AMERICA'S MINISTER:

All in the family: As Billy Graham steps down, will his kids shape the future of American evangelicalism? (JEFFERY L. SHELER, 12/23/02, US News)

It was a blustery evening in Dallas, the last night of Billy Graham's 412th crusade, and a record crowd filled Texas Stadium, spilling into an adjacent parking lot where thousands of chairs were set up beneath a giant JumboTron screen. The young and the old, parents with small children, seekers, true believers, and the merely curious--all had come out that October night to see and hear, many believed for the last time, the world's most famous preacher. After nearly an hour of music and other preliminaries, the frail, white-haired evangelist slowly made his way to the pulpit to deliver the same simple message he has preached to more than 210 million people in over 180 countries over more than half a century: "God loves you and gave his son to die for you; repent and receive Jesus as your savior."

But as he started out that night, he took longer than usual publicly thanking his coworkers for their hard work and support over the years. "People ask me, 'Isn't this your last crusade?' They say it very hopefully, some of them," Graham said, smiling. "And I say, 'I don't know. That's in God's hands.' I never want to say never, because we don't know."

For more than half a century, Billy Graham has reigned as the single most visible and revered figure in American Protestantism. But with the 84-year-old Graham in failing health (he suffers from Parkinson's disease, among other ailments), both the future of his ministry and the fate of the broader evangelical movement are poised at a crucial moment. And into that moment have stepped two of Graham's own children, Anne and Franklin. [...]

[I]f there were anything akin to royalty in American Protestantism, it would be the house of Graham. There are plenty of notables in the modern evangelical world--religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, former Watergate figure Charles Colson, and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, to name a few. But none come close to the influence and stature of Billy Graham, who helped create the evangelical movement, a loosely knit network of church and parachurch organizations representing some 60 million to 70 million Americans, from Southern Baptists to Pentecostals, who say they are "born again" (the term used by evangelicals for the experience of conversion, when one personally accepts Jesus Christ as savior and Lord).

What has kept him in such a position of high esteem for so long, observers say, is the simplicity of his message (he avoids potentially divisive doctrinal discourses), the integrity of his ministry (he receives a flat salary and has never handled ministry finances), and the ability to resist the seductions that have brought down so many other religious luminaries in recent decades. His dynamic manner, good looks, and personal charm haven't hurt, either. "He is the most attractive public face that evangelical Protestantism has offered to the wider world in the last half century," says Mark Noll, a historian at Wheaton (Ill.) College, Graham's alma mater, and author of American Evangelical Christianity.

Succession. Whether his children or anyone else can preserve the Graham dynasty is uncertain.

The Reverend Graham's importance in modern America was probably most clearly underscored after 9-11, when it was unimagineable that anyone, other than the President himself, would hold center stage at the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance service at Washington's National Cathedral. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 17, 2002 9:39 AM