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  • America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation by Grant Wacker
  • Douglas A. Sweeney
America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. By Grant Wacker. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2014. Pp. x, 413. $27.95. ISBN 978-0-674-05218-5.)

This is not a standard biography, but a book on “Graham’s place in the great gulf streams of American history in the long second half of the twentieth century” (p. 1). Grant Wacker, one of the deans of American Christian history and a “boss” in what is sometimes called the “evangelical mafia,” has spent many years trading heavily in the study of both Graham and his roles in American public life.

Many other recent scholars have tended to fixate on Graham’s storied friendships with presidents and Hollywood celebrities. But Wacker rightly focuses on Graham’s life work: mass evangelism and spiritual advice to supporters—and has taken a lot of heat from reviewers as a result. He grants that Graham sought to leverage U.S. presidents, celebrities, and culture in his work. And of course, this often led to sycophantic public statements and rhetorical support for conservative politicians, social strategies, and values. But Wacker stresses Graham’s knack for using those values for his own, spiritual ends (showing that Graham also grew less conservative with age). “From first to last,” Wacker argues in the book’s thesis statement, “Graham displayed an uncanny ability to adopt trends in the wider culture and then use them for his evangelistic and moral reform purposes” (pp. 28, 316). Critics often spurn him as a pawn in the culture wars. But Wacker’s Graham proves to be a bishop more than a pawn—in a battle more spiritual than cultural. He functioned as a pastor on the international stage—“America’s pastor,” as George H. W. Bush once declared (p. 23).

Wacker makes good use of Graham’s syndicated column, “My Answer,” to demonstrate this pastoral role. He also makes wonderful use of the letters to [End Page 198] Graham written by people from all around the world, which totaled in the millions. Graham claimed at one point near the apex of his crusade held in Madison Square Garden in 1957 that he was getting more than 10,000 letters every day. Although this statement came at a high point of his national popularity, the letters kept coming. In the late 1970s, he was still receiving nearly 2.5 million a year. Several thousand of these survive. As Wacker makes clear, “they offer a direct reading of how partisans perceived and constructed Graham as pastor.” That is, they “reveal the emotional exchange between Graham and his audience. They enabled him to keep his finger on the pulse of broadly evangelical Americans and at the same time enabled them to know what he thought about their fears and aspirations” (pp. 266–67, emphasis in original).

This is a marvelous monograph. Wacker exhibits a finer feel than previous scholars for Graham’s importance to his converts and middle-American fans, explaining why these followers became so influential during the late-twentieth century. A stronger emphasis would have been advisable on Graham’s acute concern—sparked by colleague Dawson Trotman in the late 1940s—for the spiritual maturation of the millions who walked the aisles at his stadium events. Wacker states that, for Graham, “the goal was converts, not disciples” (p. 44). In a sense, this is true. Graham devoted more time, and spent a lot more money, on evangelizing strangers than on educating friends. But he also championed “follow up” on those who signed his pledge cards, performed by local Christians representing local churches—sometimes even Catholic churches—but facilitated by Graham. Too much attention to the wide array of churches and their leaders (both clerical and lay) who helped to organize and execute these massive urban meetings might have blurred the book’s focus, but a word or two about them would have strengthened Wacker’s emphasis on Graham’s expanding ecumenical vision.

Douglas A. Sweeney
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Deerfield, IL
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