Washington National Cathedral

The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith

The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, host

Guests Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, Time magazine journalists, wrote the best-selling book The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham and the White House. Dean Lloyd hosts the authors in a discussion about faith and public life.

“Why this book, and why now?” asks Lloyd. Gibbs says that, after the most recent presidential election, the authors wondered whether journalists had “misunderstood or misinterpreted” the role of religion in political campaigns. Billy Graham, they realized, had been welcomed into relationships with every president since Eisenhower. They therefore asked the famed evangelist, then 88 years old, to reveal this aspect of his life’s work.

Duffy compares Graham to a “skeleton key” who not only opened himself to the project but also opened doors to presidents to whom he ministered, and to their families and colleagues.

In the 1950s, William Randolph Hearst perceived that Graham, whom the authors call a young “sawdust preacher,” carried his Christian message with great power. Hearst encouraged coverage of Graham, and other media quickly followed suit. “They recognized a star when they saw one,” Gibbs asserts.

In the aftermath of World War II, Communist governments had begun to proliferate. “Graham had an ability to speak to [contemporary] fears and needs in people,” Gibbs comments. Eisenhower, who had been raised in a pacifist Jehovah’s Witness family, recognized that Graham could help him pastorally and politically; he sought Grahamf’s counsel and even tried to hire him as a speech writer. As president, Eisenhower believed that religious revival would help the United States. He was the first president baptized while in office.

Graham’s influence quickly became both personal and powerful. “By 1956, Graham is counseling [then-Vice President Richard] Nixon how to stay on the ticket with Eisenhower,” Duffy says. A transition had been made from ministry to political strategy. Gibbs asserts, “I think you could say that Graham brought out the best in Nixon. I think you could say that Nixon brought out the worst in Graham.” Many years later, toward the end of Nixon’s presidency, Graham was shocked and devastated by Nixon’s behavior and words.

Graham had friendships with presidents of both major parties. Notably, he had a very intense personal, pastoral relationship with Lyndon Johnson. As Graham witnessed and shaped the interaction between politics and religion, he learned from his many experiences. In the latter years of his ministry, Graham warned, “You can’t preach to the left wing or the right wing; you have to have the whole bird.”

About Michael Duffy

Michael Duffy, journalist for Time/i>, co-wrote the best-selling book The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham and the White House with Nancy Gibbs.