Billy Graham: An Appreciation: Wherever One Travels Around the World, The Names of Three Baptists Are Immediately Known and Appreciated--Jimmy Carter, Billy Graham and Martin Luther King, Jr. One Is a Politician, One an Evangelist, And the Other Was a Civil Rights Leader. All of Them Have Given Baptists and the Christian Faith a Good Reputation (Biography‪)‬

This article focuses on the worldwide evangelist, Billy Graham. My intention in this article is to offer a personal appreciation of Graham from the vantage point of my acquaintance with him for forty years. Many articles and books have been written about him. Some are hagiographic, and others are downright mean and unfair. When one lives to be eighty-seven, there is time for critical appraisal even before one dies. The real story of Billy Graham and his influence on American religious life and indeed on Christianity worldwide, however, will be written by historians at a later date. Probably no evangelist in history has left behind more written material than Graham. He has written more than twenty-five books and hundreds of articles and sermons. During my student days at Harvard Divinity School, I observed that a number of young Southern Baptist intellectuals were embarrassed by Graham because he represented revivalism and a part of Southern culture that they rejected. Furthermore, they did not regard him as someone whom they could cite as a Baptist intellectual or thinker. Sadly, most of these intellectuals soon deserted the Baptist fold and found homes in other denominations, not realizing at that time that, for the most part, they were joining Protestant groups which were in serious decline and hoping for another Billy Graham to shore up their losses. Of course, I was at Harvard in the early 1960s, long before the thought of a conservative resurgence within the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) or a fundamentalist takeover of the denominational leadership.