Word: grahamism
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...friend says, was that "he didn't want to do anything under the influence that might embarrass his father," who was preparing to run for President. George W. was also experiencing a religious awakening, one that began with his now famous 1985 encounter with evangelist Billy Graham, at the Bush-family compound in Kennebunkport, Me. After praying privately with Graham--"It was a real personal religious visit," he says--he joined a men's Bible-study group in Midland, "taking inventory of himself," his friend Donald Ensenat says. As the economic crisis deepened, so did his faith. "The words took...
Politics could have been the destructive element for Graham, since he started his rise in the age of Eisenhower and for a time was a fervent red hunter, an admirer of Senator Joe McCarthy and an overall basher of the left, as here in a radio broadcast of 1953: "While nobody likes a watchdog, and for that reason many investigation committees are unpopular, I thank God for men who, in the face of public denouncement and ridicule, go loyally on in their work of exposing the pinks, the lavenders and the reds who have sought refuge beneath the wings...
That is now a period piece, but I think it is important to keep it on the record. Graham, a slow but sure learner, moved with the spirit of the age, and in the 1980s he became a preacher of world peace, urging reconciliation with Russia and China, where his wife Ruth, the daughter of missionaries, was born. Angry Fundamentalists turned against him, a move that became an anti-Graham passion when he rejected the program of the Christian right: "I don't think Jesus or the Apostles took sides in the political arenas of their day." The break between...
...Though Graham has never, to my knowledge, spoken out on behalf of the poor, it seems legitimate to conclude that his almost exclusive emphasis upon soul saving is his passionate center, even his authentic obsession. And there, whatever his inadequacies of intellect or of spiritual discernment, Graham has ministered to a particular American need: the public testimony of faith. He is the recognized leader of what continues to call itself American evangelical Protestantism, and his life and activities have sustained the self-respect of that vast entity. If there is an indigenous American religion--and I think there is, quite...
Evangelicals constitute about 40% of Americans, and the same number believe God speaks to them directly. Such a belief yearns for a purer and more primitive church than anyone is likely to see, and something in Graham retains the nostalgia for that purity. In old age and in poor health, he is anything but a triumphalist. There is no replacement for him, though he has hopes for his son Franklin. More than a third of our nation continues to believe in salvation only through a regeneration founded upon personal conversion to the Gospel, and Graham epitomizes that belief. A great...