While spreading the gospel around the world through his signature crusades, internationally renowned evangelist Billy Graham maintained a visible and controversial presence in his native South, a region that underwent substantial political and economic change in the latter half of the twentieth century. In this period Graham was alternately a desegregating crusader in Alabama, Sunbelt booster in Atlanta, regional apologist in the national press, and southern strategist in the Nixon administration. Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South considers the critical but underappreciated role of the noted evangelist in the creation of the modern American South. The region experienced two significant related shifts away from its status as what observers and critics called the "Solid South": the end of legalized Jim Crow and the end of Democratic Party dominance. Author Steven P. Miller treats Graham as a serious actor and a powerful symbol in this transition—an evangelist first and foremost, but also a profoundly political figure. In his roles as the nation's most visible evangelist, adviser to political leaders, and a regional spokesperson, Graham influenced many of the developments that drove celebrants and detractors alike to place the South at the vanguard of political, religious, and cultural trends. He forged a path on which white southern moderates could retreat from Jim Crow, while his evangelical critique of white supremacy portended the emergence of "color blind" rhetoric within mainstream conservatism. Through his involvement in the Eisenhower and Nixon administrations, as well as his deep social ties in the South, the evangelist influenced the decades-long process of political realignment. Graham's public life sheds new light on recent southern history in all of its ambiguities, and his social and political ethics complicate conventional understandings of evangelical Christianity in postwar America. Miller's book seeks to reintroduce a familiar figure to the narrative of southern history and, in the process, examine the political and social transitions constitutive of the modern South.

Billy Graham stands among the most influential Christian leaders of the twentieth century. Perhaps no single doctrine, practice, political position, or preacher has united the sprawling and diverse world of evangelicalism like Billy Graham. Throughout his six-decade career, Graham mainstreamed evangelicalism and through that tradition brought about major changes to American Christianity, global Christianity, church and state, the Cold War, race relations, American manhood, intellectual life, and religious media and music. His life and career provide a many-paned window through which to view the history and character of our present and recent past. Billy Graham: American Pilgrim offers groundbreaking accounts of Graham's role in shaping these phenomena. Graham stayed true to evangelical precepts yet journeyed to positions in religion, politics, and culture that stretched his tradition to its limits. This book's distinguished contributors capture Graham's evolution and complexity. Like most people, he grew in fits and starts. But Graham's growth occurred on an international stage, influencing the world around him in ways large and small. This book delves into this influence, going beyond conventional subjects and taking a fresh and nuanced look at the complex life and legacy of one of the most important figures of the last century.

Billy Graham stands among the most influential Christian leaders of the twentieth century. Perhaps no single doctrine, practice, political position, or preacher has united the sprawling and diverse world of evangelicalism like Billy Graham. Throughout his six-decade career, Graham mainstreamed evangelicalism and through that tradition brought about major changes to American Christianity, global Christianity, church and state, the Cold War, race relations, American manhood, intellectual life, and religious media and music. His life and career provide a many-paned window through which to view the history and character of our present and recent past. Billy Graham: American Pilgrim offers groundbreaking accounts of Graham's role in shaping these phenomena. Graham stayed true to evangelical precepts yet journeyed to positions in religion, politics, and culture that stretched his tradition to its limits. This book's distinguished contributors capture Graham's evolution and complexity. Like most people, he grew in fits and starts. But Graham's growth occurred on an international stage, influencing the world around him in ways large and small. This book delves into this influence, going beyond conventional subjects and taking a fresh and nuanced look at the complex life and legacy of one of the most important figures of the last century.

During a career spanning sixty years, the Reverend Billy Graham’s resonant voice and chiseled profile entered the living rooms of millions of Americans with a message that called for personal transformation through God’s grace. How did a lanky farm kid from North Carolina become an evangelist hailed by the media as “America’s pastor”? Why did listeners young and old pour out their grief and loneliness in letters to a man they knew only through televised “Crusades” in faraway places like Madison Square Garden? More than a conventional biography, Grant Wacker’s interpretive study deepens our understanding of why Billy Graham has mattered so much to so many. Beginning with tent revivals in the 1940s, Graham transformed his born-again theology into a moral vocabulary capturing the fears and aspirations of average Americans. He possessed an uncanny ability to appropriate trends in the wider culture and engaged boldly with the most significant developments of his time, from communism and nuclear threat to poverty and civil rights. The enduring meaning of his career, in Wacker’s analysis, lies at the intersection of Graham’s own creative agency and the forces shaping modern America. Wacker paints a richly textured portrait: a self-deprecating servant of God and self-promoting media mogul, a simple family man and confidant of presidents, a plainspoken preacher and the “Protestant pope.” America’s Pastor reveals how this Southern fundamentalist grew, fitfully, into a capacious figure at the center of spiritual life for millions of Christians around the world.

It was sung at Ronald Reagan's funeral, and adopted with new lyrics by labor radicals. John Updike quoted it in the title of one of his novels, and George W. Bush had it performed at the memorial service in the National Cathedral for victims of September 11, 2001. Perhaps no other song has held such a profoundly significant--and contradictory--place in America's history and cultural memory than the "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." In this sweeping study, John Stauffer and Benjamin Soskis show how this Civil War tune has become an anthem for cause after radically different cause. The song originated in antebellum revivalism, with the melody of the camp-meeting favorite, "Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us." Union soldiers in the Civil War then turned it into "John Brown's Body." Julia Ward Howe, uncomfortable with Brown's violence and militancy, wrote the words we know today. Using intense apocalyptic and millenarian imagery, she captured the popular enthusiasm of the time, the sense of a climactic battle between good and evil; yet she made no reference to a particular time or place, allowing it to be exported or adapted to new conflicts, including Reconstruction, sectional reconciliation, imperialism, progressive reform, labor radicalism, civil rights movements, and social conservatism. And yet the memory of the song's original role in bloody and divisive Civil War scuttled an attempt to make it the national anthem. The Daughters of the Confederacy held a contest for new lyrics, but admitted that none of the entries measured up to the power of the original. "The Battle Hymn" has long helped to express what we mean when we talk about sacrifice, about the importance of fighting--in battles both real and allegorical--for the values America represents. It conjures up and confirms some of our most profound conceptions of national identity and purpose. And yet, as Stauffer and Soskis note, the popularity of the song has not relieved it of the tensions present at its birth--tensions between unity and discord, and between the glories and the perils of righteous enthusiasm. If anything, those tensions became more profound. By following this thread through the tapestry of American history, The Battle Hymn of the Republic illuminates the fractures and contradictions that underlie the story of our nation.

"Pastor and bestselling author Greg Laurie was one of those fortunate few blessed with an insider's view of Billy Graham's world for more than two decades ... [He] sheds light on Graham's lesser-known struggles--such as a broken heart before he met the love of his life and a crisis of faith from which he emerged stronger than ever. From the evangelist's private challenges and public successes to his disappointments and joys, [this book] provides a ... portrait of one of history's most [well-known] Christian lives"--Publisher marketing.