Beleaguered Billy

One morning a few weeks ago I opened the Washington Post to one of the most extraordinary newspaper headlines I have ever read: "Billy Graham: 'I Am Not a Communist.' "

Who would have thought that Billy Graham, America's foremost evangelist, would ever feel forced to make such a disclaimer? I smiled to myself about the ironies of history and about how absurd the controversy surrounding Graham's recent visit to Moscow had become.

Billy Graham had been invited to Moscow with 1,000 other world religious leaders to attend a peace conference sponsored by the Russian Orthodox Church and approved by the Soviet government. The U.S. government did not want Graham to go.

In the weeks preceding his trip, the White House put great pressure on the evangelist. Billy Graham's presence in Moscow would add both visibility and credibility to the Russian peace conference, and the Reagan administration did not want to see that happen. And too, firsthand observation generally tends to undermine official versions of truth.

Vice President George Bush called Graham personally to try to dissuade him from going. So did Alexander Haig. But Graham held firm because, said the evangelist, "Jesus said,'Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel.' He didn't say, 'Go, into the capitalist countries only.'"

I was personally very pleased with Graham's decision. As governments vie for power with the fate of the earth , hanging in the balance, it is more and more crucial that Christians in particular become willing to bypass regular political channels to build new bridges of understanding and dialogue with the other side.

I knew that if Graham preached to the Russian people his heart would go out to them. He is that kind of man. The evangelist would come home, I hoped, more determined than ever to avert the nuclear destruction of the Russian people.

While in Moscow, Graham made statements about religious freedom in the Soviet Union that have raised a storm of controversy. In essence, what he said was that there is more freedom of worship in the Soviet Union than he had expected or than most Americans probably think. That is undoubtedly true. As anyone who has visited the Soviet Union or has had international contact with Russian church leaders knows, the church is alive in the Soviet Union and in many ways is quite strong.

Like everything else in the Soviet Union, religion is regulated. It is allowed expression as long as it doesn't proselytize, or oppose the policies of the Soviet government. Among the country's 265 million people, there may be as many as 30 million Russian Orthodox Christians, five million Roman Catholics, three million Jews, two million evangelical Christians, and 30 million Muslims. Christian worship is strong in the Soviet Union and in other communist countries, and the church often plays a significant social and political role, as, for example, in Poland.

At the same time, religion is still officially attacked, atheism is promoted throughout Soviet society, and discrimination exists against Christians and Jews. Religious people attempting to operate outside the framework of officially sanctioned religion have been persecuted and their leaders jailed.

When asked by a reporter about Soviet religious freedom, Graham said that he had personally witnessed no religious persecution and had been allowed to say whatever he wanted. Such statements were interpreted by the American press to mean that Graham said there was religious freedom in the Soviet Union.

Graham's statements called the Soviet Union an "atheistic society which does not encourage religion," but where the churches have "some measure of freedom to hold public worship services on church properties" and "families are free to teach their children the Bible and to have prayer in their homes." Statements like that were distorted in the press and by critics to suggest that Graham praised religious freedom in the Soviet Union and claimed there was no religious persecution.

His statements were hardly an endorsement of official Soviet attitudes toward religion or its persecution of religious dissidents. Said Graham, "It would seem to me that in the churches I visited in the Soviet Union, and there are thousands of them, the services are allowed to go on freely." He spoke about "some measure" of religious freedom in the Soviet Union and said it was "more than some Americans think." For that Billy Graham was attacked in the American press and vilified by a number of conservative Christians as--you guessed it--soft on communism (for "compromising his evangelical integrity").

To he honest, Graham did make some unfortunate remarks about how cheap the caviar was, and he unwisely used Romans 13 as the text of his sermon in a Moscow Baptist church. He did not speak publicly on behalf of Russian church dissidents or in favor of Solidarity or against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Graham said that he departed from his time in Moscow with his heart "strangely warmed," and that he was "going away with a great many positive viewpoints," convinced that "both the United States and the Soviet Union were searching for peace."

The response of his critics is, however, more interesting to me than Graham's statements. One has to wonder if the attack on Graham is not some kind of punishment by the political and religious Right for going to Moscow in the first place. The furor in the press, complete with misquotes and distortions, and the hostility of conservative Christians, seem way out of proportion to what actually happened in Moscow.

Some attacked Graham for not taking a more prophetic role while he was in the Soviet Union, ignoring the fact that he has seldom taken such a prophetic role in his own country. It may be that Billy Graham tried too hard to stay on good terms with the Soviet authorities. But the same could be said about his long relationships with American political leaders. Graham was criticized for riding in Soviet limousines and dining on caviar with the Russians, but has not been taken to task by the same critics for playing golf with American presidents and enjoying fancy dinners at the White House.

Said Graham, "In a host country like this it's been my practice through the years never to take political sides." That practice has often led to his tacit support of the status quo in America. The same thing happened in the Soviet Union. Bill Moyers was closer to the mark when he said in a CBS commentary on the Graham controversy, "It is not easy to sup with power and get up without spots."

There have been, however, two significant departures from Billy Graham's characteristic political neutrality and accommodation. The first was his commitment to racial integration in the 1950s and '60s. The second is his recent commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons. On both questions, he became convinced that not just politics was at stake, but the integrity of his faith.

Billy Graham's opposition to the nuclear arms race and deep commitment to being a peacemaker after the manner of his Lord was made clear again in Moscow. He said there that nuclear weapons have put us "at the gates of hell." Wherever he preached in Moscow, his clear commitment to peace was combined with his classic evangelistic call for commitment to Jesus Christ.

To go to Moscow, to try to build some bridges, and to preach the gospel of peace clearly offended the practitioners of another religion, that of anti-communism. The zealous anti-communism of the Reagan administration and its allies on the Christian Right is a false religion, and should never be equated with biblical Christian faith.

Billy Graham is no communist, but he is no longer the anti-communist he was in 1954 when he said, "Either communists must die or Christianity must die." His religion is less American now than before, and therefore more biblical.

Billy Graham is now trying to be a peacemaker. For that he is to be praised. In the perilous nuclear situation, one can only hope that more Christians might see his change of heart and heed his example.

Jim Wallis was editor-in-chief of Sojourners when this article appeared.