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Originally Posted by Thor
I always thought of him in a positive light, to be honest never really bothered to learn much about him but he always seemed like the nice grandpappy type.
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A little known fact. Billy Graham holds—as far as estimates can be figured for this sort of thing—the world record for cumulative size of live audiences on the planet at around 215 million. That is, more people have listened to Graham live than any other human being in history, and by a wide, WIDE margin. He also holds the single largest audience record for a meeting in Seoul Korea which was attended by over one million people:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Thor
What about his son though, he sure got a lot of hate here in Iceland for his stance on gay marriage, but is he more like his father or more like a hardened evangelical.
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I think that the controversy with F. Graham when contrasted with his father is a two-fold product. First, the senior Graham's legacy was forged in an era of conservatism, and coincided with the positive surge of Evangelicalism in the 70's and 80's. There was a LOT of public good will that accumulated with his own association with burgeoning, young Evangelicals, and he rather brilliantly played his own affable, approachable, humble, and generous persona against the excesses of the papacy, and the "big tent revival" crowd who produced such charlatans as Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Peter Popoff, Robert Tilton, Crefio Dollar, etc. The other thing is that with Graham, the sincerity is really genuine, and for a man of his public stature, this really stands out as quite remarkable and impressive.
His son, on the other hand, has not had it so easy in the public eye, and I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that times have changed quite dramatically since the '70ies. A lot of attention paid to social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, "family values", teen sexuality, and the shift in US foreign policy that could no longer ignore the Middle East have put F. Graham in a tough spot politically. Many of these were issues that his father simply didn't have to give much attention to, but with the emergence of a much more visible politically savvy social conservatism, F. Graham couldn't ignore them.
Second, B. Graham has softened politically and theologically with age, and at a stage in his life where he has benefitted from the rare latitude to do so. With his legacy secured for all time, he can take more Evangelically controversial stances on several issues (which are simultaneously much more publicly palatable), and he doesn't experience the same sort of blow back that another Evangelical leader in the same position would absorb from his inner circle of supporters. In other words, he can "pander" to "secular pressure" and not suffer for it within the Evangelical world which is famous for devouring its own.