A Prophet with Honor

by William C. Martin

  When he preaches, Franklin speaks directly and with authority. He has a good sense of humor, but relies little on jokes or other devices many preachers use to seduce and hold an audience. Instead, he moves quickly into the heart of his rather short sermons, identifying sins by name and warning that death and hell are their consequence, declaring what God has done through his Son to repair the breach between himself and fallen humanity, and calling on his audiences to repent at the foot of the cross, ask for the needed and promised forgiveness, and accept Christ as Lord of their lives. Whereas his father told of other people who rebelled against God, Franklin draws on his own biography. “For years I didn’t want Jesus Christ in my life,” he confesses. “I ran from him. I was afraid if I gave my life to him I’d have a spiritual straitjacket all my life. I wanted to be free. I wanted to make myself happy. There was a lot of fun, no question, but there was an emptiness. There was a big hole in the middle of Franklin Graham.”

  Accounts of wickedness overcome have long been a staple of evangelistic preaching, but Franklin’s message of rebellion fired by emptiness obviously strikes a chord with his audiences, heavily populated with “baby boomers” and their offspring. Their awareness that Franklin was indeed a bit of a rebel—even if smoking, drinking, and driving fast do not hold the top positions in everyone’s list of sins—provides an authentic touch. This image is undergirded by his having Dennis Agajanian, Ricky Skaggs, and other tough-looking contemporary musicians open his programs and his own habit of preaching in jeans, boots, a black leather jacket, and a Harley-Davidson baseball cap. (“I dress this way not because it’s an image. I just enjoy it. When I was at the White House . . . I wore a suit. I know when to put a tie on.”) Most of his listeners also know that Franklin actually rides a Harley, flies his own plane into dangerous regions and dodges artillery fire and snipers’ bullets in his work with Samaritan’s Purse, and once famously cut down a tree with more than 700 rounds from an assault rifle. The combination of being both William Franklin Graham III and Franklin Graham, Rebel with a Cause and Christian Soldier of Fortune, has powerful appeal, and Franklin has used his legacy, his license, and his liberty to good effect, drawing ever larger crowds to his services.

  As Billy Graham’s medical problems continued their slow but inexorable course, the need to think seriously and concretely about the future of BGEA became more pressing. Franklin’s expanding ministry, both in the pulpit and with Samaritan’s Purse, had improved his stature among organization stalwarts and generated increasing speculation that he would eventually take the reins. According to Time, Ruth Graham “became increasingly vocal in her belief that Franklin should eventually be his father’s successor.” Franklin apparently also thought it possible and reportedly broached the subject with his father early in 1995. Apparently the elder Graham was not ready to make a decision. Some accounts say he “rebuffed” his son’s inquiry. Franklin said only that, while it was plausible that he might one day head BGEA, “[my father] didn’t say it to me.” Neither did he say it to anyone else, at least publicly. However, the option to remain noncommittal would soon be taken from him by circumstances beyond his control.

  In conversations among BGEA insiders, some words serve as shorthand for signal moments in Billy Graham’s ministry: The Canvas Cathedral, Harringay, Madison Square Garden, Berlin, Lausanne, Amsterdam. For less glorious reasons, Toronto joined that list in June 1995. At a standard appearance before a large civic club on the day before a crusade was scheduled to begin at Toronto’s Sky Dome, Graham collapsed, felled by a bleeding colon. From his hospital bed he asked T. W. Wilson to contact Franklin and ask him to take his place in the pulpit at the opening service. What followed is variously described, depending on one’s place in the audience, backstage, or among the dramatis personae, as a series of innocent misunderstandings, an unattractive struggle for power, or, less darkly, a mirthless comedy of errors.

  Wilson called Ruth Graham, who called Franklin and told him his father was ill and wanted him to preach in his stead. Franklin had returned from Rwanda the day before, and his plane was being serviced. But he quickly arranged for a substitute and, with his wife and a daughter, flew to Montreat the next morning to pick up Ruth, then headed for Toronto. Before leaving, Franklin had called his sister Anne Lotz and asked her to pray for him. Concerned about their father and also recognizing the symbolic significance of having her brother step into the famed evangelist’s shoes in a major international setting with the spotlight at full wattage, Anne booked a flight and arrived in Toronto in mid-afternoon. Not long after she checked into her hotel, she received a call from a distraught Franklin, who told her he had just been informed that he would not be preaching that evening. Instead, associate evangelist Ralph Bell, an Ontario native, would fill in for their father. The decision had been made that morning, but no one had told Franklin when he was met at the airport. “My mother went straight to the hospital to see Daddy,” Franklin recalled, “and I went to the hotel room to work on my notes. About 5:00 o’clock—two hours after BGEA issued a press release naming Bell as the speaker for that evening—one of Daddy’s aides dropped by my room and said, ‘Franklin, I’ve got to talk to you.’”

  Anne was furious and demanded to know who was responsible for this turn of events. Franklin wasn’t sure, but gave her the names of the people he presumed were involved. The basic outlines of what happened next are not in much dispute. Anne and Franklin had emotional meetings with their father, with members of the crusade committee, and with key BGEA personnel, including Rick Marshall, who was directing the Toronto crusade. Anne and Franklin thought it important that their father’s wishes be honored; Marshall and the committee contended that Billy Graham crusades had always been characterized as local events and therefore the local committee should have the final say in such matters. The committee refused to change its decision but would allow Franklin to “bring a greeting” from his father and give a brief report on his mission to Rwanda. They would get back to him the next day about whether he could preach at subsequent services. That evening Franklin used his allotted time to give a quite brief evangelistic message rather than a report on Rwanda, and Ralph Bell preached as planned. The next morning, when representatives of the crusade committee tried to reach Franklin to tell him they wanted Bell to preach at the remaining services as well, they learned that he had already flown back to North Carolina.

  Beneath that consensus view of the known facts lie several conflicting explanations and attributions of motive. It appears that the Canadian committee did make the decision to ask Ralph Bell to fill in for Billy Graham and, when pressed by the younger Grahams, stood by their decision. Why they did so is less clear. Although Bell is a Canadian and had filled in for Graham on other occasions, some insiders doubt the local committee was even aware of that and assert that BGEA representatives must have suggested him to the local committee. They also note that John Wesley White is a Canadian but was apparently not mentioned as a candidate for the task, perhaps because he was known as one of Franklin’s staunchest advocates. That the push for Bell as Billy’s replacement came from inside BGEA also fits with a report that the chairman of the local committee claimed not to have known of Billy Graham’s wish until he met with Anne and Franklin.

  Those who feel the decision to go with Bell was at least defensible point to BGEA’s tradition of local control of the crusades, but they also speculate that both Rick Marshall and the local committee probably felt it unwise, after long months of extensive and expensive preparation, to turn Billy Graham’s pulpit over to a relatively unseasoned evangelist, even if he did have his father’s name, genes, and blessing. Franklin and those who take his side have a less sanguine view. Franklin questioned both the behavior and motive of those who had countered his father’s request. He and Anne certainly understood the potential symbolic power involved in picking up his fallen father’s mantle at an event already making international news because of Billy’s collapse. “That’s what some people were afraid of,�
� he said. “I was honored that my father wanted me to preach, that he thought I was ready to fill in for him. I don’t think my father’s crusade directors were loyal to him. That is what he asked for, and they didn’t support him.”

  In an interview not long after that event, Franklin showed his awareness that religious organizations, even those with the finest reputations, are not immune to the forces that characterize “worldly” organizations. Noting that control of BGEA’s $90-million annual budget could provide significant incentive to those wanting to shape the organization’s—and their own—-future, he said, “Listen, people will shoot you for $20. For $90 million, who knows?”

  It is worth noting that no one believed Ralph Bell had a hand in stirring the pot, and Anne has said that Bell encouraged her to try to persuade the committee to let Franklin preach. By all accounts, Bell acquitted himself admirably, in and out of the pulpit, throughout this trying time, preaching to huge crowds each of the first three nights. Billy Graham recovered sufficiently to preach at the last two services.

  Franklin’s family and friends worried about the impact this would have on him. Years later, both Anne and Franklin acknowledged that she had displayed more open outrage than he, and she speculated that perhaps both her presence and anger had been providential. “Franklin handled it so well,” she said, “but I feel like maybe God had me there to go with him, and that for me to be outraged helped him. He was concerned with calming me down, so maybe I was able to vent some of the anger he felt and also stand by him.” Less angry than concerned, BGEA photographer Russ Busby sat down with Franklin a few days later and told him, “I don’t know what happened, but there is one thing you need to consider. What really matters is what happens inside us. Don’t let this turn you bitter against God or anyone else. Make sure in your own heart that you’ve got it worked out. Because that’s where the problem could lie.”

  For a time, Franklin insisted that he did not know the details of the Toronto affair, that he never wanted to learn them, and further, that it really didn’t matter. But years later, in a softer mood, he acknowledged, “There have been politics for a number of years in BGEA. And at some point there were people who worked very hard—I won’t say against me, but they certainly didn’t work for me.” He recalled a widely publicized dispute between Samaritan’s Purse and the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability in 1992. Questioned by the watchdog group for some of his organization’s accounting practices and for his personal use of the company plane, Franklin withdrew Samaritan’s Purse from the ECFA in April 1992, dismissing the investigation as the work of “crummy little Evangelical busybodies” who were jealous of his success. He insisted that “[ECFA] cannot hold up one piece of paper, not one document, and say, ‘This is where we got him.’ They can’t do it.” Whatever problems existed were cleared up quickly, and Samaritan’s Purse membership in ECFA was reinstated in January 1993. Two years later, the organization’s president dismissed it as “a bump in the road. And now it’s gone.” Looking back, Franklin saw it as part of an effort to sidetrack his ascension to leadership of BGEA. “That whole thing with ECFA,” he said, was all political. It was an effort by some people to tarnish Franklin. “‘We don’t want to destroy him, but let’s taint him so that he’s not in the running, so that his credibility is blackened a little bit.’”

  The awkwardness and tension generated by the turmoil in Toronto forced Billy Graham to recognize that, by leaving questions of succession and leadership unresolved, he ran the risk of having members of his team, long noted for its harmony and relative lack of infighting, split into factions that could undercut its effectiveness after he passed from the scene. This would hurt not only the organization he had led for nearly half a century but the entire Evangelical world. A few months later, Graham took action. First, he joined Franklin in a father-and-son crusade in Saskatoon, which coincided with the publication of Franklin’s autobiography, Rebel with a Cause: Finally Comfortable with Being Graham. That symbolic joint lifting of the torch was followed shortly afterward, on November 7, by the BGEA board’s electing Franklin to the newly created position of first vice-chairman, “with direct succession to become chairman and CEO should his father ever become incapacitated.” Billy Graham retained his position as chairman of the association, but Franklin gradually took increased responsibility and in November 2000 was officially named CEO. John Corts remained as president and continued to oversee the Minneapolis operation on a day-to-day basis, but Franklin began to spend more time at the headquarters and to take a real leadership role. In January 2002, Corts retired, and Franklin assumed the additional role of BGEA president.

  Not long after it became clear that Franklin would eventually head the ministry, a BGEA veteran advised him to “keep one thing in mind. Most of the people in the Minneapolis office honestly believe, and I believe with them, that they have given their lives to your father’s ministry and, through that, to God. Don’t lose sight of that. Whatever differences you may have with them, keep in mind that they really have dedicated their lives to your father’s ministry and to God’s work.” Franklin appeared to have heard that counsel, volunteering that “with BGEA we have a leadership that is older and retiring. I’m coming in and trying not to step on toes and slowly trying to fit in.”

  Those who knew Franklin best recognized the potential for friction, because of both his new authority and his old personality. Soon after he was named Vice-Chairman and Successor, a cousin, Mel Graham, observed that “the handful that would resist Franklin clearly see him as a threat. Uncle Billy has got a lot more timid, a lot more easygoing here in his later years. And Franklin is a man of action. If somebody’s chain needs to be jerked, he’ll jerk it.” No one doubts that Franklin is more direct and less averse to conflict than was his father, but most observers gave him high marks—improving significantly over time—for his sensitivity both to his father’s continuing position as the dominant figure in the association and to the predictable anxiety felt by people about possible changes in the roles they had occupied for decades, and perhaps even about how secure their positions would be in a new regime.

  One BGEA staffer attributed what difficulty existed not only to normal resistance to change on the part of entrenched team veterans, but also to Billy Graham’s reluctance to cede control even in the face of clearly diminished abilities. “We have a relay race, and the guy who created the baton and has been carrying it for fifty years has come to the point where he ought to hand it off, but he wants to take another lap. That has been a problem. Some of the people who are extremely loyal to him and to the ways we have always done things want to point out everything that Franklin is going to do or trying to do or thought about doing or mentioned in an elevator, and when they bring it up to Billy, he says he is not sure about that. But when you pin him down, he says, ‘Sure, that’s what I want to do.’ I think eventually it is going to work out fine, but has it been a model transition? No. I think everybody would say that.”

  Russ Busby also acknowledged Billy Graham’s difficulty in passing the baton, but felt he had loosened his grip sufficiently by mid–2001 to effect a relatively smooth transfer. “It took a little bit of time, but I think God has given Mr. Graham peace about this. I think he has peace about Franklin’s motives for preaching. They are not, from my viewpoint, self-serving. I don’t think he’s ever wanted to run the Billy Graham Association. He’s got his own organization. But in the present situation, someone needs to take over. I think Billy also had some concern as to whether Franklin was ready for it. And when it is your own son, you want to make sure this is right, that you are not pushing your son into a place God has not prepared for him. In my mind, that would have been Billy’s biggest concern. I think he has peace about that now. I also think God has worked in Franklin’s life and accomplished what needed to be done there for him to take over. In my mind, God has put his stamp of approval on Franklin.”

  Without a doubt, the spectacular growth and success of Samaritan’s Purse
greatly enhanced Franklin’s standing in the Evangelical world and helped convince skeptics that he had the ability to run BGEA. In fiscal year 2001, Samaritan’s Purse income topped $179 million, including nearly $24 million from its Canadian affiliate. This outstripped BGEA revenues by approximately $62 million, a bracing response to those who feared that Franklin would never be able to attract the financial support that had come to his father. Audited statements revealed that 91 percent of Samaritan’s Purse income was expended on ministry, an admirably high proportion for any nonprofit organization. The organization’s facilities are extensive, modern, and comfortable, but neither lavish nor designed to draw attention to or pay homage to their leader. Located several miles from Boone, North Carolina, the complex is not only rather difficult to find, but has no signage to indicate one has arrived.