Sunday, April 27, 2003
Franklin Graham comes to Roanoke Valley for 3-day evangelistic rally
He follows in famous father's footsteps

At age 22, the younger Graham committed his life to Christ.

By CODY LOWE
THE ROANOKE TIMES

   BOONE, N.C. - Three times a week, Franklin Graham slides onto a bench at a rough-hewn table in the Woodlands Barbecue & Pickin' Parlor for lunch.

    He always orders the same thing. Half a barbecued chicken and three big pork ribs. Plus corn on the cob, baked beans, slaw, bread and a pitcher of tea.

    One of Graham's co-workers warns a couple of visitors to "take along some Tums if you're planning to eat there."

    The meal seems to be a metaphor for Graham's life - bold, spicy, a little messy, slightly dangerous. A reflection of the risk-taking rebel tamed - for the most part - beneath the tailored suits he wears with his cowboy boots.

    The spice the 50-year-old Graham brings to his far-flung ministries has both ardent admirers and vehement detractors.

    The latter include those who find abhorrent his pronouncements on Islam - which he has called an "evil and wicked religion."

    It will be the admirers, however, in evidence next weekend as Graham brings a preaching style reminiscent of his famous father's to Western Virginia for a three-day evangelistic rally in Salem.

    Graham's ministries attempt to fight evil and do good in the world along two fronts.

    The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, founded by Franklin Graham's father in 1950, sponsors evangelistic events; publishes books and magazines; produces movies, radio and television programs; and conducts evangelistic training. Franklin Graham took over from his father as chief executive officer in 2000.

    Samaritan's Purse, including its medical ministry, World Medical Mission, is a Boone-based nondenominational Christian aid organization that Franklin Graham has headed since 1979. It takes humanitarian aid - water, food, medicine, clothes - to war-torn countries and regions hit by natural disasters. It has been rated the nation's most efficient religious charity by SmartMoney magazine for the past three years.

    It is the ministry he has been dedicated to for most of his adult life, the one where he still maintains his office, on the edge of Boone's tiny airstrip. He will remain there even when the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association completes the move of its headquarters from Minneapolis to Charlotte, N.C., next year.

    His work space is decorated with trophies from big-game hunts, antique guns and pictures of Graham and his father with celebrities ranging from Walt Disney to Richard Nixon.

    Graham was the stereotypical preacher's kid. His father was away for weeks at a time on evangelistic crusades when he was a child, and Franklin Graham strained against the Christian upbringing his mother, Ruth, was trying to instill in him.

    He smoked, drank and took up fast motorcycle riding. He preferred camping and hunting in the mountains near their home in Montreat, N.C., to going to class. He came close to flunking out of a private high school in New York and got into fights in his public school in North Carolina. He learned to fly and was expelled from Christian college after taking a date on an overnight trip in a rented plane.

    As a young adult, he struggled with what he felt were the demands of Christianity on his life. While on a trip helping missionaries in the Middle East, he found himself alone in a hotel room in Jerusalem, where he committed his life to Christ. He was 22.

    By then, he had come to work with Bob Pierce, the founder of Samaritan's Purse. Graham was asked by its board to take the helm in 1979, shortly after Pierce died. It soon merged with World Medical Mission, an organization Graham had helped found a couple of years earlier in Boone.

    Graham's penchant for flying into war zones and disaster sites with emergency supplies for devastated populations provided experience for responding to this year's war in Iraq.

    Only this time, the animosity of Muslim groups over his post-9/11 statements about their religion led to immediate negative reactions.

    Last month, Graham announced that Samaritan's Purse had stockpiled emergency supplies and equipment in Jordan, ready to move into Iraq as soon as the war was over. That included a system to provide drinking water for up to 20,000 people, temporary shelters for 4,000 people, packs of household items for 5,000 families, and medical kits "to meet the general medical needs of 100,000 people for three months."

    In an interview on the religious Web site Beliefnet.com, Graham was quoted as saying, "We realize we're in an Arab country and we just can't go out and preach." He added, "I believe as we work, God will always give us opportunities to tell others about his Son. ... We are there to reach out to love them and to save them, and as a Christian I do this in the name of Jesus Christ."

    The comments caused an uproar. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, issued a denunciation, asserting that Graham was acting as if the war was against Islam.

    Spokeswoman Hodan Hassan said last week that "because of his close association with President Bush and the administration, it hurts us internationally. ... Many people are concerned that Graham and others have an impact on decision making. I'm not saying that is the case, but it is the perception."

    Graham, she said, has every right "to preach that he believes that Christianity is the only way through which to find salvation. Where we believe he crosses the line is when he begins to demonize another faith. When he calls Islam 'evil and wicked,' that's as close to demonization as you can get."

    Even some of his evangelical friends have warned Graham that he risks damaging the relationships of other Christian ministries, especially in predominantly Muslim countries.

    But, sitting on the porch at his Boone office recently, Graham insisted, "I don't wish any harm or feel any bad will toward anybody of any faith. Muslims have every right to worship God in this country as they see fit."

    Still, Graham said, since 9/11, "people ask 'Is this the same God?' How could we worship a God who commands his followers to kill other people?

    "We love the people of Islam. We just disagree with them, and they disagree with us."

    Despite the occasional public-relations flare-ups, Graham said he has never had protesters at an event. In fact, he said, Muslims are welcome to attend the Salem festival.

    The point of such evangelism is to try to expose non-Christians to the Gospel, he said.

    That's one reason the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has changed the names of the events it sponsors from "crusades." Billy Graham's meetings are now called "missions" - the label preferred in England decades ago, Franklin Graham said.

    Franklin Graham events are called "festivals" because Graham felt that would appeal more to non-Christians and reflect the events' contemporary music and focus on a younger audience.

    When he began the festivals, Graham committed to devoting 10 percent of his time to them. That has grown and now includes having to attend each of his father's missions, where he is prepared to preach if the senior Graham, now 84, is unable.

    "That's never happened," Franklin Graham points out, but his father - who is scheduled to preach in San Diego in May - insists he be prepared.

    Graham speaks with his father in Montreat every day. His dad's health is good, he said, although his mother is frail.

    As the head of two of the nation's largest Christian ministries, Franklin Graham is putting the business degree he earned from Appalachian State University to work.

    The Billy Graham association's move to Charlotte should make that $125 million operation more efficient, he said. That's essential because its revenues have dropped each of the past two years, decreases that Graham attributes to the national economy, the move and the war on terrorism.

    Things are so tight that the association is cutting its staff from 450 to 250.

    On the other hand, revenues at Samaritan's Purse - which employs 300 - continued to rise last year to $160 million. "We're in the business of helping people," Graham said. "If there is war or tragedy, our income goes up because people give to eliminate suffering."

    Graham is a self-described workaholic but one who still finds time to do the things he loves, which include riding his motorcycle, running and spending time at the family's vacation cabin in Alaska - "a cabin on a lake 120 miles from a road. ... God still gives me time to enjoy the things I like to do."

    He and his wife of 29 years have four children. The two oldest sons are graduates of Liberty University in Lynchburg. One is associate pastor of a Baptist church in North Carolina, and the second works for his father at the ministry's offices in Charlotte. A third son will graduate from West Point in June, and a daughter is still at home.

    Graham says he and his wife have no intention of leaving this little mountain town, which has been home to them for about 25 years.

    That means he'll fly out periodically for the kind of evangelistic meetings that he'll conduct in Salem next weekend. "Not because people want to hear me, per se, but because it provides a chance to hear God's word and see lives changed.

    "For an evangelist, each meeting includes different topics and different Scriptures," Graham said. But each time, his job "is to get across God's love for the individual, to remind him of his importance to God."

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