How do you take a significant segment of the church in the United States, called to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ – Lord of heaven and of earth, the Alpha and the Omega, the eternal Word, son of God, son of Man, son of David, the lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world, the light of the world – and reduce it to a special interest group? Listening to a podcast from The Gospel Coalition which remembered the life of Billy Graham, I was reminded that while Graham had a large political impact on our country he did not fully partner with the Religious Right.

Mark Mellinger: “Dr. Graham was staunchly anti-Communist and long supported the Vietnam War, yet he refused to be part of the Moral Majority as it came to prominence in the 70s and 80s. Why?”

Russell Moore: “Because I think he had seen what tends to happen when the gospel is affixed to a political agenda. Remember what was happening to many of those movements at the time, they were very specifically about endorsing candidates, about endorsing entire sets of agendas beyond where the Bible clearly speaks and he wasn’t willing to do that and that is one of the reasons I think that is why his ministry was able to be so long-lasting because he did transcend the specifics of particular moments of issuing lists of specific agenda items. He was clearly pro-life and spoke to that, he was clearly pro marriage and pro family and spoke to that, he spoke up to other issues. He was concerned about the nuclear arms race and those sorts of things but he wasn’t willing to become a down the line political activist and I think that was one of the reasons he was able to have the longevity he had. Because he knew, he didn’t always know how to do this, none of us do, but he did better than almost anybody else. He knew how to say ‘The Bible says’, here’s where I am speaking with authority and he also knew where that authority ended and where he should not speak.”

Billy Graham transcended partisan politics – at least much more than what we see in many contemporary evangelical leaders today. While he counseled presidents of both political parties, his political views of the 1950s – 1970s, were generally aligned with the political right. However, in Parade magazine in 1981 Graham said, “I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.”  When the evangelicals aligned completely (much more deeply than simply agreeing with individual issues – became Christian Republicans rather than Christians who basically agreed with the Republican party platform) with the Republican right they implicitly adopted a methodology that was certain to undermine the true gospel calling of the church. A significant segment of the church became the Alpha and Omega special interest group.