoke at Wellesley, and still again a night later when he stood before a thousand Harvard students at Rindge Tech. Probably the students who heard Graham at Princeton and Michigan earlier this month heard the same phrases.

Yet as he faced the camera, Billy Graham's face betrayed no boredom or fatigue. The enunciation was precise, his tone not monotonous, but rolling. In fact, he seemed excited as he leaned foreward, his eyes trained on the camera with the same intense, steady glare he turns on his audiences during a speech, on a listener during an interview.

Graham at a press conference reminds one of a politician delivering his "set speech," and of one politician in particular, Billy Graham and Barry Goldwater have more in common than the initials they use. They both combine passionate beliefs with personal flair; neither is an original thinker and neither is an original stylist, yet each has risen far above others who profess similar beliefs in somewhat the same manner. As Gold water is a cut above John Tower and H.R. Gross, so Graham seems far removed from Oral Roberts and the other nameless faith-healing Protestant evengelists.

Graham is at a loss to explain his power over his audiences. "That's one of the first things I'm going to ask God when I get to Heaven, because I don't know. I'm the most ordinary person in the world. I'm amazed at it all; to me it's just God. It's sovereignty of God in choosing me as he did Jeremiah, or Isaiah."

Graham does not, however, see himself as a prophet like Isaiah and Jeremiah. "When I first heard myself called an evangelist, I resented it--I thought of Elmer Gantry. But I've come to like it. It comes from a Greek word meaning 'proclaimer'; an evangelist is a proclaimer of the good news that God loves us and wants to help us."

Though he does not think himself a prophet, Graham can sound like Jonah addressing the men of Ninevah: "We're approaching a crisis that will make Cuba look pale, and you only have to read the papers to see it. The explosive points around the world are increasing rapidly; it seems as if the whole world is catching fire."

Graham's solution to the growing crisis is purely religious. He refuses to classify himself politically. "I don't like people to label me liberal or conservative," he says. "I want to be all things to all men. That's St. Paul's phrase." The evangelist's ideologically balanced public statements make one aware that he is conscious of Paul's dictum. "I believe every word of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations," he says, but again "the Bible isn't a scientific document; it's written for the common people, in language they can understand." And again, "I disagree with some points in Tillch, though I respect his right to his opinion."

Graham adds to his balanced, careful sentences a politician's forced modesty. "I'm in the line of these people," he says, comparing himself to great evangelists of the past, like St. Augustine and St. Francis of Assisi. But he quickly adds, "I'm the least of them all. . . . I shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath with them. . .I'm not worthy. . . ." The words have the hollow sound of a statement which once was passionately sincere but which had been eroded by constant flattery until its speaker had come almost to disbelieve it.

Above all, like a campaigner and yet far better than most politicians, Graham, understands his audiences. "People are the same deep down," he explains, "but you do have to vary your approach a little." His Harvard speeches lacked the hardline moralizing Graham sometime presents, and they were spiced with quotations from Sartre, and Kant. But the appeal, to be born again in God, was the same.

Yet his speaking ability, his understanding of his audiences, his modesty, could get Graham no-where without the obvious sincerity of his beliefs. The word "sincere" is one that is applied over and over both to him and to Barry Goldwater; the word "commitment" crops up again and again in Graham's speeches. Graham, like Goldwater is often criticized for presenting simple answers to complex problems. The words of each man, read in cold print, seem fantastically foolish to some people. Yet when he presents his views in person, each man wins the approval of almost any audience. Graham's semi-fundamentalist views win applause at Rindge Tech just as Goldwater's discourses on poverty receive standing ovations from his listeners.

What is Graham's goal? "If just one student out at Harvard would go back to his room tomorrow night and make a commitment to Christ, who knows what might come of it?" He went on to describe how Dwight Moody once told a young Scottish convert to "go do something for the laboring people of Scotland;" the convert went on to found the British Labour Party. Graham sat back in his chair, looking towards the ceiling, his phenomenal nervous enegy no longer so obvious. "These men did evangelists' work, men like John Wesley, and Dwight L. Moody, and William Wilberforce. We've forgotten today how the evangelist is as important as the pastor and the teacher."

Suddenly he sat forward, his eyes again fixed on his listener; "Of course I'm not worthy to lick these men's boots. . . . I shouldn't be mentioned. . . ." And he was off again.