Billy Graham's Legacy in Serious Question

[Stephen Fox]

I am sending some background info to NPR 1a program and hope they have a panel his legacy deserves soon. I see on Facebook where my otherwise esteemed friend Carson Newman President Obrien has given over to hagiography in tribute.

I am hoping Furman has a panel on Graham before mid April that does him justice warts and all. I learned just Weds on his passing that Will Campbell's great friend at Furman LD Johnson was crusade chair for the 1966 Billy Graham crusade at the ole TExtile Hall in Greenville. my friend Steve Wright got saved in that one when we drove the 50 miles from Gaffney.

And Furman is the alma mater of Graham, his definitive biographer. Hoping Doug Cumming of WLU, son of Newsweek bureau chief in Atlanta in the 60's can come talk about Graham and Frady maybe in the presence of some of Billy Gee's offspring other than Franklin.

Most of you know Billy asked his tombstone epitaph simply say: PREACHER

[Stephen Fox]

Softer from his Billy Graham and the Judgments of History take
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/remem ... o-millions

And my eulogy blog is up now at asfoxseesit.

[Jim]

Fox blog: But here on earth some of us in Jesus Name will give Franklin Hell till he comes around to better discernment. No...not in Jesus's name...just in the name of your own fit of jealousy. After you visit a few earthquake sites and construct some sort of housing to keep folks out of the elements, maybe you can give Franklin hell. Until then, stew in your own juices and continue to eat crow.

[William Thornton]

Well, let's talk legacy. BG is in heaven, his body to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda and fox is still banned from Collinsville BC and on severe restriction at the liberry?

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

See my entry of a few minutes ago with a link to a pastor oped in Greenville News about differing Furman accounts of the life of Billy Graham

My last shot in my blog at Franklin was an afterthought. I am reconsidering it.

[Stephen Fox]

[Stephen Fox]

Butler and Balmer both have lengthy pieces at religiondispatches.org. Butler says Graham died on the same day as MalcolmX and goes from there in a provocative piece that ends with a flourish about Paul Ryan laying Graham in the Rotunda that I think is spot on.

Balmer is stronger here than his brief conversation on PBS Newshour. He examines how Graham deceived JFK in 60 but leaves out Billy's deceit with Jimmy Carter in 1980.

One key point they both miss is Al Mohler's championing Graham's role in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention

[Jim]

USA Today: "It's the passing of an era,'' said Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth College expert on evangelical Christianity. He called Graham "the most prominent religious celebrity of the 20th Century,'' a period that included popes John XXIII and John Paul II, the 14th Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Norman Vincent Peale.

[Rvaughn]

"Pastor" to Presidents:

One of a kind:

[Sandy]

[Stephen Fox]

For the last couple years I have linked Balmer's easily googled piece Billy Graham and the Judgments of History. He also has an online chat with Billy Gee's most recent hagiographer Grant Wacker where Balmer expresses his reservations as Balmer did a few years ago in person in Birmingham Alabama.

Mohler's brag about Billy abetting the fundy takeover of the SBC is a matter of record on tape.

And you can find the line up of the Truth for a New Generation conferences as well.

Apparently you did not read Balmer and Butler at religion dispatches nor have you read Frady's 500 pages on Graham. I read em in 1979 when they were first published and the last 50 pages again last night. I hope you saw in the Furman thread what Doug Cumming texted me yesterday.

Had a good conversation with a staffer at FBC Spartanburg Friday. He's a nice guy but his history and tunnel vision on this matter almost as bad as yours but he does have better taste in film.

CN President and my friend Randall Obrien did Carlyle Marney a disservice with a gushing piece in Huff Post.

One of Billy's grand daughters sent me a nice facebook message yesterday.

You have a blessed day.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/new ... y1uahyH.01

[Stephen Fox]

[William Thornton]

Tripe

[Sandy]

[Haruo]

In that last sentence I assume you meant Franklin's. not Billy's, when you wrote "his own". It looked to me like it meant Billy's own, which didn't make sense. But it still leaves me unsure whose name and whose ministry are referred to immediately following the "his own".

[Sandy]

[Haruo]

Thanks, yes, it is.

[Jim]

[Haruo]

My main problem with Francis is he doesn't speak Esperanto like the last few did.

[Stephen Fox]

http://www.vnews.com/Column-How-Will-Hi ... m-15854797

I knew he would come through after the funeral.

Retired Mercer Proff Colin Harris, a frequent contributor to ethicsdaily texted me after reading the above Piece: "Balmer gets it; a remarkable analysis". A former assistant to SAmford President Tom Corts said Balmer's piece was magnificent.

Doug Cumming the son of the bureau chief of Newsweek in the mid 60s texted me about Marshall Frady's magisterial 500 pages on Graham in 79, A Parable of American Righteousness; an Egyptian in the Mideast told Frady Graham as an American innocent, was deadly. Comparing him to Melville's Billy Budd in Parable of American Righteousness, Frady connects those dots. An ambitious literary achievement.

Mohler boasting about Graham's enthusiastic assistance with the Takeover is on one of his podcasts, his interview with Charles Marsh about three years ago.

You see in the Balmer piece he talks of Graham's help for Gerald Ford in 76. That same year Ford and Graham called on Yankees star Bobby Richardson to run for Congress. With the financial support of Upstate SC Textile Magnates many of them active Baptist lay leadership, Richardson hit a road block when he came to Gaffney and I asked him a question, the subject of a blog coming soon.

More tripe for Thornton. History for my friends at Davidson, Furman and Wofford!!!!!!!

[Stephen Fox]

https://www.redletterchristians.org/let ... pzfspRWmi8

A few years ago here husband last name Armfield was on staff at a nondenominational church near the OldPost office about a Mile NW of the the Peace Center in Downtown Greenville SC, more in the Furman direction than Bob Jones for whatever that may be worth.

Apparently the CT opinion piece has renewed a conversation in the family, asit has with Randall Balmer and the wider CT community. See Balmer's piece today intheLA Times about the Galli's evolution at CT

[Stephen Fox]

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/ ... 73069.html

[Stephen Fox]

A day after Graham's gdaughter by Franklin, Cissy, spoke on behalf of Trump at the RNC, the Tchvidjian gdaughter Jerushah now apparently remarried in Greenville SC said Trump is not for her. She explored some family dynamics in her piece.

And there is growing conversation at the Spartanburg Herald Journal facebook page about Graham and FBC and the truth for a new generation conferences that paved the way for Trump. All this coinciding with new book on Fox Hoax News by Steltzer that asks questions with grave implications for the witness of FBC Sburg, a Franklin Graham and Trump enabler.

Also see religion dispatches on Falwell Sr, Liberty ideology, abortion poliitcs etc in August 31 religiondispatches.org