Billy Graham

For more than six decades, Billy Graham played a prominent role in shaping Americans’ outlook on the critical religious, political, and cultural issues of the day. By drawing on new sources and by asking new questions of old sources, Billy Graham: American Pilgrim offers groundbreaking accounts of Graham’s storied career. The distinguished contributors offer fresh perspectives on the major changes Graham brought to American Christianity, World Christianity, church and state, the Cold War, race relations, American manhood and family, intellectual life, religious media, Christian relief work, and Christian music. Charting his titanic career provides a many-paned window for viewing the history and character of our present and recent past while also attending to Graham’s personal evolution and complexity on these issues. Yet Graham stayed true to evangelical precepts, as he addressed contemporary questions of religion, politics, and culture, as well as perennial questions of spiritual and daily life, that stretched his tradition to its limits. The volume presents this interplay of change and continuity in the life of Graham as a pilgrimage. But Graham lived his journey on an international stage, influencing the world around him in ways large and small—ways that still echo in today’s religious, political, and cultural arenas.