Two broad interpretations have dominated portraits of the modern South that took shape during Graham's career. Some have cast the South as a dynamic region of economic vitality and demographic relevance (the foil of the Rustbelt North), while others have seen it as the birthplace of a popular conservative ascendancy traversing both faith and politics (the foil of the bicoastal liberal elite).13 These seemingly contradictory interpretations are evident in the constructed landscape of the region. The banking center of Charlotte, North Carolina, and the fundamentalist bastion of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, can be seen to symbolize modernity and reaction, respectively, while Newt Gingrich's booming Cobb County, Georgia, and Pat Robertson's colossal Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) headquarters in Virginia Beach blend elements of both. Those interpretations are embodied in an equally diverse range of political symbols, including Richard Nixon's and Ronald Reagan's outreach to the white South, Jimmy Carter's and Bill Clinton's New South personas, and George W. Bush's vaunted electoral “base.” Significantly for this book, all of these symbols also intersect in some way with the life and career of Billy Graham. The evangelist was born in 1918 in what half a century later became a thriving section of Charlotte, briefly attended Bob Jones College (then located in Cleveland, Tennessee) in 1936, operated an evangelistic office in suburban Atlanta from 1964 to 1976, and dedicated the CBN building in 1979.
Recalled at the close of Graham's remarkable sixty-year run as an evangelist and pastor to kings and commoners alike, such intersections might appear as coincidences or asides in a career that has taken place mostly outside the South. They might also be viewed as mere epiphenomena of the larger historical forces that, through the blessings of time and place, propelled Graham toward fame and influence. After all, the evangelist has not resided in his hometown since the mid-1930s, lasted less than one semester under the thumb of Bob Jones, Sr., maintained his organization's official headquarters in Minneapolis until the present century, and moved comfortably among political figures as liberal as Sargent Shriver and as conservative as Strom Thurmond. For these and other reasons, many Americans, regardless of their theological and political leanings, see Graham as a transcendent icon—and, in an era of culture wars and intense partisanship, as a beacon of stability and graciousness. He has, indeed, become all of these things. However, it would be unfortunate for our understanding of Graham's historical legacy, as well as recent southern history, if his familiarity was to overwhelm his complexity.
Graham, Evangelicalism, and Social Change
Any attempt to interpret how Graham affected his home region of the South requires a step back to consider the influence of modern American evangelicalism on public life. This, in turn, necessitates a historically grounded understanding of evangelicalism that distinguishes it from fundamentalism, its older sibling. Modern evangelicalism has its roots in the pointed doctrinal debates (and periodic divisions) that riled American Protestantism during the early decades of the twentieth century. Fundamentalism, an identity both chosen and ascribed, strongly resisted the influence of theological liberals (eventually termed “modernists”) who saw a need to reinterpret their faith amid the challenges posed by biblical higher criticism and Darwinian scientific inquiry. Fundamentalists sought to hold the doctrinal line in what they came to view as a fallen, secularized society. Beginning in the 1940s, evangelicalism in its modern sense emerged as a moderate critique of the fundamentalist hard line. Most of these “neo-evangelicals” had few serious theological qualms with fundamentalism, yet they did desire greater engagement with society at large. By the late 1950s, the divide between fundamentalists and evangelicals had widened to the point of self-conscious differentiation. While fundamentalists initiated the breach, evangelicals like Graham were aware of the public relations benefit of distinguishing themselves from their confrontational (and often controversial) brethren.
Since the 1970s, evangelicalism has boomed both as a badge of identity and as a subject of inquiry for journalists and scholars, in the process stretching the limits of the term's conceptual clarity. At least one prominent historian of American Christianity has recently wished it good riddance as a unit of analysis.14 As a historian, I appreciate how giving such a term descriptive power risks belying the tensions, fluidity, and general diversity of American Christianity. Yet I also recall my own experiences coming of age in a small Shenandoah Valley community. As a bookish child, I was aware of the theological differences between my rural Mennonite congregation and the Southern Baptist church back in town—especially on matters of military service. Still, despite their overall lack of interaction, the Mennonites and Baptists of Stuarts Draft, Virginia, shared much more than the practice of adult baptism. My own decision to declare my Christian faith came at the young but not preternatural age of ten, and featured elements that might have occurred inside both sanctuaries: the response to an anticipated invitation during the annual revival week, the singing of “Just as I Am, Without One Plea” and “Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling,” the slow walk forward, the laying on of hands. In worship style and other respects, my fellow congregants drew inspiration not from the prophetic martyrdom of their sixteenth-century Anabaptist forebears but rather from the evangelical instincts of neighboring believers.
Evangelicalism was an avowed, internalized identity for many of the subjects considered here—including, of course, for Graham. Like “liberal” and “conservative,” “evangelical” has become a pervasive modifier that, while often frustratingly vague and perpetually contested, has joined the pantheon of American identities. During the years considered here, evangelicalism stood apart from Protestant liberalism and most other forms of mainline denominationalism, as well as from Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy. Analytically, evangelicalism remains a useful category for interpreting the type of cross-denominational faith Graham and many others upheld—a piety too specific for the label “Protestant” or “conservative,” yet obviously much too broad for “Baptist” or “Pentecostal.”15 My intention is not casually to disregard important distinctions among the many traditions that inform modern American evangelicalism, be they theological, denominational, or regional in substance. The very nature of Graham's ministry, however, has lent itself to an elision of such categories. Evangelicalism has worked most influentially on a large and small scale, as a sweeping social force and as a discrete movement within individual souls. The same is true of the expression of evangelicalism most identified with Graham: revivalism.16
This book employs an expansive understanding of evangelicalism as operating simultaneously on theological, sociological, and temperamental levels. Evangelicalism holds to doctrinal orthodoxy and biblicism, while emphasizing the born-again moment, a personal relationship with God, and the importance of sharing the good news of salvation. It also features self-conscious, cross-denominational networks of like-minded believers. Finally, evangelicalism can be seen as an attitudinal posture with several leanings. It tends toward individuation and a pietistic emphasis on the correspondence between personal conversion and the transformation of character. Also, during the years considered here, it evinced a habitual wariness toward nonreligious social institutions, along with a more forthright skepticism about religious and political liberalism—stances rooted in ambivalence about the status of evangelicalism in American society.
The above characteristics have applied to evangelicalism in both the South and the nation at large, even though the southern variety has tended to maintain distinctive institutions and communities of discourse. Within the South, even into the present century, evangelicalism has often functioned much more as a general faith.17 It has served as a kind of informal establishment or point of reference in keeping with the broader American tradition of church-state separation and denominational pluralism. Significantly, Graham bridged both the national and the more particularly southern varieties of evangelicalism.18
Delineating the sociopolitical space Graham occupied as a postwar white evangelical requires understanding the nature of his social ethic, here termed evangelical universalism. This social ethic, which subsequent chapters explore in detail, featured three coexistent (if not always complementary) tenets: that the individual soul is the primary theological