This interview is being published as a supplement to a previous story MintPress News published about Billy Graham.
(MintPress) – The Rev. Billy Graham turned 94 years old the day after the 2012 election. Graham is considered not only as the leader of the Evangelical Christian church, but as a political figure whose influence runs deep. He has served as a spiritual and political adviser in the lives of every U.S. president since Harry S. Truman, until now. To better understand the impact Graham has had in U.S. politics, MintPress reached out to Darren Dochuk, associate professor in Humanities at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.
MintPress News (MPN): Billy Graham was a spiritual adviser of sorts for every president since Truman, aside from President Barack Obama. In return, presidents looked to Graham on key moral issues, including abortion and gay marriage. Having said that, could Graham be considered an influential political figure? If so, how did he change the political conversation in the U.S.?
Dochuk: Graham, as you note, was a spiritual adviser for most presidents since World War II. He was closer to some (generally Republicans), more distant from others, yet his place at the head of a “New Evangelicalism” that achieved unprecedented influence during this time made him a necessary ally for all. No president could count on reaching the growing evangelical electorate without engaging him in some way. It is in his largely symbolic but not unimportant role as liaison, therefore, that Graham really achieved power in the postwar era.
Yet his political power can be considered real and tangible in other ways as well. Graham has always been the most respected and important spokesperson for evangelicals on all things political. Typically he has championed centrist conservative positions, shunning both the left- and right-leaning interests of the sprawling evangelical community, which means he has tended to speak for the majority. So when Graham talks about political matters, most conservative Protestants listen; and when Graham offers proclamations or makes concrete claims about a political issue or candidate, they tend to do more than listen — they heed his advice and take it with them to the polls. This isn’t to suggest that Graham dictates voting patterns within his community, but to simply emphasize his authority as a prophet who can shape the political thinking and activity of a large, powerful and engaged voting public.
Although such power of persuasion has diminished with age, we were reminded recently that Graham still enjoys much clout. Aided (and no doubt heavily influenced) by his son, Franklin, Graham made it clear to the evangelical electorate that voting Romney was right, voting Obama an invitation for society’s destruction and that fighting abortion and gay marriage was a political imperative drawn straight from God’s word. Again, it is impossible to measure just how much weight such charges had among a wide evangelical public, but there is little doubt that Graham’s sentiments helped energize and legitimize the conservative Republican base.
Graham has also done his part to influence political strategies and policies. Graham reached his peak of political influence between the mid-1950s and mid-1970s, a time of incredible ferment in American society. As much as the preacher worked hard during this last election to shore up theological and political boundaries where gender, sexuality and reproductive rights were concerned, he played an equally important role in the ‘50s and ‘60s in breaking down barriers of race within his religious community as well as in the country overall. Though hardly a progressive in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s mold, Graham did lend legitimacy to the civil rights cause, by being one of the first to desegregate large religious gatherings and by speaking out against the fundamentalist wing of his Church, which sought to protect white supremacy.
Of course Graham reached new heights of power during the Nixon era. Encouraged by a few of his political friends to run for the presidency in 1964, Graham declined and instead helped build a new Sunbelt Republican Party that would capture the White House in Nixon’s day, and solidify its hold on the presidency during Reagan’s. Besides acting as a confidant and broker for Nixon, and enjoying insider access to the Nixon administration, Graham also played a vital role in recruiting evangelical leaders (white and black) from the South to the Nixon team and wooing southern evangelical citizens out of the Democratic Party and into the GOP. When Watergate broke, Graham would come to regret this effort on Nixon’s behalf.
MPN: Is it a coincidence that Obama, the only president to not be advised by Graham, openly endorsed gay marriage, or was it just due to the growing, widespread acceptance of gay marriage?
Dochuk: Obama’s stand in favor of gay marriage reflects a growing acceptance of gay rights, and more generally, an expanding pluralism and liberal outlook in a more diverse and, to a degree, socially liberal generation of voters. Even younger evangelicals are tending to be less dogmatic on the matter of gay marriage, at least in comparison to their parents and grandparents — those two generations to and for which Graham has long spoken. So, the fact that Graham has not built a relationship with Obama has more to do with the changing times and the new cultural landscape with which evangelicalism must now contend, than with some conscious decision on the evangelist’s part to shun the president. And for his part, I might add, Obama has less need for Graham than his predecessors; Obama can and does look elsewhere for access to the religious voter and for access to the liberal wing of evangelicalism.
MPN: While Graham did not specifically endorse Mitt Romney for president, he did say he stood behind the Republican candidate. Shortly after this, Graham detracted his position that Mormonism is a cult. What did this say about Graham and his role in American politics? Did it show his support first for the Republican Party, rather than his faith?
Dochuk: It came as a bit of a shock to me that Graham was so outspoken in favor of Romney, Mormonism and the Republican agenda. Since the Watergate fiasco, Graham has shied away from publicly endorsing specific political candidates. While speaking out for or against key political issues, like abortion, he has refrained from siding with one party or the other, at least in any explicit way. Yet the 2012 election saw him take a different tack. Why the change of heart? I can’t answer that in any definitive way, but I do think Graham, at his advanced age and in his vulnerable physical state, has increasingly relied on the counsel of his son, Franklin, who now oversees the Graham evangelistic ministry. Franklin, it seems to me, is more overtly political and more willing — indeed eager — to make evangelicals active on behalf of the GOP. Billy Graham’s endorsement of Romney was, in this sense, a gesture conceived of by others.
But there’s no doubt that Graham remains anxious about the state of American society and about what he sees as the declining morality of this country. Graham believes in what he said — that gay marriage and abortion remain the most egregious affronts to the Christian way of life. But what is surprising is the way he voiced that so openly and aggressively, and on behalf of one particular candidate. It’s not what he said but how he said it that makes Graham’s endorsement of Romney significant as a turn away from earlier patterns. Graham has always worked hard transcending the political, at preaching a gospel that cannot be reduced to politics, and so this recent reversal is curious, and a bit unsettling, to say the least.