Billy Graham American Pilgrim

by Finstuen, Andrew; Wacker, Grant; Wills, Anne Blue

• ISBN13: 9780190683528
• ISBN10: 019068352X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2017-06-26
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture, and America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation, both published by Harvard University Press. Wacker is past president of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, past president of the American Society of Church History, and a former senior editor of Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture.

Andrew Finstuen is Dean of the Honors College at Boise State University and an Associate Professor in the Department of History. His first book, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety, won the 2010 American Society of Church History's Brewer Prize. In 2017, he co-produced the documentary film An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story, which aired on Public Television.

Anne Blue Wills is Associate Professor of Religion at Davidson College. She is writing a biography of Ruth Bell Graham and contributed an article about Ruth Bell Graham to a special issue of Christian History magazine (2014, issue 111). Wills has published articles on other aspects of U.S. religious history and culture in Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation and Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture. She serves as Chair of the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (SECSOR), is past President of the American Academy of Religion/Southeast Region, and chairs the Research and Prize Committee for the American Society of Church History.

Table of Contents

Introduction "He Brought the Storm Down" Grant Wacker

Part One: Religion
1. Professor Graham: Billy Graham's Missions to Colleges and Universities - Andrew Finstuen
2. From Desire to Decision: The Evangelistic Preaching of Billy Graham - Michael Hamilton
3. Singing to Save: Music in the Billy Graham Crusades - Edith Blumhofer
4. God's Ambassador to the World - William Martin

Part Two: Politics
5. Preaching Good News to the Poor: Billy Graham and Evangelical Humanitarianism - David P. King
6. A Politics of Conversion: Billy Graham's Political and Social Vision - Curtis Evans
7. Heavenly Houston: Billy Graham and Corporate Civil Rights in Sunbelt Evangelicalism's "Golden Buckle" - Darren Dochuk

Part 3: Culture
8. You Cannot Fool the Electronic Eye: Billy Graham and the Media - Elesha Coffman
9. Billy Graham's New Evangelical Manhood - Seth Dowland
10. An Odd Kind of Cross to Bear: The Work of Mrs. Billy Graham from "Pretty Wife" to "End of Construction" - Anne Blue Wills
11. Complicated Innocence: A Case Study of the Billy Graham Image - Steven Miller

Afterword Billy Graham's Legacy - Margaret Bendroth
Epilogue What Now? - Ken Garfield