Billy Graham - Politics

Politics

Graham is a registered member of the Democratic Party. In 1960 he was opposed to the candidacy of John F. Kennedy because he was Catholic, and worked "behind the scenes" to encourage influential Protestant ministers to speak out against him. Graham met with a conference of Protestant ministers in Montreux, Switzerland during the 1960 campaign, to discuss their mobilizing congregations to defeat Kennedy. He did not comment publicly on the election. According to the PBS Frontline program, God in America (2010), Episode 5, Graham also organized a meeting in September 1960 of hundreds of Protestant ministers in Washington, DC to this purpose; Norman Vincent Peale led the meeting. This was shortly before Kennedy's speech on the separation of church and state in Houston, Texas, which was considered to be successful in meeting concerns of many voters.

Graham leaned toward the Republicans during the presidency of Richard Nixon whom he had met and befriended as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower. He did not completely ally himself with the later religious right, saying that Jesus did not have a political party. He has given his support to various political candidates over the years.

He refused to join Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority in 1979, saying: "I'm for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak with authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists cannot be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left. I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will be in the future."

According to a 2006 Newsweek interview, "For Graham, politics is a secondary to the Gospel.... When Newsweek asked Graham whether ministers—whether they think of themselves as evangelists, pastors or a bit of both—should spend time engaged with politics, he replied: 'You know, I think in a way that has to be up to the individual as he feels led of the Lord. A lot of things that I commented on years ago would not have been of the Lord, I'm sure, but I think you have some—like communism, or segregation, on which I think you have a responsibility to speak out.'"

In 2012, Graham publicly endorsed the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. Shortly after, references to Mormonism as a cult were removed from Graham's website. Observers have questioned whether the support of Republican and religious right politics on issues such as same-sex marriage coming from Graham—who no longer speaks in public or to reporters—in fact reflects the views of his son, Franklin, head of the BGEA. Franklin has denied this, and says that he will continue to act as his father's spokesperson rather than allowing press conferences.