Billy Graham’s Conversion to Peace

IN 1978, a Sojourners subscriber sent me this quote from a European newspaper reporting on Billy Graham’s visit to the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland: “The present insanity of the global arms race,” Graham said, “if continued, will lead inevitably to a conflagration so great that Auschwitz will seem like a minor rehearsal.” The U.S. media had not reported on Graham’s statement.

I wrote to Billy Graham and asked if what he said, after visiting Auschwitz for the first time, indicated a change of heart for him on nuclear weapons. Billy wrote back to say it did. He agreed to an interview with Sojourners to explain how his thinking had changed about the nuclear arms race, saying that it felt to him like a moral and spiritual question and not just a political issue.

August marks the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. When President Obama visited Hiroshima earlier this year, he encouraged leaders to “pursue a world without nuclear weapons” (which is sadly and dangerously ironic coming from a president who is overseeing a 30-year, $1 trillion upgrade of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal).

Billy Graham, in that 1979 interview with Sojourners, was clear in his view of the threat posed by nuclear weapons:

Is a nuclear holocaust inevitable if the arms race is not stopped? Frankly, the answer is almost certainly yes. Now I know that some people feel human beings are so terrified of a nuclear war that no one would dare start one. I wish I could accept that. But neither history nor the Bible gives much reason for optimism. What guarantee is there that the world will never produce another maniacal dictator like Hitler or Amin? As a Christian I take sin seriously, and the Christian should be the first to know that the human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, as Jeremiah says. We can be capable of unspeakable horror, no matter how educated or technically sophisticated we are. Auschwitz is a compelling witness to this.

THIS ISSUE OF Sojourners celebrates the life and witness of Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest renowned for his untiring work on behalf of peace who, as I explain in "The Unchained Life of Daniel Berrigan," has been a close friend and mentor for me and for our work here at Sojourners.

Likewise Graham, who will be 98 years old this fall, has been an important figure in my life and career. Ever since meeting him in the early days of Sojourners’ ministry, I found him to be not only gracious and warm, but also a bridge-builder and encourager, and a steady supporter of Sojourners’ work for peace and justice, which he called “complementary” to his mission of personal evangelism. Graham has always been a lifelong learner, passionate about preaching the gospel but always ready to understand more about what that gospel means in the world. It was never surprising to me that this Southern-born-and-raised American evangelist decided early on to insist on preaching only to racially integrated coliseums and crusades, when many others just went along with their culture.

But perhaps the most surprising position Graham took, which was at odds with many evangelicals of the time, was his change of heart about nuclear weapons.

As one might expect when talking about Billy Graham, scripture was at the heart of what led to his “conversion” to peacemaking. “I have gone back to the Bible to restudy what it says about the responsibilities we have as peacemakers,” Graham said. “I have seen that we must seek the good of the whole human race, and not just the good of any one nation or race.” He added, “Is it [God’s] will that resources be used for massive armaments that could otherwise be used for alleviating human suffering and hunger? Of course not. Our world has lost sight of true values and substituted false gods and false values.”

Graham talked about the unique role that Christians are called to play. “I believe that the Christian especially has a responsibility to work for peace in our world,” Graham said. “Christians may well find themselves working and agreeing with non-believers on an issue like peace. But our motives will not be identical.” And the goal, as he saw it, was the “total destruction of nuclear arms.”

Graham told us in that 1979 conversation, “I honestly wish we had never developed nuclear weapons. But of course that is water under the bridge. We have nuclear weapons in horrifying quantities, and the question is, what are we going to do about it?”

That’s still the question for Christians today.