Just As I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham

by Billy Graham

The sponsoring group’s chairman, Dr. Josip Horak, who was also president of the Yugoslavian Baptist Convention, was exuberant: “Never before have gathered so many Protestants, and it is the first open-air meeting since the war,” he said as he welcomed us. “We couldn’t dream that something like this can happen in our country.”

  More than 7,000 stood in a steady, drenching rain for the two meetings. Many had traveled all night by train; others had taken a three-day bus ride from Macedonia; some had come from as far away as Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Romania.

  “I don’t believe I’ve seen people anywhere in the world stay in pouring rain like this to hear the Gospel,” I said to them. “I’ll never forget this.” Walter Smyth and T.W., who were with me, agreed it was a thrilling sight. Response to the Gospel Invitation also encouraged us. It stirred me to see strong men and women embrace each other with tears of joy at what God had wrought in those few hours.

  Equally inspiring was the Friday night prayer meeting I attended at a little Baptist church upon our arrival in Zagreb. People so packed the small, hot room that I wondered if there would be enough oxygen! After responding to their request for a brief message, I concluded this way: “We are gathered to pray for the Crusade that begins tomorrow. . . . Nothing . . . will unite us . . . like praying together. I want to join you in prayer. I cannot understand your language, but we both know the language of Heaven. It is the language that God the Holy Spirit speaks to our hearts. . . . And so I can join you at the throne of grace.”

  The people at that meeting smiled when I told them, through the interpreter, that our prayers would be joined by those of thousands of fellow believers all over the world, who were likewise praying for the Zagreb meetings.

  At a press conference in Chicago shortly after we returned from Yugoslavia, reporters seemed to be more curious than usual.

  Had Yugoslavian officials opposed the meetings? they wondered.

  No, I replied, because Yugoslavia’s constitution allowed a certain degree of religious freedom, provided religion was exercised only in private ways and on church premises.

  Would I like to do the same thing in the Soviet Union?

  Yes, if allowed to, I said, and I added that we might eventually see one of the greatest religious awakenings of all time in that country.

  In typical American fashion, reporters questioned the meetings’ success in terms of attendance and response statistics.

  “If I can talk with one person about Christ,” I replied, “and get him to say yes to Jesus Christ, I consider that to be a very successful meeting.”

  The blessing God gave us in Yugoslavia increased my longing to penetrate with the Gospel deeper into the strongholds of atheistic Communism. Even though our schedule was filled years in advance, I kept my heart open to any firm possibility to preach in eastern Europe. At the same time, the political climate in those nations gave little hope for change, and all we could do was pray.

  Part Five

  1960–1976

  World in Upheaval

  21

  The Thousand Days

  President John F. Kennedy

  As Grady Wilson and I got on the train in Cincinnati bound for Chicago in late April 1960, we were approached by a young man who introduced himself as Pierre Salinger. Senator Jack Kennedy, he said, wanted a statement from me on the Roman Catholic issue and tolerance in the election for their use in the West Virginia Demo-cratic primary, which would take place two weeks later. Hubert Humphrey, they felt, was giving him a tight race there.

  Later during the trip he came back to me and argued his case earnestly and charmingly, but I said no. I was afraid some might interpret anything I said on the subject as an implied political endorsement. Nevertheless, he was courteous when he said good-bye to me in Chicago.

  A few days later, in Minneapolis, I received a phone call from someone who identified himself as John Kennedy. In spite of the man’s New England accent, I seriously doubted that it was he. He wanted me to say that the religious issue should play no part in the campaign and that I would not hesitate to vote for a Catholic if he was qualified. I gave the voice on the phone the same answer I had given to Salinger.

  I did not think I saw any serious problem with a Catholic in the White House. Many Protestants, however, did have concerns, including some in my own Southern Baptist denomination. Baptists had a long tradition of stressing the separation of church and state. The idea of having a president who might owe a degree of allegiance to a religious leader who was also head of a foreign political state—Vatican City—concerned some of them greatly.

  In my boyhood, Democrats in our part of North Carolina had voted against Catholic Al Smith of New York and for the victorious Republican candidate, Herbert Hoover, partly because of that same religious issue. We schoolchildren celebrated the 1928 election outcome without knowing why.

  While I turned down Mr. Salinger’s request, I also refused the insistent demands of some Protestants to come out against a Cath-olic candidate. As it turned out, Kennedy did not need my help; he swept the West Virginia primary on May 10.

  I was still in something of a bind, though. While I did not want to appear to endorse Kennedy, neither did I want to seem prejudiced against him on religious grounds. In Kennedy’s hometown of Bos-ton, I had enjoyed good rapport with Cardinal Richard J. Cushing for ten years, and I felt sincerely that it was important in our Cru-sades to foster good church relationships.

  I did not agree with some Catholic teachings and church practices, but warm acquaintance and fellowship with many in that church had long since laid to rest whatever prejudices I might have had. In addition, Hubert Humphrey, whom I had met first in Minneapolis, had introduced me to Senator Jack Kennedy some time before. One couldn’t help but like Kennedy personally. As far as his own spiritual commitment was concerned, I really had no idea. There were rumors in Washington about his personal life, but I didn’t pay too much attention to them, since gossip of all sorts was rampant there.

  In the Kennedy-Nixon contest, my position was further complicated by my known friendship with Vice President Nixon. Frankly, I thought Nixon’s eight years in the Eisenhower administration qualified him better than Kennedy’s terms in the House and Senate. A lot of people cross-examined me for a clue to my preference (which, apart from the sectarian factor, should have been fairly obvious), but I didn’t want to say much, lest a seeming denominational bias should skew perceptions.

  Once Kennedy and Nixon officially became their parties’ candidates that summer, I felt constant pressure to make an endorsement. Had I been foolish enough to declare myself, it would have been for Mr. Nixon. In May I spoke at the Southern Baptist Con-vention and made thinly veiled allusions to my preference, without giving Nixon my outright endorsement. I might have fueled some partisan flames, though, with those allusions. In retrospect, only divine intervention kept me from answering the press on that issue, especially during an eight-day Washington, D.C., Crusade in June of 1960.

  From then until early October, as the presidential campaign roared into high gear, attendance at the Baptist World Alliance in Rio de Janeiro and a series of Crusades in Europe kept me outside of the United States. It was a great relief to have the Atlantic Ocean between me and American politics.

  While overseas, I received a letter from Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, pastor of New York’s Marble Collegiate Church and proba-bly America’s best-known clergyman at the time. He had already strongly endorsed Nixon, who occasionally attended his church. Peale wanted me to go public on our mutual friend’s behalf and asked if he could talk with me about it personally while he was vacationing in Europe. I invited him to Montreux, Switzerland, where I was conducting an evangelism strategy conference with about thirty evangelical leaders. He came and addressed the group briefly, and he and I chatted privately about the U.S. presidential race. I told him that I would think and pray about his request but that I still preferred to stay out of the fray.

  One of the conferees, Clyde Taylor, then s
ecretary of the World Evangelical Fellowship, invited Dr. Peale to attend a Washington conference of religious leaders who would be discussing the campaign. I encouraged Peale to go, privately glad that I would still be in Europe and therefore unable to attend. From Europe I wrote privately to both Kennedy and his running mate, Lyndon Baines Johnson, explaining why I was not going to vote for them. It seemed only fair in view of my friendship with the competing candidates.

  The press was not admitted to the Washington conference, but when Dr. Peale came out of the meeting room, reporters asked him for his comments. He read the statement the group had formulated, which contained no explicit statement about either candidate but did express serious reservations about electing a Catholic president in light of the Constitution’s separation of church and state. While the group’s intention was to deal with the issue on a philosophical (instead of a political) level, their effort backfired and they were branded by some as anti-Catholic. Unfortunately, Dr. Peale was unfairly blamed for the whole situation, and he was hurt both personally and professionally. Later I apologized to him for whatever I might have inadvertently contributed to his problem by urging him to attend the Washington meeting.

  When I got back to the States in early October, I went to see Henry Luce at the Time & Life Building in New York City. “I want to help Nixon without blatantly endorsing him,” I said. “Any ideas?”

  Luce rested his hands behind his head. “Why don’t you write an article about Nixon the man, as you know him? If it works, we’ll use it in Life magazine.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t write whom you’re going to vote for. Just what you think of Nixon as a man.”

  I wasn’t comfortable with the idea, but I went back to our home in the mountains and started writing; the article came easily in one afternoon.

  As soon as he got it, Luce called. “Billy, this is just what we want,” he said. “I’m running it this coming week—going to feature it.”

  Pleased as I was that Luce liked the article, I was soon miserable. It was two weeks before the election, and Ruth was upset, totally opposed to my going public on a political subject. What was I getting myself and my friends into? Others who had learned about the piece called me to protest, including Governor Luther Hodges of North Carolina and Governor Frank Clement of Tennessee. Everybody seemed to agree that it was a serious mistake, but it seemed too late to do anything about it.

  On Thursday—the night the magazine went to press—Ruth and I got on our knees and asked the Lord to stop publication if it was not His will. Neither of us felt comfortable with it.

  The next day Henry Luce phoned. “Billy, last night I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “At midnight I pulled your article.”

  God had intervened!

  “Mr. Luce, I’m so relieved, I just can’t tell you.”

  “Well, it was a good piece, but I suppose this is the better part of wisdom.”

  “Listen,” I said impulsively, “what if I wrote you an article on why every Christian ought to vote? I could get it to you right away.”

  There was silence on the other end for a moment.

  “Billy, I don’t think so. I appreciate it, but no. That’s a nice thought, but it wouldn’t have the same punch. Thank you anyway.”

  For some reason I wrote the article anyway and sent it to him the next day. He called.

  “I like the new piece, more than I thought I would. But I need to tell you what I’ve decided. I’m going to run the first one after all, next issue, a week before the election.”

  “No, sir, I believe God stopped that,” I told him, explaining about our prayers.

  “I can’t argue with that,” he said. “All right, I’ll run the second one.”

  He did, and it received a gratifying response from readers.

  Right after the election, I received a phone call from my friend Senator George Smathers of Florida, who told me that the President-elect wanted to talk with me. “I’ve suggested that we have a game of golf together,” he said.

  I was delighted. The catch was what my friend Nixon would think, depressed as he was over losing the election. I called him.

  “He’s the President-elect,” Nixon said. “Every time he asks you, you have to go. I would go, so don’t think anything of it.”

  On the evening I arrived in Florida, Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy had just given birth to their son, John; so my meeting with her husband had to be postponed.

  Ten days before the inauguration, in January of 1961, Smathers phoned again. “Could you come to Palm Beach to Jack Kennedy’s father’s house next Monday to have lunch and play golf?”

  When I arrived at the Kennedy family estate, the charismatic young President-elect called to me from the window of the bedroom where he was changing clothes. “My father’s out by the pool. He wants to talk to you.”

  After we shook hands and sat down, Joseph Kennedy came straight to the point: “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “Not exactly, sir,” I admitted.

  “When I was in Stuttgart, Germany, with the president of Notre Dame University, we saw signs all around that you were preaching there, so we decided to go and see what was happening. What we saw astonished us. You were preaching through an interpreter to 60,000 people. Many responded to your call at the end. When we visited the pope three days later, we told him about it. He said he wished he had a dozen such evangelists in our church. When Jack was elected, I told him that one of the first things he should do was to get acquainted with you. I told him you could be a great asset to the country, helping heal the division over the religious problem in the campaign.”

  I felt he had greatly overestimated my influence with the public (and had perhaps overlooked God’s place in our ministry). However, I assured him that I wanted to do what I could.

  Golf was the next order of the day. After a light lunch, at which Jack asked me to pray, he introduced me to his wife, Jackie. I thought her more beautiful in person than in newspaper and magazine pictures.

  Jack himself drove us to the Seminole Golf Club at the wheel of a Lincoln convertible, with me in the front seat and George Smathers in the back. He waved at people as they recognized him, and we chatted all the way.

  At the club, Kennedy and I rode in one golf cart, Smathers and Billy Reynolds (the aluminum company president, who joined us at the club) in another. When I stood at the first tee, I was nervous as a cat. I did not hit the ball far and wound up with a double bogey.

  “I thought you played better than that,” Kennedy joked.

  “Well, sir, when I’m not playing with the President-elect, I usually do.”

  He laughed, and I felt more relaxed.

  We played only fourteen holes. On the last hole I sank a long putt.

  “I made $40 on that putt,” shouted Reynolds.

  I had a hunch there was something going in the way of a bet on the side, but they had concealed it from me.

  In the clubhouse afterward, we got into a lively discussion. Kennedy aired his view that the sixties would be filled with challenges, promises, and problems. As we sat relaxing with soft drinks, he began to talk about Vietnam. Kennedy agreed with Eisenhower’s domino theory. “If Laos goes,” he said, “all of Southeast Asia will go. Then India. We’re going to have to do something about it. Eisenhower’s got a number of people over there. We can’t allow Vietnam to fall to the Communists.”

  That was the first time I heard that Vietnam—that far-off country in the Orient—was such a problem. It all sounded so remote to me.

  On the way back to the Kennedy house, the President-elect stopped the car and turned to me. “Do you believe in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ?” he asked unexpectedly.

  “I most certainly do.”

  “Well, does my church believe it?”

  “They have it in their creeds.”

  “They don’t preach it,” he said. “They don’t tell us much about it. I’d like to know what you think.”

  I explained wh
at the Bible said about Christ coming the first time, dying on the Cross, rising from the dead, and then promising that He would come back again. “Only then,” I said, “are we going to have permanent world peace.”

  “Very interesting,” he said, looking away. “We’ll have to talk more about that someday.” And he drove on.

  Kennedy then asked me to go with him to a party he had been invited to at a private home. I accepted but felt self-conscious in my golfing clothes in front of about 100 people, including many well-known socialites who wintered in Palm Beach.

  Then the President-elect popped another surprise on me. “Billy, there are about 300 media people at the Washington Hotel I haven’t seen since I’ve been down here. I’ve got to say a word to them. Would you mind going with me?” I felt honored.

  At the hotel I sat among the press, prepared to listen to the President-elect’s comments. He started by saying that he had been playing golf with me and joked about our scores. Then the surprise: “I want to present to you Dr. Billy Graham, who’s going to answer some questions.”

  That was the first I’d heard about that! I went up to the podium, and the press dived into the religious controversy that had been so prominent during the campaign—and about which I had kept quiet. Though Mr. Kennedy was using me for his own purposes, I did not mind finally speaking out.

  “I don’t think that Mr. Kennedy’s being a Catholic should be held against him by any Protestant,” I said. “They should judge him on his ability and his character. We should trust and support our new President.”

  If I had said that before the election, I am convinced I would have been in trouble. But the statement seemed justified now. I was interviewed for a half-hour or more, Kennedy sitting off to one side.

  As we left the hotel, he asked me where I wanted to go. I told him that my wife and I were staying at the Holiday Inn at Vero Beach some distance up the coast.

  “We’ll send you back in our plane,” he offered.

  At the airport, then, I boarded the Kennedy plane, the Caroline. As we were landing after the brief flight, I noticed that the place did not look like Vero Beach. I told the pilot so. A man came running out and told us that we had landed at the Ft. Pierce airport, some fifteen miles short of our destination. We took off again and landed a few minutes later in Vero Beach.