Billy Graham Died Today: A Coda · 1:22am Feb 22nd, 2018
Billy Graham died today.
He nearly lived to be a hundred years old, off by only a nine months. He leaves behind him a legacy that few preachers will match, a ministry that boasts audiences in the millions and converts across the globe, and shaped the landscape of theological teaching in America in a way few others can claim.
Billy Graham died today.
Billy Graham's wikipedia article is fascinating. I hadn't done much reading about his early life before tonight. Did you know he was once thrown out of a youth group for being "too worldly" when he was a teenager? A regular St. Augustine, apparently. Minus all the sex. He avoided both drugs and alcohol, but he was drunk on his love for God and preached with passion and zeal.
Billy Graham died today.
Billy Graham was a moralist. Of course he was. It came with the territory. Augustine was a moralist too. The two of them weren't much into sex outside marriage, or drugs, or vices of any kind. I have no doubt that Graham wouldn't have known what to make of me, had we met. That's entirely fair, I suppose, since I'm not sure what to make of him. I have a feeling we'd have spent any conversation awkwardly talking around each other until I got bored and went home.
Billy Graham died today.
Billy Graham was a moralist. When the civil rights movement began, with other white leaders worrying about moderation it was Graham who refused to allow segregation of the crowds at his revivals. It was Graham who bailed Martin Luther King Jr. out when he was jailed for protesting. It was Graham who called him a "social leader and prophet" when he died. It was Graham who argued with him about Vietnam in public, but who turned and told a white audience that their pride would lead them into hell.
Billy Graham died today.
Billy Graham will be buried near a library bearing his name, along with his wife. Not everyone will be happy about this. His youngest son thought they should honor her mother's wishes and bury her near Asheville, where she grew up as a girl. His older son liked the library site. Franklin won in the end. As he has done. As he continues to do.
Billy Graham died today.
Billy Graham's been dealing with Parkinson's Disease. Did you know that? It stole up on him in '98, and he lived with it for twenty years. Twenty years of your independence being stolen. Of being unable to really enjoy the fruits of a life spent in labor. Of having your children make decisions on your behalf. Twenty years of cognitive and physical decline as your empire rots from the inside.
Billy Graham died today.
We were told in 2012 that Billy Graham was okay with Mitt Romney being president, even though the man is a Mormon and Graham was once so hilariously partisan about his faith that he voted against Kennedy on the grounds that he didn't want a president who'd listen to the Pope. We were told Billy Graham doesn't approve of same-sex marriage, or transgender people, even though he flat-out refused to join Moral Majority in '79 on the grounds that being a moralist meant preaching social justice and equality as much or more than it meant disapproving of sex.
Billy Graham died today.
Franklin Graham is Billy's oldest son. When he took the reigns of the BGEA, the organization his father built, I imagine he felt powerful. How could he not? He was the firstborn son, the heir. The throne was now his. And like all heirs, that power's gone to his head. The last time anyone asked him whether his father's sudden shift into a Republican mouthpiece might have less to do with the wishes of Billy Graham and more to do with the reactionary beliefs of Franklin, he told them that no, of course his father said all that. And of course he'd continue speaking for him instead of Billy Graham - the crusader, the man who drew a million people - calling the press conferences himself.
Billy Graham died today.
Of course Billy Graham supports Romney. Of course he's against gay marriage. Of course he's interested in Moral Majority. Of course he endorses Trump. And of course he wanted to be buried near the library bearing his name, his corpse the last capstone on a tourist trap the likes of which baffle the mind. Franklin said his father wanted it. It must be true.
Billy Graham died today.
Billy Graham wasn't a saint. He would've been offended had I called him that, saints are a Papist thing. The man was a patriarch, with a patriarch's biases. He preached that women were destined to be wives and home-makers. He preached for the rights of black people but in private conversations with Richard Nixon, his conversations turned more than a little anti-semitic.
Billy Graham died today.
Billy Graham tried. He tried to be better than those around him. He tried to preach a gospel that called men brothers, a gospel that united all of the world in salvation, a gospel that wanted to let the outcast in and protect the weak from the strong. Billy Graham tried. That's all you can ask a man to do in the end, is try.
Billy Graham died today.
Franklin Graham will no doubt be making a series of press releases soon. With his father wracked by disease, it fell to his son to speak on his behalf. Not much has changed. After all, dead or alive, Billy Graham passed on without being able to speak for himself.
Billy Graham died today.
I wonder if he hasn't been dead for a while.
Amen.
That is probably a very good description of the men.
In the modern discourse of social justice, not a person who is easy to sum up.
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He's intensely easy to sum up. He's hard to sum up in binary.
Graham fought for equality, but he was also patriarchal, condescending, and loved having the ear of power. Those were his faults. This story isn't really about Graham being a good or bad person, though. This is a story about his life's work being taken over by a worse person, who was allowed to speak for him for the entirety of his twilight years. And those views are going to be associated with his name for some time.
I find that fucked up.
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That is, indeed, fucked up, from any kind of moral standing.
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Billy Graham was the first big-name preacher who worshiped wealth at least as much as he claimed to worship G-D, and was the single greatest influence in spreading the unholy heresy that is the Prosperity Gospel, infesting and destroying the Church with this anti-scriptural monstrosity.
Bill Graham was not only anti-LGBTQ, he also preached that AIDS was G-D's punishment on homosexuals (despite the majority of AIDS sufferers worldwide being heterosexuals, a fact he conveniently ignored).
He "trained up" his son to be like him. His son was instrumental in turning the American Evangelical community away from the last vestiges of their adherence to G-D's word, and gave them their own golden calf to worship in the form of Donald Trump.
Billy Graham was more interested in preaching and spreading his distorted version of the gospel than he was in being with his own family.
I grew up in the Church, on Billy Graham's sermons, among others. My parents were fans. I believe that the Billy Graham that honestly tried to be a better person died the moment he fully understood the wealth and power that he possessed and had access to, and he came to, like so many others before and after him, mistaken his own personal desires and prejudices for G-D's word. Any good he may have done with his life regarding civil rights has been vastly overshadowed by the evils he himself committed later in life, and the evils that continue to be committed by the empire he created, for which he must bear responsibility.
He will not be mourned by me.
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That's fine.
But given most people think he and his son are the same person, I wanted to say something.
Graham was no saint. He was also not the man Franklin became. He was weak to the song of power, yes. But all of us are. That's how power works.
I also grew up in the church, in a world Billy Graham helped build. That world fucked me up too. I mourn not out of obligation, but because I can, and I want to. That's all.
And besides that, Franklin may have been trained but he grew up worse and the empire is his now. To me, that's sad.
This was the only good take I saw all day long about this.
See you later, Revival Cowboy. There goes the last sickly light, half-useless, in a long darkness.
Outstanding essay. I especially like the way you conclude it. There are several ways to interpret your second-to-last sentence; I suspect all of them are true.
Well done.
As I've said elsewhere, it takes a far worse man than Billy Graham to make me rejoice in the death of another. Falwell, Phelps, probably a certain Archbishop whether or not he gets himself wholly excommunicated first... but not Graham.
Graham was a lot like Frankenstein, really. Noble goals, good intentions, but through his hubris and his absolute certainty the He Was Right he went on that sliiiiiide into darkness.
Until, eventually, his unholy spawn destroyed him in a twisted mockery of love and hate.
I don't rejoice in his death. I'd just really like to be a fly on the wall for *that* celestial performance review.
I guess we can call him an heirhead then.