The Prophet and the Evangelist

In 1948, the well-known neo-orthodox1 theologian Reinhold Niebuhr appeared on the cover of Time magazine’s 25th anniversary edition. Niebuhr’s stern visage was accompanied by the original sin-inspired caption: “Man’s story is not a success story.” Six years later, a portrait of evangelist Billy Graham stared directly out at Time‘s readers. A Garden of Eden scene, complete with a naked Eve and a menacing serpent coiled around the tree of knowledge, provided the backdrop.2

Their respective cover appearances were more than mere happenstance. These two giants of American Protestantism revitalized the doctrine of original sin in the post-World War II era. Their interpretations of sin differed: Niebuhr focused on the complexities of individual and social sin, while Graham focused almost exclusively on individual sin. Indeed, Niebuhr had little patience for what he referred to as Graham’s “pietistic individualism,” which asserted that the solution to the world’s problems was individual regeneration. Despite this theological divide, Niebuhr saw great potential in the ministry of Graham, and he poked and prodded the evangelist in several mid-Fifties articles aimed in part at helping Graham realize his potential as a prophetic leader within American Protestantism. For a brief moment, then, these two leading Christian personalities were not so much polarized from one another as typically imagined but rather in “conversation” with one another. And to a large degree, ministers and some lay believers of the day followed the conversation closely, appreciating each thinker for his respective gifts to the community of the faithful.

Niebuhr’s sweeping judgments caused one layman to wonder whether “Dr. Niebuhr has ever taken the time to hear a whole sermon by Dr. Graham.”

Yet few scholars have recognized this basic point of contact in the thought of Niebuhr and Graham, however distinct their interpretations of sin, nor have they given careful consideration to the space they shared within the mid-century public sphere.3 As the two most recognizable faces of postwar Protestantism (Paul Tillich and Norman Vincent Peale were the others), Niebuhr and Graham’s thought was often juxtaposed in popular periodicals. In 1955, McCall’s asked the nation’s religious leaders, “Is our religious revival real?” Graham and Niebuhr joined a handful of other respondents by expressing suspicion of the “revival.” The thrust of their reservations had a similar tone. Graham announced, “God is interested in the quality of converts, not quantity.” Niebuhr also questioned the “quality” of the surging church-going population. He wondered whether “this generation is not expressing its desire to believe in something,” though perhaps unwilling “to be committed to a God who can be known only through repentance.”4

This was not an isolated incident. Both figures voiced their concerns about the depth of the revival frequently, doing so again alongside one another in a Newsweek article in 1955. That same year, The Reader’s Digest printed Graham and Niebuhr’s reflections, one after the other, on the prospect of world peace. Both were hopeful but not unrealistic; they each cited the corruption of human nature as the biggest obstacle to any lasting peace.5 Niebuhr was, to be sure, more discriminating than Graham in his assessment of the mid-century religious situation. Graham judged much of 1950s piety positively. As A. Roy Eckardt, a neo-orthodox foot soldier, pointed out in The Surge of Piety in America (1958), Graham considered religion “a very good thing.”6 Niebuhr, by contrast, considered religion a very ambiguous thing.

Niebuhr’s mid-Fifties preoccupation with Graham kept the two thinkers linked in the public eye. As preparations mounted for Graham’s scheduled 1957 New York City crusade, Niebuhr dashed off a critical editorial for Christianity and Crisis in March of 1956. He did not mince words, writing at the outset of the editorial: “The Protestant leaders seem to have reached the decision which will bring Billy Graham, the evangelist, to New York City in about two years. We dread the prospect.”7

Historian Mark Silk has characterized this piece as the first assault of a “guerrilla action” that Niebuhr carried out over the course of the next year. Silk’s view is typical of the dominant understanding of Niebuhr and Graham’s relationship: that it was colored only by antagonism and critique. That was part of it, but it was also a relationship richly complicated by instances of charity and cross-fertilization. For example, Graham startled the Protestant world with his admission in 1958 that he had read “nearly everything Mr. Niebuhr has written.” Graham apparently meant what he said. As late as the 1980s, Graham claimed: “Look, I need some more Reinhold Niebuhrs in my life. I would say Reinhold Niebuhr was a great contributor to me. He helped me work through some of my problems.”8

Niebuhr never went quite so far as to profess any Grahamian influence on his work, but he never ceased praising Graham for his sincerity, integrity, and certain aspects of his evangelism. Niebuhr noted in a 1955 New Republic article, for instance, that Graham’s “fundamentalist version of the Christian faith . . . expresses some of the central themes of the Christian faith. He demands that men be confronted with God in Christ; and hopes that this confrontation will lead to conversion.” (We should note in passing that even as Niebuhr characterized Graham thus, fundamentalists were denouncing the evangelist.) Niebuhr also consistently distinguished Graham from the “success cult” of Norman Vincent Peale. Graham, Niebuhr thought, had something of the prophet in him in comparison with Peale.9

The Christianity and Crisis editorial that launched Niebuhr’s mid-Fifties interest in Billy Graham was his harshest critique. He signaled his aggressive misgivings about Graham as a representative of the gospel by referring to Graham’s “Christian message” with quotation marks. And though he agreed with Graham that New York City was a modern-day “‘Babylon,'” whose “‘sins'” invited condemnation, he doubted whether Graham could “discern the real sins of such a Babylon.” Niebuhr worried that the pietistic moralism of Graham would “accentuate every prejudice which the modern ‘enlightened,’ but morally sensitive, man may have against religion.” Niebuhr had a vested interest in “enlightened” New York. He lived there and had spent two decades defending Christianity—especially its estimation of human nature—against the optimism of liberal humanism’s leading exponents, most notably Columbia University’s John Dewey. Graham’s oversimplified view of sin threatened to undo some of that work. In particular, Niebuhr objected to Graham’s belief that if enough “‘bad'” people could convert and become “‘good'” people, delicate problems such as potential atomic warfare might be solved. Niebuhr reminded Graham that “all men sin, even good men. The latter may be involved in sin, particularly when they try to do good, as for instance when they try to save their civilization.” Niebuhr insulted Graham’s ministry at the end of the editorial. He asked whether the Protestant leadership of New York had fully considered the cost of Graham’s “petty moralizing” before inviting Graham to evangelize the city. Graham’s “simple answers to complex questions” endangered any relevance the gospel had gained with the “modern generation.”10

Niebuhr’s doomsday predictions of the impact of Graham’s work were exaggerated and oversimplified. And he heard about it. The editor of the widely circulated Christian Herald rushed to Graham’s defense, and Newsweek reported that 900 of the city’s Protestant leaders felt the “hazards” of the Graham crusade well worth it. In addition, readers filled Christianity and Crisis‘ letters to the editor page with their support of Graham.11 Niebuhr must have expected some rallying behind Graham, but likely not in the pages of his own neo-orthodox journal, let alone from some of his colleagues at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In fact, the president of Union, Henry Pitney Van Dusen, shot back at Niebuhr first. In contrast to Niebuhr, Van Dusen wished for “hopeful, though not uncritical, support” of the Graham campaign. He considered Niebuhr’s opposition “presumptuous” and “unscriptural,” ignoring the “apostolic insight that there are ‘diversities of gifts.’ ” Graham was an evangelist, not a theologian. His vocation charged him with the task of spreading the gospel as widely as possible. Van Dusen further argued that the masses required the easily digestible “pure milk” of the gospel before biting into the “‘strong meat’ of a sophisticated interpretation of the gospel.” But Van Dusen was not simply reinforcing the intellectual division that separated Niebuhr from Graham. He suggested that, not unlike his own experience with Billy Sunday years before, Graham’s evangelism served as the gateway for non-Christians and Christians to commit to Christ and perhaps eventually come under the influence of a theologian like Niebuhr.12

Several letter writers echoed Van Dusen’s distinction between the work of Graham the evangelist and Niebuhr the theologian. It seemed rather plain to many clergy that Niebuhr and Graham occupied two separate offices—both extremely necessary—in the church. As one pastor put it, “We need men, both of Dr. Niebuhr’s type as well as of the Billy Graham type.”13 Others agreed that Graham’s message served as a useful introduction to Niebuhrian interpretations of Christianity.

Two additional correspondents’ appreciation of both Niebuhr and Graham highlighted the irony of his critique. A seminarian in Georgia informed Niebuhr that his view of Graham drove a wedge through the ecumenical movement. His strong criticisms reinforced the prejudices his fellow seminarians held about neo-orthodoxy. As such, this pastor-in-training confessed: “Your writings have made me aware of the sinful pretensions in my own life, including my own call to the ministry, and for this I am deeply in your debt. Yet, is it not somewhat in that vein that your article about Mr. Graham could be interpreted?”14

A New York pastor shared some of Niebuhr’s reservations about the crusade. He told of several pastors in the metropolitan area who, like Niebuhr, feared that Graham’s campaign might lead to the loss of some “hard-won ground.” The “emotional experience of mass evangelism” endangered the ministries of local churches hard pressed to compete with such Christian sensationalism. This worry was widely held, and not just in New York. Ministers in crusade cities frequently criticized Graham for swooping in to a town, winning some decisions for Christ, and leaving area churches to pick up the pieces as he bounded off to another city. This particular New York pastor, however, put an interesting spin on Graham’s pending arrival by comparing it to Niebuhr’s visits to his own New York congregation:

I always looked forward to the coming of Dr. Niebuhr to my church because he provided the kind of drastic confrontation for people of which I was not capable. This did not alter the fact that I had to spend weeks after his coming interpreting and explaining the living and often angry God who faced my people through his prophetic preaching. Yet I always regarded his coming as a blessing. Possibly Dr. Graham’s coming can be so, too. He seems to be a very humble man. Perhaps if we are humble too, we may gain a real blessing.15

Curiously, Niebuhr’s private comments about Graham tended to be more forgiving than his printed evaluations. In letters to these Graham supporters, he maintained his basic aversion to the evangelist’s “pietistic individualism,” but he tempered his criticisms. For example, Graham’s biblical literalism was not a significant problem for Niebuhr. He admired aspects of such biblicism, borrowing Will Herberg’s distinction of “scholastic fundamentalism” versus “pietistic fundamentalism.”16 Graham’s literalism, when not couched in the language of pietism, had its virtues. In response to the pastor who advocated for men of both Niebuhr and Graham’s type, he apologized for the severity of his March editorial. He reiterated his objection to Graham’s focus on individual piety but confessed that he was “sorry that I was not more generous in my estimate of Billy Graham.” The social message of Graham, admitted Niebuhr, constituted one area in which Graham deserved credit. Though Graham “moved within the limits of pietism,” Niebuhr wrote, “he does have a very honest message on social issues.”17 Niebuhr eased up on Graham in the ensuing articles of 1956 and 1957, but he continued to critique Graham’s ministry more rigorously in public as opposed to his private judgments.

The fairest and yet most confusing assessment of Graham offered by Niebuhr came in May of 1956 in the Christian Century. In the article, “Literalism, Individualism, and Billy Graham,” Niebuhr again spelled out his basic problem with Graham’s evangelism: his pietism neglected the Reformation’s insistence on the “moral ambiguity in the life of the redeemed,” and it provided “simple answers to complex questions of social order and justice.” Niebuhr, however, clearly struggled with his assessment of Graham, openly contradicting himself in the article. Twice he stressed Graham’s personal virtues and praised his “achievements as a Christian and as an evangelist,” writing that his accomplishments “should be duly appreciated.” But Niebuhr immediately qualified his praise, giving his now standard warning about the “danger” of the “individualistic approach to faith.”

That Niebuhr would compliment Graham at all on his evangelism is surprising. Graham’s “achievements as an evangelist” had everything to do with his approach to the gospel and the thousands of “decisions” he won, the very aspects of his ministry that Niebuhr challenged. Second, Niebuhr well understood that a focus on the individual commitment to Christianity was “inevitable.” The gospel of Christ was not merely a social gospel, a distinguishing feature of his own break with early 20th-century liberal Protestantism. He further acknowledged in the article that the “pietistic evangelist” had a contribution to make to the “preservation of a civilization,” namely in ministering to those with “pressing personal, moral, and religious perplexities.” Niebuhr may have offered up this compliment without much thought, and perhaps he felt assured that he had made his objections abundantly clear and thus could throw Graham a bone. Whatever the case, Niebuhr’s view of Graham was more complex than scholars have acknowledged.

A second, equally enigmatic passage in “Literalism” confirms the complexity, or at least inconsistency, of his evaluation of Graham. He wrote: “Graham has proved himself an able ambassador of American good will in the Orient and a good ambassador of Christ to Europeans, who are not inclined to accept anyone from America with sympathy.” This was high praise indeed, and all the more peculiar since Niebuhr balked at unqualified references to human “good will.” Toward the end of the article, he offered his most curious statement to date about Graham’s ministry. Though in his earlier Christianity and Crisis editorial he warned of Graham’s neglect of social sin, he had apparently changed his mind: “He [Graham] has incorporated many of the social gospel’s concerns for social justice into his pietism. And, though a southerner, he has been rigorous [emphasis added] on the race issue.”18 This was not thoughtless rhetoric or a slip of the pen. Racism was unquestionably one of the paramount social evils in America, the sort of problem the pietist avoided. Yet Graham, to Niebuhr’s mind, had a developed sense of justice on this tragic issue.

Niebuhr hesitated at the prospect of publishing his third critical review of Graham. Six months after “Literalism,” the Christian Century commissioned another piece on Graham. Niebuhr informed Century editor Theodore Gill, “It is probably foolhardy of me to write you another article on Billy Graham after all the reactions that you received from the first article.”19 The “Literalism” article had instigated a letter-writing spree from readers of the liberal periodical. Of the many letters received, nine appeared in print, and six of those defended Graham. Neo-orthodox theologian E. G. Homrighausen’s response to Niebuhr in the July issue of the Christian Century buoyed this pro-Graham contingent.

Neither Homrighausen nor the six correspondents wholly disagreed with Niebuhr’s critique, but they insisted that Graham’s work was a greater contribution to American Protestantism than Niebuhr allowed. The thrust of these supportive letters, including Homrighausen’s piece, was that Graham reached the masses precisely because he communicated an accessible theology. Writing from Princeton, Homrighausen contrasted this virtue of Graham’s preaching with an indictment of neo-orthodoxy’s “paralyzing” theology of judgment and guilt that was “hesitant and weak in calling persons to a positive faith.” Homrighausen hoped that neo-orthodoxy might be infused with a dose of Grahamian theology. Graham, from Homrighausen’s perspective, had provided “thousands of Protestants a dynamic gospel which highly intellectualized and organized Christianity fails to give.” Yet Homrighausen had not fully denounced the neo-orthodox gospel or Niebuhr’s article. In fact he congratulated Niebuhr for doing what had been absent among the many evaluations of Graham. Niebuhr’s “critical yet moderate treatment” of Graham was the “sort of creative encounter with Graham and all that he means” needed “in our time.”20

Privately Niebuhr again gave Graham the benefit of the doubt. He affirmed to a correspondent his belief in Graham’s “humility and lack of pretension” and made no objection to the letter writer’s opinion that, granted “the abiding importance of the Social Gospel, it is nevertheless true that the individual salvation promoted by such mighty evangelists as Wesley, Finney, Moody, and Graham does affect civilization powerfully.”21 More striking were some additional comments Niebuhr offered in his letter to Gill regarding the proposed third article. Homrighausen, it would seem, accurately judged Niebuhr’s interest in a “creative encounter” with Graham. Despite his misgivings about publishing another article on Graham, Niebuhr felt that he “treat[ed] Graham with considerable respect, and that not for pedagogical reasons but because I honestly believe that he is very much better than his backers.”22 Niebuhr subsequently repeated this view publicly, arguing that his criticisms targeted not Graham, but the stylized, factory-like methods employed by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for facilitating conversions.

Niebuhr was true to his word. He finally consented to a third article—”A Proposal to Billy Graham”—and treated the evangelist with “considerable respect.” He began humbly: “I have no business making any proposals to Billy Graham. We are not acquainted.” He also avoided any absolute claims as to the irrelevancy of Graham’s evangelism, remarking instead that he harbored “uneasiness” that Graham’s work might be “irrelevant to the great moral issues of our day.” This was hardly the olive branch that Homrighausen and several correspondents hoped for, but Niebuhr did mute his criticisms in comparison with the initial Christianity and Crisis editorial. He no longer expressed “dread” at the thought of Graham’s evangelism. Retreating from his attack on Graham’s presentation of the gospel, Niebuhr pursued another angle. He challenged Graham’s record on race, oddly reversing his position in “Literalism.”

In light of Niebuhr’s earlier comments about Graham’s social awareness and his own mixed record on race, his motives for publicly challenging Graham’s race position appear less than honest.23 But judging from the bulk of the article, Niebuhr was likely attempting to push Graham on the race issue, recognizing perhaps that no other white Christian leader could positively influence the race question as Graham could. Niebuhr argued that Graham had proven himself “a very perceptive observer of the world scene with its many collective problems. His instincts are genuine and his sense of justice well developed.” These qualities encouraged Niebuhr to speculate that Graham might break with the traditional “technique of revivalism” that oversimplified social issues by focusing too squarely on individual regeneration. If that were the case, continued Niebuhr, Graham would “cease to be merely the last exponent of a frontier religious tradition and become a vital force in the nation’s moral and spiritual life.” To be sure, Niebuhr restrained his prophetic hope for Graham with his repeated objections to the pietistic, “frontier religious tradition” to which he believed Graham belonged. But clearly he saw something of, as Homrighausen had put it, “the authentic gospel-reality” in Graham.24

Reactions flowed steadily into the Chicago offices of the Christian Century, and the magazine published several letters in two separate issues. The majority of respondents defended Graham, staging a small mutiny within the liberal, somewhat anti-Graham periodical. The pastor who had previously expressed his view that the church needed both Niebuhr and Graham was troubled by Niebuhr’s admission that he and Graham were not acquainted. This struck him as nonsense: “Two such Christian personalities ought to have become acquainted long ago.” For his part, Graham sought an audience with Niebuhr during his New York City crusade, but Niebuhr declined and remained steadfast, refusing to grant an interview despite pressure from Union Seminary’s board of trustees.25

Others advocated a modicum of Christian fellowship, reminding readers that God was bigger than either Niebuhr’s or Graham’s ministry. A South Carolina pastor, though admitting he was no particular fan of Graham, advised Niebuhr to “tread softly lest we tamper with the work of the Divine Spirit.” Another southern pastor thanked the Christian Century for printing “critical appraisals of Billy Graham’s methods and evangelism in general,” but he lamented the polarization of the social gospel from the importance of individual conversion. Graham might have strengthened his social message, according to this pastor, but not at the sacrifice of his proven ability to bring individuals to Christ. A third pastor looked past the person of Billy Graham, writing that Niebuhr’s proposal applied “to all who would preach the Word in the fullness of its convicting and converting power.”26 These pastors’ efforts to search out common ground between Niebuhr and Graham in the preeminent liberal Christian weekly suggest that a less divisive though not uncritical clergy served in parishes across the country.

To his credit, Graham tackled the race problem in Life magazine seven weeks after Niebuhr’s “Proposal.” The article, one of the more substantive pieces Graham ever produced for popular consumption, ran for six pages, brooking no compromise with racism and segregation. A companion article—no doubt encouraged by Graham—featured a dialogue regarding the problem of integration among some leading evangelical Protestants, including Graham’s father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell. Both articles denounced racism as unbiblical, though the latter article advocated a gradualist approach to desegregation.

Graham’s article opened with overtones of deflection as well. He painted the problem of discrimination on a broader North American and worldwide canvas. The Dutch, the English, New Englanders, and, of course, Southerners shared in the shame and sin of American slavery and racism. At the same time, he stated the problem frankly: “We have sown flagrant human injustice and we have reaped a harvest of racial strife.”27

Niebuhr read the article and judged it, not surprisingly, incomplete. The editors of Christian Century commissioned a rebuttal from Niebuhr, but he declined. Although he contended “he [Graham] did not answer my challenge in his Life article,” Niebuhr felt strongly that it would be inappropriate to challenge him again, “since many of the readers will not have seen Life and will not know whether he answered adequately or not.” Niebuhr’s negative assessment bespoke a stubborn pride. Graham had risen to his counterpart’s “proposal” but Niebuhr refused to see it.

Graham had directly addressed the essence of Niebuhr’s charge against his ministry. Niebuhr had accused Graham, despite his “enlightened” attitude on the issue of race, of ignoring the Christian “demand of love” that transcended “racial boundaries.” For Niebuhr, it was not enough to condemn racial prejudice. The Christian must recognize his complicity in the corporate sin of racism, repent, and pursue a “whole-souled effort to give the Negro neighbor his full due as man and brother.”28 Graham answered Niebuhr point by point with a thesis statement fully attentive to the intricacy of social sin, the temptation to complacency, and the need for honest contrition:

It is fashionable in some circles to tolerate current evils because of their tremendous complexity and the knotty problems involved in any attempt to improve the state of affairs. We and our fathers have made the situation what it is. In the midst of this tangled web it is more than ever our responsibility to weave a pattern of justice—and more than justice: the principle of the Golden Rule, the spirit of neighbor-love, and the experience of redemptive love and forgiveness.29

The article continued with an unequivocal refutation of biblical arguments for racism. Any arguments maintaining that Jesus “never specifically denounced slavery” were “silly,” since Jesus regarded any violation of “neighbor-love” a sin. Graham also disputed other scriptural defenses of racial difference, for example the curse of Ham, concluding: “There may be reasons that men give for practicing racial discrimination, but let’s not make the mistake of pleading the Bible to defend it.” In perhaps unspoken deference to Niebuhr, he further recognized the social obligations of Christians and the importance of combating the collective evil of segregation. The gospel of “pietistic individualism” that Niebuhr so reacted against remained, but Graham insisted that individual regeneration could not be separated from social regeneration. “The pulpit does only half its job,” wrote Graham, when it “neglects the ‘power’ for social reconstruction peculiar to the Christian religion.”

Graham, like Niebuhr, also paid homage to secular advances in race relations that outdistanced any Christian efforts at reconciliation. This “tragedy of 20th Century Christianity” notwithstanding, Graham maintained that “true neighbor-love” was only possible through Christianity, more specifically through individual salvation from sin. For Graham, one had to begin with the individual. An unrepentant person—whether Christian or non-Christian—could not possibly conjure the humility necessary to embark successfully on such an important social problem. The openness of a “twice born” Christian toward his “Negro” brother exceeded that of both the secular individual and the uncommitted “Christian.” The truly penitent understood the abundant sin of individual and corporate life through confrontation with God.

In short, the judged should not judge one another. But Graham anticipated the Niebuhrian critique of this undo sanctification of the Christian, arguing that even the “twice born” fell short of this Christian ideal. Graham summarized his position powerfully:

The church, if it aims to be the true church, dares not segregate the message of good racial relations from the message of regeneration, for the human race is sinful—and man as sinner is prone to desert God and Neighbor alike. When he receives Christ as his Saviour being regenerated by the Holy Spirit he finds a power that turns the social patterns upside down. The twice-born man may not live up to his possibilities—and it is sad he falls so far short—but he has the possibilities and potentialities of Christ, and we had better not neglect this tremendous fact in our preaching and teaching.30

In this instance, Graham was the prophetic equal of Niebuhr. Niebuhr devoted his career to extolling the ultimate superiority of the Christian perspective against other “schemes of meaning.” In other words, he believed that individual Christians working together had the best chance of enacting the love principle, however inadequately, here on earth and of achieving the closest approximation of peaceful coexistence with the neighbor. Graham’s view of the church, if only for a moment, matched Niebuhr’s conceptualization of the duties of the Christian life.

Graham’s overall record on race, however, was ambiguous. Despite his integration of his crusades prior to Niebuhr’s “Proposal” and his reputation in the South as a full-fledged integrationist, he still, in the words of his biographer, William Martin, “preferred decorum to bold example.” Although progressive for its day, the Life article still faulted the “Negro” for his role in segregation. Graham compared the larger numbers of “Negroes” that attended a segregated crusade in Jackson, Mississippi with the fewer numbers at the Richmond, Nashville, and Oklahoma City meetings as proof that “the responsibility for discrimination is not all one-sided.” When he asked the “Negroes” about the drop in attendance, he reported that they felt more “comfortable sitting by themselves.” He also advised patience to civil rights leaders, among them his friend Martin Luther King, Jr., although he broke with decorum by inviting King to deliver an invocation at the 1957 New York crusade. His resistance to socially disruptive protest—violent or non-violent—kept him from participating in the march on Washington in 1963.31

Niebuhr had his own difficulties with the question of race and integration. One scholar has recently charged him with a gradualist “racial gospel,” in part for his own urging of King to “decelerate the civil rights crusade.”32 Yet Graham took Niebuhr’s challenge seriously. His greater attention to the structures of sin and the duties of Christians to act for social justice betrayed the influence of Niebuhr. Although social reform, as George Marsden has shown, concerned evangelicals for generations, Graham confirmed his debt to Niebuhr on matters racial and beyond.33 He first credited Niebuhr in 1957 in the Saturday Evening Post for pushing him to broaden the purview of his ministry: “When Dr. Niebuhr makes his criticisms about me, I study them, for I have respect for them. I think he has helped me to apply Christianity to the social problems we face and has helped me to comprehend what those problems are.” In the 1970s, he recalled to biographer John Pollock that when Niebuhr criticized him on race, he “thought about it a great deal. He [Niebuhr] influenced me, and I began to take a stronger stand.”

But, for the most part, Graham did not concern himself much with Niebuhr. He made it a policy not to answer his many critics, particularly because “very few of them [including Niebuhr] have ever actually been to our meetings.” Despite his public silence, Graham vented privately. He told David Howard, a missionary to Mexico and a coordinator of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association there, that neither Niebuhr nor any of his critics bothered him. He reminded his colleagues that Christ “had two years of popularity and then a year of persecution,” opining further that “if I go all through life on this wave of popularity, I may miss something in heaven.”

During the conversation, Graham made an obvious and relevant counter-accusation against Niebuhr and other critics: “New York has the worst social conditions in the world. If they want me to preach more social gospel, what have they been doing all these years, and where has it gotten them?”34 Graham also recognized the intransigence of their theological difference on the issue of sin. In the same Post article, he explained: “I disagree with Dr. Niebuhr in one respect. I don’t think you can change the world with all its lusts and hatred and greed, until you change men’s hearts. Men must love God before they can truly love their neighbors. The theologians don’t seem to understand that fact.”35 Of course, Niebuhr understood the necessity of individual conversion. In his two-volume study, The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941, 1943), he conveyed his admiration for evangelical “crisis conversions” that he felt captured the intensity of man’s confrontation with God. What Niebuhr contended was that Graham overlooked the fact that these same “new men” more often than not facilitated the injustices of society.36

Two prominent conservative theologians answered Niebuhr’s proposal directly. Edward John Carnell published “A Proposal to Reinhold Niebuhr” in the Christian Century two months after “A Proposal to Billy Graham” had appeared in August of 1956. Carnell had written his dissertation on Niebuhr’s theology, and as such was not only conversant with the material but found much to recommend it. Carnell argued why “it would pay orthodoxy to listen to Reinhold Niebuhr,” but also to “propose that [Niebuhr] approach orthodoxy a bit more dialectically.” According to Carnell, it was advisable that orthodoxy, and by extension Billy Graham, pay attention to the “delicate biblical balance” that Niebuhr so aptly described between “perfection in Christ” on the one hand and the continuance of sin in the life of the redeemed on the other. Carnell predicted, “If Billy Graham would open his eyes to the reality of the tragic in Billy Graham,”—in other words to engage in some Niebuhrian self-scrutiny—”he would temper his assertions that repentance yields deposits of wisdom and grace with which to untangle all our difficulties.” Conversely, Carnell urged Niebuhr to qualify his “resounding ‘No’ ” to Billy Graham with a more distinct “‘Yes.’ ” First, Carnell observed, “decision preaching” was highly biblical. Graham followed in the tradition of the apostles when he called for individuals to decide for Christ. Second, Niebuhr had overcorrected Graham’s focus on individual sin. The point for Carnell was that the Christian life required individual and social repentance (especially regarding race), something he knew Niebuhr understood but had neglected in his critique of Graham.

Carl F. H. Henry, editor of Christianity Today (founded just a few months earlier), was less amenable to Niebuhr’s perspective on Graham. Still, Niebuhr’s criticisms prompted Henry to concede that Graham tended to oversimplify the “problems of Christian culture.” Though Henry added that the “neo-orthodox approach seems needlessly overcomplicated.” The respect, albeit begrudging in Henry’s case, which Niebuhr began to command in evangelistic circles, while less widespread than the regard for Graham among liberal and neo-orthodox Christians, was nevertheless real. As one pastor wrote in response to Carnell’s article, “I have a strong hunch that many of us of the evangelical (‘orthodox’) tradition are listening to Reinhold Niebuhr’s proposal.”37

As 1957 approached, Niebuhr continued to alternately commend and critique Graham. He offered perhaps his most favorable appraisal in a Dutch periodical. He granted that “at its worst” American religiosity mixed the Christian faith with faith in “‘The American way of life,'” which he defined as “faith in a free society and passion for good plumbing.” The majority of the article, however, championed the “best” of American Protestantism, including the strong tradition of “lay leadership and responsibility,” and the “vitality” and “genuine communit[y]” of the congregations, especially in comparison with Europe.

Despite these virtues of the postwar revival, Niebuhr argued that if America was the most religious of modern nations it was also the most secular. Norman Vincent Peale epitomized the religious syncretism of the day, according to Niebuhr, by making “religious piety the servant of the desire for success.” But, he added, another wing of the revival resisted such easy accommodation with American culture. He explained that “the conservative revivalism under the leadership of Billy Graham has much more biblical foundations and defies, rather than serves, the ambition for worldly success.”38 This more forgiving view of the religious scene in America and of Billy Graham may have been a defensive reaction against the European critics of American piety. But, however explained, it is significant that Niebuhr chose to support Graham, congratulating him on his leadership against the worship of success.

By the late spring of 1957, with the New York crusade in full swing, Niebuhr’s tone turned negative as it had in his initial Christianity and Crisis editorial. In an article for Advance, the national periodical of the Congregational Church, he argued that the ministers assisting with the crusade were “reduced to ballyhoo helpers in the effort to swell crowds.” On the face of it, Niebuhr appeared to have delivered a low blow to Graham, revealing his true feelings about the evangelist. While Niebuhr had offered biting critiques of Graham before, he had never dismissed his ministry as anything close to “ballyhoo.” Yet his outburst, it seems, had more to do with his disappointment that “organized Protestantism” had sanctioned the crusade. He expressed this sentiment again in a letter to a New York Times editor soliciting yet another evaluation of Graham and the crusade. Niebuhr declined the offer, but in his reply he reiterated that Graham was not necessarily the problem; rather he was upset with the Protestant Council of New York’s endorsement of Graham. Such a move, thought Niebuhr, effectively crowned him the official representative of Protestantism. Graham had every right to evangelize in New York, but, Niebuhr continued, the official backing he enjoyed projected a false unity within Protestantism that hardly accounted for expressions of the faith that maintained a “more varied and complicated relation to modern culture.”39

A month later, however, Niebuhr essentially dismissed Graham’s campaign. Life featured Graham and his New York crusade on its cover in early July of 1957.40 Two editorials accompanied the article, one by Niebuhr and the other by John Sutherland Bonnell, pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church and one of the city’s Protestant celebrities. After politely complimenting Graham on his humility and honesty as well as his “sound personal views on racial segregation and other social issues of our time,” Niebuhr hammered the evangelist. As one correspondent adroitly observed, the compliments did little more than “damn [Graham] with faint praise.” For example, Niebuhr qualified his comment about Graham’s social views by claiming “he almost ignores all of them in his actual preaching.”

This was flatly untrue. Less than a year earlier, Graham, as we have seen, argued passionately for the end of racial intolerance. In New York, moreover, Graham visited Harlem several times as well as the Bowry slum. He also included discussion of specific problems facing the city based on his staff’s analysis of the social landscape of the city.41 Though perhaps somewhat cursory, Graham’s attention to poverty and to the plight of African Americans were significant given his southern, evangelistic background.

Niebuhr’s sweeping judgments caused one layman to wonder whether “Dr. Niebuhr has ever taken the time to hear a whole sermon by Dr. Graham.” Indeed, although Niebuhr remarked that Graham was a “pure gain” in comparison with the “vulgarity” of Billy Sunday, he later contradicted himself. He observed that Graham’s promise of “new life” simply by “signing a decision card” was a bargain and paled in comparison with such old-time revivalists as Sunday and Dwight Moody who viewed redemption as a “painful religious experience.” Niebuhr’s comparison of Graham with Sunday and Moody, was irresponsible. He resorted to defending the “vulgar” Billy Sunday and the equally simplistic (if not more so) Moody to highlight the “painless price” of Graham’s call to repentance. Finally, Niebuhr also conveniently forgot his attendance at a Billy Sunday revival during his parish service in Detroit, something he ought to have remembered given the favorable review that he had published in a Detroit newspaper at the time.42

Niebuhr clarified his comments in Life in another article for the Christian Century in September 1957. In fact, 250 pastors and ordinary Protestants helped him realize his excessive negativity through letters of protest, and Niebuhr, to his credit, addressed their concerns in the article. He began with an apology of sorts. “In a rash moment a while ago I wrote an article on Billy Graham for Life magazine,” one he characterized as “mildly appreciative but also mildly critical.” Niebuhr attempted to further appease his critics by again affirming Graham as one who offered an “honest and sincere” version of “pietistic evangelism” and by clarifying that his “chief point of criticism in the Life article was not Billy Graham but official Protestantism, which gives support to his type of pietism.”

Alas, Niebuhr had confused his facts. He had made precisely this argument in other places, but in Life he never mentioned this distinction between Graham and official Protestantism. He had clearly targeted Graham but continued to evade his responsibility for, in this case, what did amount to an attack. For the remainder of the article, he analyzed the letters he received, concluding, “The reaction to these rather mild criticisms would prompt one to fear that American Protestantism has been engulfed by uncritical religiosity in the so-called revival of religion.”43 Had he actually engaged in “mild criticism,” the letters of protest might have still flowed, but his criticisms were anything but mild. He deserved the outcry of his correspondents.

Judging from Niebuhr’s summary of the correspondence, this sample of Protestants expressed more than simply an “uncritical religiosity.”44 For instance, he registered his particular disappointment at the letters from Lutherans who to him seemed unaware of Luther’s “insistence that righteous men are still sinners.” The problem with his analysis was twofold. First, these Lutherans were critical of Graham, and Niebuhr himself mentioned their disapproval of Graham’s evangelistic method, but he wished they had critiqued Graham’s view of sin instead. Second, Graham, though certainly more progressive in his view of human nature, never preached that Christians were immune from sin. On the contrary, he retained something of Luther’s insistence concerning Christian sinners. Niebuhr also reported that he received a number of thoughtful letters. He mentioned that some of the “most moving letters” came from those arguing from Scripture about the “diversity of gifts” within the church. As one writer put it, “Surely there ought to be room in the church for people like you and like Graham.” Niebuhr may have been moved by this sentiment, but he warned that such logic, if followed, would turn the church into “an innocuous mutual admiration society.”45 Sadly, Niebuhr missed the significance of this view, apparently rather common among the many respondents. These Protestants were not willing to settle only for Graham’s interpretation or for Niebuhr’s interpretation of the Christian faith; they saw virtue in both perspectives.

The most important of Niebuhr’s retractions, presumably inspired by these letters, was his confession: “I made the mistake, in my article, of accusing Graham of giving ‘simple answers to complex questions.’ ” He added, “That was hardly an adequate way of criticizing pietism’s moralistic answers to problems of justice and of international relations—problems which cannot be solved unless the residual egotism of even the best people is assumed to be the basis of them all.”46 With this admission, Niebuhr acknowledged the veracity of Graham’s theological starting point. Individuals must first be converted before turning greater attention toward social evil. Niebuhr, however, still maintained that satisfaction with individual conversion, as a complete answer to the myriad complexities of domestic and international problems, was an inadequate, even irrelevant answer.

Niebuhr provided a coda to his mid-Fifties appraisals of the evangelist in his book Pious and Secular America (1958). His overall objection to Graham remained the same. Graham vastly oversimplified the problem of sin and evil in the world with his born-again formula, which “knows nothing of the agonies about the unrighteousness of the righteous out of which the classical Reformation sprang.” Here, again, Niebuhr exaggerated. Graham, of course, knew of the “unrighteousness of the righteous,” but Niebuhr’s evaluation was not totally mistaken. Graham too often spoke of the born-again experience in absolute terms; he pronounced the death of the old self and the birth of the new self in conversion too easily. As a consequence, Niebuhr wrote, the evangelism of Graham had the ironic distinction of being more utopian than the “discredited utopian illusions” of secularism. Graham’s message “cuts through all the hard antinomies of life and history by the simple promise that really good people will really be good.”

Yet, Niebuhr admitted, “It is a thankless task to criticize Graham.” Niebuhr knew firsthand just how thankless, given the wide popularity of Graham and the mail he received defending the evangelist. But the job was thankless for another, more important reason: Billy Graham was not all that bad. Recalling his remarks in the Dutch periodical, Niebuhr contended that Graham was “infinitely superior to the other popular versions of the Christian, or at least Protestant, message.” Moreover, he “preserved something of the biblical sense of a Divine judgment and mercy before which all human strivings and ambitions are convicted of guilt and reduced to their proper proportions.” Finally, Niebuhr observed, “he genuinely helps those who are engulfed in personal moral confusion or in the sense of the meaninglessness of their existence.”47 In the end, perhaps the thankless task had more to do with the merits of Graham’s ministry rather than with its weaknesses.

Niebuhr could never fully embrace Graham, but, outside a few instances, neither could he fully dismiss him—as much as he may have wanted to. In a perfect world, Graham might have been more attuned to the great complexity of sin and its layered and covert operation in both individuals and in the world. (Although Niebuhr, of all people, should have recognized that the world was not perfect.)

A decade passed before Niebuhr stirred up any more controversy regarding Graham. In 1969, near the end of his life, he mustered enough energy for one last parting shot. Early in Richard Nixon’s first term, the president inaugurated weekly worship services in the East Room of the White House. “Naturally,” Niebuhr wrote in Christianity and Crisis, Graham “was the first preacher in this modern version of the king’s chapel and the king’s court.”

This was the last straw for Niebuhr, dashing any hopes he may have had in the 1950s about Graham’s potential as “a vital force in the nation’s moral and spiritual life.” In fact, Graham no longer deserved even conventional cordiality; Niebuhr described him as a “domesticated and tailored leftover from the wild and wooly frontier evangelistic campaigns.” He again received “hate mail” from Graham fans, but evidently he was delighted that he had touched a nerve. For his part, Graham had turned a blind eye to the dangers of such unabashed Christian support for Nixon, or for that matter, any president. Had he heeded Niebuhr’s prickly warning, as he had with the race issue, he would have avoided significant embarrassment. In the midst of the Watergate scandal, Nixon distanced himself from Graham, though the evangelist remained marginally supportive. When the New York Times published the transcripts of the Watergate tapes, Graham was appalled at Nixon’s profanity and irreverent character as well as his own naïve misjudgment of his “friend.” Subsequently, while presidents have often courted Graham, he has remained leery of too close an association with the White House.48

The relationship between Niebuhr and Graham was not merely hostile. Graham responded humbly to Niebuhr’s critical assessments, acknowledging their value. In general, Niebuhr regarded Graham’s evangelism negatively, yet he tempered his negativity with strong public and private endorsements of Graham’s personal character and potential as an important Christian leader in America. Although suspicious of the religious “revival” and Graham’s role therein, he never considered Graham captive to the mythos of American culture in the same way as Norman Vincent Peale or other popular self-help figures.

Niebuhr must be faulted for the unfairness of his public censure of Graham. Not only did he reveal himself to be somewhat territorial during Graham’s New York City crusade, but he had clearly not read Graham’s work carefully, if at all. Graham was not the first to suffer from Niebuhr’s critical pen. Niebuhr often relied on broad generalizations in his evaluation of thinkers and ideas, and consequently he did an injustice to both his opponents and to himself. In Graham’s case, Niebuhr’s constant objection to the individualistic pietism of Graham eclipsed his own concern for individual repentance and regeneration. Thus he created a wider divide than actually existed between himself and Graham, a divide that later scholars have recorded uncritically. This is not to deny that Niebuhr clashed significantly with Graham, but rather to recover the moments of charity and affinity between the two ministers. Of equal importance was the impact of the articles in their “conversation” on pastors and parishioners. On-the-ground reactions unveil the constituencies of Niebuhr and Graham to be at times dogmatic in their loyalties, but also thoughtful in their consideration of the strengths and weaknesses of these two leading mid-century

Andrew S. Finstuen received his Ph.D. in American history from Boston College in May 2006. His dissertation, “Hearts of Darkness: American Protestants and the Doctrine of Original Sin, 1945-1965,” considers the reactions of ordinary pastors and lay believers to Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich’s articulation of original sin at mid-century. In the fall, he will begin postdoctoral work at Valparaiso University as a Lilly Fellow in the Humanities.

1. The term neo-orthodox is problematic when applied to Niebuhr. Despite Niebuhr’s own criticism of the term and scholarly fights that claim him as a theological liberal or neo-liberal, I have chosen to rely on the term neo-orthodox principally because it was and is the most widely used description of his thought.

2. [Whittaker Chambers], “Faith for a Lenten Age,” Time, March 8, 1948, pp. 70-76; “Evangelist Billy Graham,” Time, October 25, 1954.

3. James G. Newbill’s master’s thesis was the exception. From Newbill’s perspective, the foundation for his comparison was obvious: “There is an outstanding similarity in the theologies of these two men and that is their belief in the doctrine of Original Sin and its effects on human beings.” James G. Newbill, “The Theology of Billy Graham, Its Practical Applications, and Its Relative Position in the Contemporary Religious Scene” (MA thesis, Univ. of Washington, 1960), pp. 126-31.

4. “Is Our Religious Revival Real?” McCall’s, June 1955, p. 25.

5. “Americans and Religion: State of the New Revival . . . As Billy Graham, Niebuhr, and LaFarge See It,” Newsweek, December 26, 1955, pp. 44-45; Stanley High, “Our Prayers Could Change the World,” The Reader’s Digest, February 1955, pp. 56-58; Niebuhr and Graham appeared together again in the Los Angeles Times when they were asked to select their favorite Bible passage. See, “They Pick the Bible’s Greatest Words,” Los Angeles Times, April 10, 1955, J8.

6. A. Roy Eckardt, The Surge of Piety in America, p. 61.

7. Reinhold Niebuhr, “Editorial Notes,” Christianity and Crisis, March 5, 1956, p. 18.

8. Mark Silk, Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), pp. 101, 105. Silk reproduces Graham’s 1958 admission that he had read Niebuhr, but Silk offers it more as anecdote than as evidence that reconfigures their relationship as it is currently understood.

9. RN, “Varieties of Religious Revival,” New Republic, June 6, 1955, p. 14.

10. RN, “Editorial Notes,” Christianity and Crisis, March 5, 1956, pp. 18-19.

11. Daniel A. Poling, “Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr on Dr. Billy Graham,” Christian Herald, June 1956, p. 16; “Salvation in New York,” Newsweek, April 23, 1956, p. 89.

12. Henry P. Van Dusen, “Billy Graham,” Christianity and Crisis, April 2, 1956, p. 40.

13. Johannes Ringstad to RN, April 24, 1956, Reinhold Niebuhr Papers, collection 10, Collections of the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; hereafter referred to as RN Papers.

14. Paul E. Smith to RN, April 12, 1956, RN papers, collection 11.

15. See Paul S. Heath’s letter in “Correspondence,” Christianity and Crisis, May 14, 1956, p. 64.

16. RN, “After Comment, the Deluge,” The Christian Century, September 4, 1957, p. 1035; Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Doubleday, 1955).

17. RN to Paul E. Smith, April 12, 1956, RN papers, collection 11; RN to Johannes Ringstad, April 26, 1956, RN papers, collection 10.

18. RN, “Literalism, Individualism, and Billy Graham,” The Christian Century, May 23, 1956, pp. 640-642.

19. RN to Theodore Gill, June 20, 1956, RN papers, collection 16.

20. “Correspondence,” The Christian Century, July 11, 1956, pp. 830-831; E.G. Homrighausen, “Billy Graham and the Protestant Predicament,” The Christian Century, July 18, 1956, pp. 848-849.

21. Harold Paul Sloan to RN, June 3, 1956, RN papers; RN to Harold Paul Sloan, June 7, 1956, RN papers.

22. RN to Theodore Gill, June 20, 1956, RN papers.

23. Eugene McCarraher, Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought (Cornell Univ. Press, 2000) p. 110.

24. RN, “A Proposal to Billy Graham,” The Christian Century, August 8, 1956, pp. 921-922; Homrighausen, “Billy Graham and the Protestant Predicament,” p. 848.

25. “Correspondence,” The Christian Century, August 29, 1956, p. 999; William Martin, A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story (Morrow, 1991), p. 228.

26. “Correspondence,” The Christian Century, August 29, 1956, September 5, 1956, pp. 999, 1027. See in particular Johannes Ringstad, Max Christopher, John Craig, Robert MacAskill.

27. BG, “Billy Graham Makes Plea for an End to Intolerance,” Life, October 1, 1956, pp. 138, 138-162; RN to Harold E. Fey, November 6, 1956, RN papers, collection 3; Harold E. Fey to RN, November 2, 1956, RN papers.

28. RN, “A Proposal to Billy Graham,” p. 921.

29. BG, “Billy Graham Makes Plea for an End to Intolerance,” p. 138.

30. Ibid., pp. 140, 143, 144.

31. Ibid., p. 144; Martin, A Prophet with Honor, pp. 168-69, 172, 202, 296.

32. McCarraher, Christian Critics, p. 110.

33. George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd. ed. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), p. 12.

34. David M. Howard, “David M. Howard Notebook,” collection 74, box 1, folder 26, Billy Graham Center Archives.

35. John Pollock, Billy Graham: Evangelist to the World (World Wide Publications, 1979) p. 157; Saturday Evening Post, April 13, 1957, quoted in Martin, A Prophet with Honor, pp. 228, 229; “Graham Sermon in Garden on TV,” New York Times, June 2, 1957, p. 38.

36. RN, The Nature and Destiny of Man: Human Destiny (Scribner’s, 1943), p. 109. Niebuhr writes: “The necessity of its [the self] being shattered at the very center of its being gives perennial validity to the strategy of evangelistic sects, which seek to induce the crisis of conversion.”

37. Edward John Carnell, “A Proposal to Reinhold Niebuhr,” The Christian Century, October 17, 1956, pp. 1197-1199; [Carl F. H. Henry] “Billy Graham’s Impact on New York,” Christianity Today, September 16, 1957, pp. 3-5; “Correspondence,” The Christian Century, November 14, 1956, p. 1331.

38. RN, “The Secularism and Piety of America,” RN papers, collection 17; a note on the document indicates that the article appeared in the Dutch publication Elsevier’s Weekblad in December 1956.

39. “Graham Sermon in Garden on TV,” New York Times, June 2, 1957, p. 38; RN to Joanne Bourne, May 22, 1957, RN papers, collection 9.

40. “Dedicated Deciders in Billy Graham Crusade,” Life, July 1, 1957, p. 87.

41. “Billy Graham’s Finale,” Newsweek, July 22, 1957, p. 57; Curtis Mitchell, God in the Garden: The Story of the Billy Graham New York Crusade (Doubleday, 1957) pp. 111-112, 115; “Crusades Impact,” Time, July 8, 1957, p. 57.

42. RN, “Differing Views on Billy Graham,” Life, July 1, 1957, p. 92; RN, “Billy Sunday—His Preachments and His Methods,” Detroit Saturday Night, October 14, 1916, pp. 3, 10.

43. RN, “After Comment, the Deluge,” pp. 1034-35.

44. The other difficulty with assessing the “uncritical religiosity” of his correspondents is that it appears that Niebuhr did not save more than a handful of the letters.

45. RN, “After Comment, the Deluge,” pp. 1034-35.

46. Ibid.

47. RN, Pious and Secular America (Scribner’s, 1958), pp. 20-21.

48. RN, “The King’s Chapel and the King’s Court,” Christianity and Crisis, August 4, 1969, pp. 211-212; RN to Willard E. Fraser, August 28, 1969, collection 35; Richard Wightman Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (Harper & Row, 1985; reprint, Cornell Univ. Press, 1996), p. 289; Martin, A Prophet With Honor, pp. 357, 430-435.