Billy Graham

Life

Graham was born on November 7, 1918, on a dairy farm near Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1934, at the age of sixteen, he experienced conversion at a revival meeting led by the itinerant evangelist Mordecai Ham. He went on to study at the Florida Bible Institute and Wheaton College. In 1939 he was ordained a Southern Baptist minister. In 1943 he married Ruth Bell, the daughter of a Presbyterian medical missionary serving in China. Ruth reportedly attended a school for foreign children in Pyongyang as a child. Graham died at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, on February 21, 2018, at the age of ninety-nine. Before his funeral, he lay in honor at the United States Capitol, where members of the public paid their respects.

Ministry and Achievements

In 1950 Graham founded the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which he led until 2001. He held stadium-scale evangelistic crusades that ran for months at a time in cities such as London (1954) and New York (1957). He is reported to have preached in person to more than 200 million people in 185 countries. His preaching centered on repentance (sorrow for sin and turning from it) and salvation through Jesus Christ. In the 1950s he spearheaded the founding of the magazine Christianity Today. Although he emerged from a Southern fundamentalist milieu, he moved beyond its separatism, cooperated with many denominations, and became a leading representative of twentieth-century evangelicalism. He was often called a spiritual adviser to successive U.S. presidents, from Eisenhower to Trump.

Influence on the Korean Church

According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, Graham visited Korea and held meetings in 1952, 1956, and 1973. In 1952, during the Korean War, he held meetings in Busan, Daegu, and Seoul, with Han Kyung-chik serving as his interpreter.

The 1973 crusade, for which Han Kyung-chik chaired the preparatory committee, took place from May 30 to June 3 at May 16 Plaza in Seoul (now Yeouido Park). Billy Kim (Kim Jang-hwan), a Korean pastor, served as interpreter. On the final day about 1.1 million people gathered, the largest crowd at any of Graham's meetings, and total attendance over the five days exceeded three million. The crusade is often cited as a catalyst for the rapid growth of Korean Protestantism that followed.

In 1992 and 1994, at the invitation of Kim Il Sung, Graham visited North Korea and preached at Bongsu Church in Pyongyang. At his funeral in 2018, Billy Kim delivered a eulogy on behalf of foreign clergy.

Assessment

Supporters credit Graham with building evangelicalism into a socially influential force and with laying the groundwork for revival in the Korean church. Critics, including the church historian Bae Deok-man, argue that his Korean crusades leaned heavily toward an anti-communist message and the salvation of individual souls, and that this contributed to the Korean church's indifference to social issues. His close ties with successive presidents also drew controversy, though in his later years he declined requests to endorse particular candidates. During his 1992 visit to North Korea, some American Christians criticized his meeting with Kim Il Sung; Graham replied that he had gone not as a politician but as an ambassador of Christ.