Billy Graham: He Walks, He Talks, He Sells Salvation

Billy Graham is everywhere. He popped up this week on President Nixon's list of charitable contributions. His prerecorded presence graces American television screens several times a year. His syndicated column, "My Answer," competes with enlightened journalists' essays for editorial space in newspapers all over the country.

Somehow I had managed to escape him until this summer. I had changed television stations when he came on. I had opted for enlightened questions over Graham's answers. But beyond that, I am Jewish and I go to Radcliffe, and if that's not enough immunity from Billy Graham, there is no escape.

This summer, divine retribution stepped in: The Atlanta Journal assigned me to cover the week-long Billy Graham Crusade, held in Atlanta. Seven nights with Graham and his near-capacity crowds, seven days interviewing the members of his elaborate organization and seven mornings at the typewriter fighting to retain objectivity--I was literally swimming in the waters of the Lord.

****

It all began on June 15, when Graham whisked into Atlanta International Airport with a towering entourage of smiling, suntanned, seersucker-jacketed look-alikes. As he moved down the glass-walled corridor, Graham strode slightly ahead of his companions--his silver hair glistening a little more in the sunlight, his Hollywood tan more golden, his blue eyes more piercing, his big white smile more dazzling than the others'. Bystanders fought the blinding glare to gaze after his amazing grace.

The entrance was perfect--and then I met him. He was more a figure than a man, a walking mannequin who had sold his soul to the devils of modern image-making. His reverence was wrapped in Hollywood Holiness, and the whole package was better suited to a television screen or a stadium platform than a room filled with real people.

At the airport, Graham gave waiting reporters a canned version of the sermon he'd deliver in different forms for the next week. It went something like this: No man can solve the problems of poverty and oppression on this earth. But people can learn to find peace within their limitations, realize that this life is not the theater for our salvation, redirect their energies, accept. In acceptance lies the Answer.

****

Across town, groups of Atlanta blacks were preparing demonstrations against Graham's refusal to speak out about Watergate and his alleged neglect of the black clergy's call for Christian activism. At the press conference, Graham was asked to comment on the challenge. He declined, but said he'd gladly talk to the black leaders if they called him. They never did. Blacks continued to boycott the crusade throughout the week and the crowds who saw Graham in Atlanta were almost all well-dressed and white.

****

For the week of June 18-24 Graham staged his nightly spectacular in Atlanta Stadium, home of the Atlanta Braves and their great showman, Henry Aaron. At the time, Aaron was seemingly on his way to breaking Babe Ruth's all-time home run record. Graham had a tough act to follow, but he was prepared. In seven nights, he drew over 350,000 worshippers.

Most of the Crusade chairmen came not from Atlanta's religious leadership, but straight out of its power structure. At the top was Tom Cousins, a leading real estate developer and financier who brought the pro basketball Hawks to Atlanta, built the city's dazzling indoor athletic and cultural center, and is currently building a uniquely luxurious hotel that will aid the city's drive to become the national convention center by 1980.

Under Cousins, committee chairmen included the president of one of Atlanta's largest banks, the chairman of its rapid transit system, the president of its chamber of commerce, the country's number-one Ford dealer and several retired public servants. The chairman of the ministers' council was the pastor of the church where numerous Atlanta political and civic leaders do their praying.

At the next level was a group of men who did the actual footwork--for example, the middle-aged fellow who for 20 years had flown all over the world with Graham to organize local counseling programs to supplement Graham's message. In striking contrast to the sophisticated, glamorous, powerful men at the top, they are homey, plodding yes-men; they do drudge work; they carry pamphlets detailing The Way; they stutter and stare blankly when asked questions that aren't in the pamphlets. They are the peddlers. The glamorous leaders are the front men. And Billy Graham is their product--a very marketable product.

****

Graham preached from a bright blue $15,000 podium at second base, surrounded by the live greenery of the Braves' infield and a cluster of yellow and violet plastic flowers immediately under the platform. Each night, he strode across the field with head bowed, looking up once or twice--precisely when he reached the photographers who wanted a candid snapshot of him.

Before beginning his sermon, Graham would let loose a sales pitch for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA), a non-profit corporation that oversees and budgets all his activities. "We can't keep bringing me into your living room without your help, folks," he'd say in sermonic tones with arms flailing. He'd direct the crowd's attention to the collection buckets being passed around, the concession stand inside the stadium with scores of books by and about Graham and religious experiences. Then he'd remind them to send contributions to the national association: "Now that address again is Billy Graham; Minneapolis, Minnesota..." All along, the cameras in the pressbox were whirring, the spotlights gleaming, the coordinators giving signals.

The plea brought results. Collections in the buckets totalled $173,513 over the seven-day period, but that was peanuts compared to the contributions that Graham's televised plea would bring. One of the BGEA officers up in the press box said that mail offerings cover most of the association's $20 million annual budget.

After that pitch, Graham went into a windup for the real product--and his salesmanship was equally masterful. Each night it was a little different. Two nights were "youth nights," so his special guests were disproportionately sports celebrities and rock singers, and his sermon played with the theme of romantic love.

He even had a formula for keeping marriages together--a chain of command in authority. First God, then the husband, then the wife and finally the children, who are responsible to the parents. "There must be acceptance and appreciation," he said.

But whatever the angle, the conclusion was the same. "With all of our best efforts, neither my generation nor the younger generation is going to bring utopia to earth. Only Christ will do that. We are to work at it and pray for it but ultimately and eventually utopia will only come when human nature has been transformed." Then he'd raise his arms and voice in a clarion call to the unsaved to come forward and accept Christ. He had confronted them with problems of human relations, of social inequality, of government corruption--problems that dwarf men into insignificance and inadequacy. And then he had given them a way out--The way out.

"Don't put it off. Don't wait until tomorrow. You might be dead then," he implored. His words were identical each night. "Don't let distance keep you from Christ," he'd say, especially to those in the upper deck.

And then they came streaming forward. From my seat in the press box, they looked like ants. But close up, they were a melee of starry-eyed couples, teetering old folks, prissy little girls with their hands over their mouths to cover the giggles, middle-aged couples and singles.

For 15 minutes each night they spilled forward from their cold, hard seats to join Graham in Christ's verdant kingdom--located between the first and third base lines. Over the week, more than 10,000 came forward for the five minute registration session with a corps of counselors who put the newly won souls on Graham's mailing lists and sent their names to local ministers for safe-keeping.

****

One night, I followed the throngs down to the field to find out what had siezed them. But they didn't know.

"Were you inspired?" I ventured.

"No," they said.

"Well, did you have a vision?" I asked.

"No," they said.

"Then what are you doing here?" I wailed.

"We're rededicating our lives to Christ," they said with frightening unanimity.

A family of nine from nearby Rome, Ga., had another answer. They were farmers, and had driven the truck to the Crusade. They did not come to be saved or to be inspired. "I was saved when I was six and I can get inspiration any time I want on my knees at home," the matriarch told me tersely.

"Don't you see? He makes it all so simple," she said. "He doesn't use big words or complicated ideas. Even our minister back home--we can't tell what he's talking about anymore." She was half exasperated, half emotional.

Her son, dressed in overalls, took over: "Nobody talks to the little man anymore. But Billy Graham--he's talking to us. That's why we came. We'd drive a lot farther than this to hear a man like that."

****

The route from the suburbs to Atlanta Stadium leads past downtown Atlanta and its new, skyscraping skyline. The stocky, black Equitable Building dominates the scene, its white lights blinking out "Equitable, Equitable, Equitable" for all Crusade-goers to see.

A group of suburban Baptists, with whom I rode a chartered bus to and from the Crusade one night, liked that sight. They told me so. They liked the idea that Atlanta had progressed--taking them along with it--but they didn't like the accompanying threats. They didn't like the fact that blacks were running their school system, that a black was the front runner in the mayor's race. They didn't like the proposal for a housing project in their neighborhood, which would bring down their property value. But they were going to rededicate their lives to Christ. "There's a spiritual hunger in a city like Atlanta," the minister told me as the bus sped past a once-pastoral landscape being laid to waste by bulldozers.

They were going to listen to Graham talk about brotherhood, the problems of the poor and downtrodden, the simple virtues. It was all going to seem very equitable. Then they were going to go home and feel good about themselves. After all, they were saved.

****

Billy Graham finally flew out of Atlanta on a wing and a prayer, leaving behind more saved souls than the city deserves. I was left with a question: Did he buy his own package? Not Christianity, but did he really believe that those people had acquired religious conviction, had dedicated their lives to truth and justice--in a baseball stadium?

Or did he prefer being an image with answers for everyone--even for those who didn't want to ask questions. I wondered, too, if by now he had any control over what he was doing--if maybe the whole operation, like the problems he preached about, had gotten so complex and powerful that it acquired a force of its own, and was out of his hands.

Graham is more a figure than a man, a walking mannequin who has sold his soul to the devils of modern image-making. His reverence is wrapped in Hollywood holiness, and the whole package is better suited to a television screen or a stadium platform than a room filled with real people.

Graham's workers are homey, plodding yes-men; they do drudge work; they carry pamphlets detailing The Way; they stutter when asked questions that aren't in the pamphlets. They are the peddlers and Billy Graham is their product--a very marketable product.

Photographs of Billy Graham by Al Stephenson. Reprinted by permission of the Atlanta Journal--Constitution.