William Franklin "Billy"
Graham, Jr., found Christ at a tent revival in Charlotte, NC, when he was
sixteen. He attended Bob Jones University, Florida Bible College, and Wheaton
College, receiving a degree in anthropology in 1943. That year, he married Ruth
Bell (who died in 2007). He also took the pulpit of First Baptist Church in
Western Springs, IL, and the host microphone of "Songs of the Night,"
a Sunday radio sermon and gospel sing. This led to his preaching at the Youth
for Christ rallies organized by Rev. Torrey M. Johnson, another radio
evangelist. Under Johnson's aegis, Graham started Graham Youth for Christ,
which toured through North America and Great Britain.
Thanks
to support from the Hearst newspapers, whose publisher liked his anticommunism,
Graham and his "crusades" made headlines and attracted people to hear
his evangelical Protestantism. The renamed Crusade for Christ ran eight weeks
in Los Angeles in 1948 and drew two million people to a 16-week rally in New
York City's Madison Square Garden in 1957. In 1966, Graham preached to almost
one million people in London. He preached in North Korea and in China. In 1986,
while preaching in Paris, he used direct satellite transmissions to reach 30
other French cities.
Graham
preached to integrated crowds long before other Southern preachers did. His
organization's books were open for inspection, and he paid himself expenses
plus "the salary of a fairly well-paid local minister." (According to
the New York Times, he received
$50,000 in 1980, or $142,000 in today's money.)
In
1950, he founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which oversaw his
weekly "Hour of Decision" radio show, his Decision magazine, television shows for Christian networks, and the
publishing of more than thirty of his books. Graham, a registered Democrat,
advised every president from Johnson to Obama. Richard Nixon addressed one of
his crusades, and George W. Bush credits Graham with convincing him to give up
alcohol.
Billy
Graham's last crusade, which drew 242,000 people, was in 2005 in New York City.
After it, he retired to his home in Montreat, NC, where he died on February 21,
2018, at age 99.
--wcgreen
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