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Billy Graham

How evangelical Christianity is different now than in Billy Graham's heyday

Holly Meyer
The Tennessean

NASHVILLE — The Rev. Billy Graham's ability to bring Christians together through his magnetic preaching of the gospel has gone unmatched. 

His legacy as a unifier for evangelicalism, highlighted this week as word of his death spread, stands in contrast to the Christian movement's continued splintering. It is a fact that Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, thinks the late-evangelist would grieve.  

Billy Graham, world's best-known evangelist, 99.

"He brought together evangelicalism," Stetzer said. "I think today evangelicalism is fractured and fracturing."

The fragmentation is on many levels from how to relate to culture and engage in politics to disagreeing over what the heart of evangelicalism is, he said.

While Graham's simplistic message about Jesus continues to ring true to believers, evangelical Christianity has evolved from the apex of the North Carolina preacher's ministry. But, it can still learn a great deal from Graham's example, experts say. 

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"I think Billy Graham would like to see us put the evangelism back in evangelical," Stetzer said. "There seems to be a whole lot of other things that are catching people's attention." 

The evolution isn't unexpected. Ultimately, Graham was a man of his day, Stetzer said. 

The world's best-known evangelist, who died Wednesday at age 99, catapulted to prominence in 1949 with an eight-week revival in Los Angeles. In that post-war era, the church was at the center of the cultural landscape, but has since lost some of its footing.    

Graham's legacy is complex. That is reflected in the fact that both ends of the evangelical, theological and political spectrum owe something to Graham's public ministry, said Scott Culpepper, a history professor at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. 

"One ironic aspect of Graham's legacy is the fact that the evangelicalism he leaves behind is so diverse that it is unlikely that one single figure could dominate evangelical life and discourse today as Graham did at the peak of his influence," Culpepper said. 

For nearly six decades, Graham leveraged emerging media and traveled the globe preaching the gospel to millions, convincing people to accept Jesus Christ as their savior. Many in the pews today came to the faith through Graham's teachings. 

Evangelical Christians in the pews

The concerns of those attending church services on Sundays have shifted. 

Graham often preached against communism, secularism and divorce, which have dropped off or fallen as major priorities for evangelical Christians today, said James Hudnut-Beumler, an American religious historian at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville. 

The evangelist warned against temptations, like sinful movies and skimpy outfits, said Hudnut-Beumler, who teaches on Graham in his classes. 

"You couldn’t simply dust off a Graham sermon and preach it today," Hudnut-Beumler said.  

While not too far off from the Graham-era issues, evangelical Christians' worries now focus on what faith means for their loved ones and how the world will affect them, Hudnut-Beumler said. Church prayer lists are full of requests for those struggling with illnesses, waiting on tests and serving in the military. 

"Will my children have faith? Will they be loved? Will they be safe in the world?" Hudnut-Beumler said. "All of these kind of much more personal issues continue to be the kind of things that people bring on their hearts into prayer spaces."  

In recent decades, evangelical Christians have spent a lot of time hashing out whether theology supports same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ issues in the church.

While Graham opposed a 2012 gay marriage ballot measure, he retired from active ministry before the sexuality wars became the defining and dividing line among Protestants, Hudnut-Beumler said. 

But, the crisis response team from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which Graham founded, was one of the first religious groups to respond to the 2016 Florida massacre at a gay nightclub and offer support to those affected, he pointed out.     

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"Billy Graham's big tent evangelicalism kind of grew beyond him," Hudnut-Beumler said. "The message of bigheartedness and even recovering in his case from sins of, early on, racism and anti-Semitism, is a work in progress as are most people." 

The outreach and culture within the church has evolved too, said Scott McConnell, executive director of Nashville-based LifeWay Research. Evangelizing has shifted from old-time door knocking to friendship-focused outreach and serving those in need, he said.  

Pastors and congregations also are more inclined to address dirty laundry. That change comes, in part, because it is being called out, but also because people in the pews demand authenticity, McConnell said. 

"There's just a lot less sweeping under the rug," McConnell said.   

Politics and evangelical Christianity

The approach to politics has changed, too.

Graham, who offered counsel to a dozen U.S. presidents from both parties, was a towering, but largely non-controversial, American leader, said Dennis Goldford, a political science professor at Drake University in Iowa.

Politics were not hidden from view, but they were not Graham's focus, said Goldford, who wrote the book, The Constitution of Religious Freedom: God, Politics, and the First Amendment.  

"Under Billy Graham, evangelicalism wasn't a politicized movement," Goldford said. 

That has changed so much that Goldford does not think Graham would have the same success today. 

While it is a big tent, evangelical Christianity, especially its white believers, are closely associated with conservative policies and the Republican Party. They can be a powerful voting bloc. Exit polls in 2016 showed that four out of five white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump despite his perceived moral failings.

Many evangelical leaders today dive into conservative politics and advocate for the right-leaning side of the culture wars. The late evangelist's son, Franklin Graham, as well as James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and his son, Jerry Falwell Jr., followed that path. 

Graham did not. In 2011, he shared his regrets about what he thought were his missteps in the political arena. He told Christianity Today that he "sometimes crossed the line" and wished he would have "steered clear of politics." 

Stetzer thinks the lessons Graham learned about political involvement should serve as a reminder to evangelical Christians not to wed themselves to a particular party or candidate.  

"That distracts from the mission," Stetzer said. "It's unhelpful and Billy Graham avoided it, and I think we should as well."  

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With Graham's passing, an ongoing conversation about who will take up the late-evangelist's mantle continues. Stetzer believes "all of us" are his successors.  

Central Pennsylvania pastor and author Michael Anthony shared a similar thought. He believes the evangelical revolution Graham started has "lost some of its fire" because Christians may know the Bible, but they often miss the mark in living it. 

But given the current state of the country, the pastor, who leads Grace Fellowship in York, Pa., thinks America needs more than the next Billy Graham. 

"I think we need an army of Billy Grahams," he said. 

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Contributing: Joel Shannon, York Daily Record, and Courtney Crowder, The Des Moines Register. Follow Holly Meyer on Twitter: @HollyAMeyer

 

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