Billy Graham’s Controversial Ministry
00:00:00.000 | We're continuing to talk about Billy Graham and your memories of him, Pastor John.
00:00:09.440 | And the Piper family history is tied up with one particular controversy surrounding Billy
00:00:15.380 | Graham.
00:00:16.480 | And listeners may not know about this.
00:00:18.800 | So can you explain for us a little of what happened between Billy Graham and Bob Jones,
00:00:22.760 | and how did that controversy between them impact your father?
00:00:27.480 | In Greenville, South Carolina, where I grew up, there's a university across the highway
00:00:32.800 | from where I live called Bob Jones University.
00:00:35.400 | It's big.
00:00:36.400 | I don't know, four or five thousand students, maybe.
00:00:39.640 | I haven't checked more recently.
00:00:41.800 | A very strong and very influential fundamentalist institution.
00:00:46.840 | That's a word that they love and would use.
00:00:49.920 | My dad was happy to call himself a fundamentalist.
00:00:53.960 | Lots of people would call me a fundamentalist.
00:00:56.500 | What a fundamentalist is historically is not only someone who embraces all the fundamentals
00:01:02.120 | of the faith, but has a doctrine of separation and defense of the faith that is fairly militant.
00:01:14.000 | George Dollar wrote a history of fundamentalism one time called "The History of Fundamentalism,"
00:01:17.840 | and the cover of the book was a Bible with a fist on it.
00:01:22.080 | And the subtitle was "A Militant Defense of the Historic Faith," or something like that.
00:01:27.440 | And so that sense of being willing to fight, go to the mat, separate from people who are
00:01:32.280 | not truly faithful, that marked historic fundamentalism.
00:01:37.760 | And to this day, it does.
00:01:40.000 | And frankly, I have a high level of respect for that approach towards Christianity, and
00:01:46.920 | would only differ from it probably in some degrees of how we deal with culture and how
00:01:52.140 | we handle certain disagreements.
00:01:54.840 | So yes, my father went to school there, was one of those, loved that school, cherished
00:02:01.720 | what he got from it.
00:02:03.560 | And in 1957, a dispute between Billy Graham and his crusade strategies and methods, and
00:02:15.360 | the fundamentalists on the other side, who thought he was compromising the gospel by
00:02:20.520 | the way he was supported by liberal people in his crusades.
00:02:27.280 | That controversy came to a head, and my father, who was on the board of Bob Jones, had to
00:02:33.480 | make a choice of whether he would remain on the board and side with those who were saying
00:02:39.880 | Billy Graham's crusades were sub-Christian or of the devil even some, or whether he would
00:02:47.200 | stay with the school he loved.
00:02:50.160 | He felt like he needed to resign, and he did.
00:02:52.420 | And so all the rest of my growing up life, I was 11 then, all the rest of my life then
00:02:58.920 | was under the shadow of that disagreement.
00:03:02.960 | And it broke my dad's heart, and to my great gladness, there was a sweet reconciliation
00:03:10.920 | between him and some of the leaders at Bob Jones in his 80s.
00:03:15.200 | And my dad died in a nursing home owned by Bob Jones University.
00:03:24.040 | So symbolically, he came full circle.
00:03:30.760 | The issue came to a head in 1957 because of the New York crusade.
00:03:36.240 | The New York crusade was historic, it was phenomenal.
00:03:40.160 | Billy Graham went there, I'm not sure how long he was planning to be there, but he wound
00:03:43.760 | up preaching every night for 16 weeks in New York.
00:03:49.600 | That's an unprecedented evangelist.
00:03:51.400 | That's four months in Madison Square Garden.
00:03:56.040 | Jesus Christ is being lifted up to a full house.
00:04:00.560 | The problem is, Billy wanted as many people to say yes and support him as would be willing,
00:04:08.360 | and there were people who supported him and even sat on the platform who were clearly
00:04:12.600 | liberal, didn't believe the doctrines he believed, and that was felt to be a profound contradiction
00:04:19.920 | of faithfulness to the gospel by some.
00:04:23.160 | And Billy always said that he'd go anywhere and preach under any circumstances if he was
00:04:29.360 | allowed to say what he wanted to say.
00:04:33.560 | So I have really sad memories about that disruption between my father and the school and fundamentalism
00:04:42.640 | in general over that issue.
00:04:46.800 | But I'm really happy with the decision that my father made.
00:04:50.640 | I think he made the right decision.
00:04:53.200 | In other words, I think it's possible to disapprove.
00:04:55.880 | My father did disapprove with Bob Jones of some of Billy Graham's strategies.
00:05:00.800 | He said to them in correspondence that I've read that he said, "I agree that I would not
00:05:07.680 | do it this way, but I can't say that Billy Graham's crusades are of the devil.
00:05:12.240 | I can't write off the work of God.
00:05:13.920 | I can't say that God's not moving here.
00:05:16.080 | I can't withdraw my support from Billy's gospel efforts for these disagreements."
00:05:21.400 | Yeah, so how influential was this episode in your life, this conflict between Billy
00:05:26.480 | Graham and Bob Jones and your father's hard decision?
00:05:29.680 | How influential was this in how you personally think through which conferences you will speak
00:05:35.160 | at now?
00:05:36.160 | You know, I don't know the answer to that, Tony.
00:05:39.840 | I don't know the causality of a lot of the convictions that I have, but I think it would
00:05:45.280 | be honoring to my father and probably faithful to history to say that what we experienced
00:05:52.160 | growing up has really significant, almost subconscious effects that may show themselves
00:05:59.080 | 30 years later.
00:06:01.040 | So that I find myself today being very much at home with my father's preaching.
00:06:05.560 | In fact, I was listening to my father preach just two days ago.
00:06:12.000 | My wife and I were on our anniversary.
00:06:15.120 | We did not go to church.
00:06:16.680 | We were way up in the mountains at bed and breakfast, and we said, "Let's have our own
00:06:20.560 | little church here."
00:06:22.040 | And we couldn't get internet, so I couldn't listen to my living favorite preachers.
00:06:26.320 | So I listened to one of my dead favorite preachers, namely my dad, because I have a whole bunch
00:06:30.440 | of his sermons on my computer.
00:06:32.800 | And as I was listening to him, I said, "I love this guy.
00:06:35.600 | I love what he preaches."
00:06:37.680 | And so I don't doubt that his approach to this was influential on me and that I can
00:06:47.080 | go into a conference, and I might say, "I don't like this music," or, "I don't like
00:06:52.680 | some of the slapstick that's happening on the platform.
00:06:55.720 | I don't like all the things that the other speakers are saying."
00:06:59.440 | But they're going to let me talk to a lot of people here about the supremacy of God
00:07:03.120 | in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus, and that's what I'm called to do.
00:07:06.760 | And so probably my approach to be willing to lift up my vision of God in places where
00:07:15.520 | it might not be completely shared has been influenced by my father's choices.
00:07:19.880 | Yes.
00:07:20.880 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:07:24.560 | Tomorrow we'll be back to take a look at another season of Billy Graham's ministry that was
00:07:29.080 | stirred up in controversy and what we can learn from it.
00:07:32.280 | Until then, please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org, and you
00:07:36.280 | can visit us online at desiringgod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons,
00:07:40.720 | and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.
00:07:43.440 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:07:44.440 | Thanks for listening.
00:07:44.440 | Thanks for listening.
00:07:45.760 | [BLANK_AUDIO]