"Billy Graham knew every president from Harry Truman to Barack Obama; he was a White House visitor for decades. The Southern Baptist preacher known as 'America’s pastor' was by turns counselor, confessor and confidant to chief executives from both parties.
"Across the decades, he gained unique access to the power centers of American life. Publishing magnates William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce helped propel him to fame; financial and business leaders saw his message as a powerful antidote to the appeals of 'socialistic' politics, while more liberal political figures saw the benefits of bonding with America’s favorite religious figure. More and more, Graham came to embody the tension between the spiritual necessity of speaking Biblical truth to power, and the compromises required by access to power itself."
– Jeff Greenfield, Politico Magazine
Watching the PBS episode of “Billy Graham: Prayer, Politics, Power” on American Experience, I was reminded of the life and myth of “America's pastor.” Many believe Graham was never involved in scandals as were other popular religious leaders like Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Bakker. But, the truth is that Graham practiced partisan politics, and his close relationship with Richard Nixon involved a nasty, anti-Semitic dialogue between Graham and Nixon in 1972.
Among the more than 3,000 hours of secret recordings, the tape revealed that when a White House conversation turned to the subject of Jewish domination of the media, Graham made a string of bigoted remarks about Jews and what he deemed their undue influence.
Nixon was a notorious anti-Semite – a fact that became clearer after the Watergate tapes – and Graham played to the president’s prejudices with enthusiasm. What was revealed on the tape was that the President and America’s best-known evangelist shared a paranoid view that there existed a Jewish plot to dominate the American media.
The 90-minute conversation took place after a prayer breakfast, on February 1, 1972. HR Haldeman, Nixon's hatchetman, was also present. It was an election year, and Nixon's dirty-tricks team was sabotaging the run of his most feared Democratic opponent, Ed Muskie.
Graham begins by advising Nixon on campaign strategy. The evangelist had been invited to lunch at Time Magazine. "You better take your Jewish beanie" (yarmulke), Haldeman jokes. Nixon is in darker mood. He broaches something that "we can't talk about publicly" – Jewish influence in the media.
The actual audio tapes from the Nixon White House were released in 2002. Here is part of the actual transcript along with comments from James Warren – contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report and an award winning reporter, columnist and editor:
“Graham responded, 'This stranglehold (Jewish influence) has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain.'
"'You believe that?' Nixon said, seeming to be pleasantly surprised with affirmation of an anti-Semitic streak that courses through many Nixon Oval Office conversations.
“'Yes, sir,' Graham said to Nixon (and H.R Haldeman, the Nixon top aide later imprisoned for his role in the Watergate cover-up, who is apparently in the room for most, even all the conversation).
"'Oh, boy,' replied Nixon. 'So do I. I can't ever say that but I believe it.'
"'No, but if you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something,' Graham replied.
“Graham referenced friends of his own in the press who were Jewish and how they 'swarm around me and are friendly to me.' But, he added, 'They don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country.'
“It got worse. Nixon brought up a topic of which he said 'we can't talk about it publicly': the alleged influence of Jews in Hollywood and the press. He references an executive with the 1968-1973 NBC hit show, 'Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in,' as once informing him that 11 of its 12 writers were Jewish. (Nixon surfaced on an episode during the 1968 presidential campaign as part of his attempt at reinvention, famously uttering, 'Sock-it-to-me!' a well-known catchphrase of actress Judy Carne, a show regular.)
"'That right?' said Graham. Nixon seamlessly continued by asserting that Life Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times were among those 'totally dominated by the Jews.' And, he said, the famous broadcast network anchors Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite were 'front men who may not be of that persuasion,' but that their writers were '95 percent Jewish.'
“Nixon, being Nixon, qualified his broadside by declaring that this didn't mean 'that all the Jews are bad.' But, nevertheless, most were of leftish persuasion and desired 'peace at any price except where support for Israel is concerned. The best Jews are actually the Israeli Jews.'
"'That's right,' agreed Graham, who would further aid and abet his host's declaration that a 'powerful bloc' of media Jews confronted Nixon. 'And they're the ones putting out the pornographic stuff,' Graham said, thought it's a bit unclear to what he alluded.”
(James Warren. “Billy Graham's Troubling, Nasty Nixon Moment.” U.S. News & World Report. February 28, 2018.)
When the story in 2002, Graham, who had a long history of supporting Israel, said through a spokesman that he could not respond regarding the transcript because he didn't remember it. He would later apologize profusely, issue a written apology, and meet with Jewish leaders.
"If it wasn't on tape, I would not have believed it," Graham told Newsweek. "I guess I was trying to please. I felt so badly about myself – I couldn't believe it. I went to a meeting with Jewish leaders and I told them I would crawl to them to ask their forgiveness."
The Graham Legacy
Billy Graham once told a Charisma magazine reporter: “I want to be remembered as a person who was faithful to God, faithful to my family, faithful to the Scriptures, and faithful to my calling … a man who dedicated his life to the Lord and never looked back.”
With Graham’s death at age 99 on February 21, 2018, millions of people across the world remembered him for those graces and much more. Billy Graham preached to more people live than perhaps any other American minister, with estimates circling around 215 million over his lifetime.
But, even as American Jews moved fully into the mainstream of U.S. culture and challenged casual anti-Semitism, they still faced the backroom anti-Semitism of people like Nixon … and Graham.
George F. Will of The Washington Post wrote: “One can reasonably acquit Graham of anti-Semitism only by convicting him of toadying. (“Toady” – “one who flatters in the hope of gaining favors: sycophant.”) When Graham read transcripts of Nixon conspiring to cover up crimes, Graham said that what “shook me most” was Nixon’s vulgar language.
Historian Robert Orsi said of Graham's legacy: “Billy Graham muted the prophetic voice of American white Protestant Christianity, in this way leading to the soulless pandering of conservative evangelicals today, including especially his son.” (Franklin Graham has a deservedly terrible reputation for his anti-Muslim attitudes.)
Anthea Butler makes a similar argument in Religion Dispatches: “Graham has paved the way for evangelicals to operate not only comfortably in the political world, but as lobbyists for theocratic policies and moral issues.”
Melani McAlister, Organizion of American Historians lecturer and author of The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals, says …
“After Nixon’s disgrace and resignation, Graham himself began to pull away from close political alliances, but by then he had forged a path that many others gladly stepped into.
“The rise of the Christian Right in the late 1970s was a retooling of what had been many postwar evangelicals’ fear of excessive worldliness. On this model, Graham’s willingness to comment on everything from communism to civil rights to nuclear war was part of what allowed Jerry Falwell and others to forge white evangelicals into a potent and deeply conservative political force.”
(Melani McAlister. “Billy Graham’s Legacy.” Process: A Blog For American History. March 21, 2018.)
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