Walking and Talking With the Lord: Teleological Curation,Salvation,and the Billy Graham Library

Origins

From The Charlotte Observer, October 7, 2015 (Funk, 2015):

New Book Echoes Hard-Line Billy Graham of ’50s: At nearly 97 years old, Billy

Graham has a new book out. . . . On many of the 259 pages . . ., the words about heaven and especially hell echo his hard-line sermons from the 1950s, when he stressed God’s judgment, man’s sin and the lies of the devil. One Billy Graham scholar said the book reads like it was written not by Graham but by his son, Franklin, an evangelist who has a combative style. But Franklin . . . said his father is the author: “It’s all him.” (pp. 1A, 16A)

Christ, the royal Master,

Leads against the foe;

Forward into battle,

See his banners go! (Baring-Gould & Sullivan, 1865/1871)

The 40,000 square foot BGL complex constructed at an initial cost of US$27 million opened in May of 2007 with an elaborate dedication service featuring Presidents George. H. W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton in attendance (Young, 2010). To date, over a million souls have toured the site and, along with its unlikely sister complex, The NASCAR Hall of Fame, the BGL is one of Charlotte’s two most popular destinations for visitors. Besting even the stock car pantheon, the Graham Library tops the charts on TripAdvisor’s crowd-sourced list of must-dos while touring the Queen City (a factoid the BGL notes proudly in its promotional materials). Visitors arriving by air, rail, or motor cannot avoid the invitation to come entertain the multi-generational Graham legacy and hear the word of the Lord. Located just off the Billy Graham Parkway and short minutes from the BGL itself, the Charlotte-Douglas airport contains multiple eye-catching displays spotlighting the complex, with the most prominent mounted in the baggage claim concourse to prime new arrivals to make their way to the Library. Each of the interstates that girdle and run through Charlotte features massive electronic billboards inviting all for an inspirational “experience that will last.”

The term library, a place or house for books, is an intentional misnomer on the part of the BGL. Even as the BGL moniker evokes presidential libraries, repositories of official and canonical artifacts (including books) that construct and reify national, institutional, and biographical identities, it isn’t really designed as a warehouse for tomes and records. There are few books throughout the BGL exhibits save for those on sale at the requisite gift shop and favorite family volumes on display in the portion of the Library that documents Ruth’s childhood and her special grace as a loving, learned Matriarch. Early advertising promotions invited guests to come tour the “library without books,” an appeal that ensures potential, but perhaps leery, visitors that the BGL will not require any undue intellectual exertion and that the ultimate impetus for visiting is to find something or someone who cannot be contained within the limits of any gilded volume. Finally, despite the title of Library, the BGL does not serve as an archive for journalists, theologians, and academics researching the life and work of the Grahams. Graham’s papers are not available for review here. Rather, the archives for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association when it was directly overseen by Billy Graham and Graham’s personal papers (to be opened twenty-five years after his death) are housed in the Billy Graham Museum on the campus of his alma mater Wheaton College just outside Chicago. Despite the almost complete absence of traditional library wares, from beginning to end, the BGL hallows one book—THE book—from which Billy reads, quotes, and holds up, literally, as gospel. However, to consider the BGL a library for just one divine book is to mistakenly substitute a consecrated symbol or bound body of messages for God incarnate. The Good Book, like the good works of Billy and Ruth Graham, is just a vehicle to bring people to Christ. As an “ongoing Crusade,” the Library is not engineered to merely preserve the word, it is designed, first and foremost, to usher guests into the presence of the Lord. Until Christ enters our open hearts and we are born again, all else is just words.

While the BGL occupies a substantial piece of prime Charlotte real estate, Graham’s presence extends across the entire metro area and beyond. A brochure given to visitors of the Library provides directions for motivated explorers to set off into the city and find his birthplace marker on Park Road (unveiled by President Richard Nixon in 1971); the original location of the Graham family home place and the home place of Billy’s grandfather; the site of the extensive Graham dairy farm which is now an upscale shopping center; the site of the outdoor prayer meeting that turned young Billy’s attention from girls and sports to the Lord; Billy’s boyhood church, the first church in which Billy delivered a sermon, and another church at which he preached; the sites of Billy’s second-ever and final evangelistic campaigns; the burial grounds of Billy’s parents; and the location of Billy Graham’s “defining moment”—when he made his “real commitment to Jesus Christ” (Rubien, 2000, l. 61, 69). No matter that he preached to over 210 million people in over 185 countries, and was listed by the Gallup organization as one of the ten most admired men in the world in 52 separate polls, Graham is a hometown hero who found God in his backyard (Young, 2010). And, if Graham found God right here, then why shouldn’t we?

Franklin Graham is also a visible presence—both religious and political—on state, national, and international stages and at the BGL. Under Franklin’s watch, the Billy Graham enterprise has become more stringently authoritarian, reversing the direction taken by Billy Graham who late in his career tempered his early fire and brimstone jeremiads with a more open and benevolent version of Christianity than that currently espoused by his scion. Franklin’s doctrinaire, line-in-the-sand approach has made him a prominent voice for the conservative Christian movement in America. Franklin’s eminence is not limited to a place of honor in the BGL and significant influence in the wider Christian arena. The Charlotte Observer included Franklin in their list of 22 possible running mates for 2016 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying,

The North Carolina-based evangelist and son of legendary Billy Graham is already on the campaign trail—he’s holding rallies in all 50 states this year to fire up evangelical Christian voters. Graham has no government experience, but he does run two large ministries. And he called for blocking Muslim immigrants months before Trump did. (Funk, 2016, l. 63-69)

As the senior Graham retreats from public life, suffering from hydrocephalus, a close cousin to Parkinson’s disease and prostate cancer (“Billy Graham Biography,” n.d.; Young, 2010), and having made his final public sermon in 2013 via a video filmed at the celebration of his 95th birthday and aired on Christian TV stations and Fox News (described by Franklin Graham at the celebration as “the greatest news channel in America,” Page, 2013, n.p.), Franklin is the public face and spokesperson for the Graham legacy. As such, he appears in multiple exhibits in the BGL calling for visitors to not merely learn the lessons of the Father and his father, but to also pay attention to signal controversies diminishing the public standing of Christians and Jesus in the homeland and abroad.

The online promotional literature describing the genesis and teleology of the Library makes clear that the site, unlike most other working archives and commemorative libraries, is neither “a memorial, nor is it a museum” (“What Is the Library,” n.d., para. 8) The man whose name the Library honors was adamantly opposed to the construction of a memorial edifice celebrating a long and storied evangelical journey. Graham did not want the model chronicle of a red-blooded Piedmont farm boy who became one of the world’s best known and most beloved evangelists of the late twentieth century to take center stage and appear to compete with the Good News of the Gospel. For this reason, Graham initially rejected the idea of an elaborate complex celebrating his memory and life’s work. It was Franklin who persuaded a chary Graham with a compromise, dual purpose solution that aims to focus the Library on God rather than Billy, while still commemorating, with all due restraint, the story of God’s noted Carolina servant (Stepp, 2006).

At the BGL, Graham’s life story and Call to Christ is told in a captivating series of exhibits and multi-media displays, commencing with “Bessie” the animatronic dairy cow who recalls Billy Frank’s cold hands on a full udder for early morning milking and “moooving” guests along to a recreation of Billy’s first great revival in Los Angeles under a canvas tent to his pioneering use of modern media to broadcast God’s glad tidings. And, while a gushing Bessie makes gentle mock of Graham’s youthful, practice preaching sessions to a congregation of unresponsive tree stumps, a simple start for a raw-boned American kid on his way to becoming an exalted preacher, every exhibit and way station in the Library keeps Christ in direct sight as visitors are shepherded to the foot of the living cross at the end of each visit. Visitors may elect to turn a deaf ear to the altar call and not give themselves over to the Messiah, opting to focus their attention on Graham’s hagiography and the wider story of Christian outreach in the media age, but it is impossible to visit the Graham Library and not hear the siren call from one of God’s most familiar and impassioned messengers.

Poetics

From Newsmax, October 8, 2016 (Beamon, 2016):

Franklin Graham Rips Trump Comments, Urges Voters to Turn out for SCOTUS

The Rev. Franklin Graham Saturday slammed Donald Trump’s “crude” remarks in the 2005 video that was leaked on Friday and called on Americans to vote on Nov. 8 because “the most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court.”

“The crude comments made by Donald J. Trump more than 11 years ago cannot be defended,” Graham said on Facebook. “But the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton likewise cannot be defended. . . . I am not endorsing any candidates in this election,” he continued. “I have said it throughout this presidential campaign, and I will say it again: both candidates are flawed.”

In the tape, leaked to The Washington Post and NBC News, Trump made lewd and sexually charged comments about women as he waited to make a cameo appearance on a soap opera in 2005.

Trump bragged about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women who were not his wife on the recordings, caught on a live microphone, in a conversation with Billy Bush, then a host of the television show “Access Hollywood.” . . .

“The only hope for the United States is God,” Graham said on Facebook. “Our nation’s many sins have permeated our society, leading us to where we are today.

But as Christians, we can’t back down from our responsibility to remain engaged in the politics of our nation.

“On Nov. 8, we will all have a choice to make,” the evangelist continued. “The two candidates have very different visions for the future of America.

“The most important issue of this election is the Supreme Court. That impacts everything.

“There’s no question, Trump and Clinton scandals might be news for the moment,” Graham added, “but who they appoint to the Supreme Court will remake the fabric of our society for our children and our grandchildren, for generations to come.” (n.p.)

A few months later, just prior to the inauguration of President Trump, Franklin Graham pointed to God as the ultimate political authority and the Prime Mover behind Trump’s unexpected election:

“For these states to go the way they did, in my opinion, I think it was the hand of God,” he said. “It wasn’t hacking. It wasn’t Wiki-leaky or whatever. It was God, in my opinion, and I believe his hand was at work, and I think he’s given Christians an opportunity.” (Miller, 2017, n.p.)

We are not divided;

All one body we:

One in hope and doctrine,

One in charity. (Baring-Gould & Sullivan, 1865/1871)

The BGL proper is housed in an enormous barn faced with a large glass cross that dominates the complex grounds. The massive barn is a condensed symbol which meshes Graham’s birth to plain spoken dairy farmers with the Messiah’s humble entrance in a lowly, crowded stable. The barn with its vast entrance hall appointed with buggies, old farming implements and decorative hay bales also carries powerful nostalgic echoes of an old-timey America, when life was lived at a less frenetic pace and, at least at the mythic level, large numbers of us were part of an united, untroubled, homogeneous population tending to the home fires in a Jeffersonian, agricultural idyll secured by God’s blessing. Patrons of Cracker Barrel, America’s roadside stop for heritage vittles will have no trouble visualizing the grand, yet homespun interior of the entrance hall. It is a people’s palace for the sainted salt of the good Earth.

Visitors enter and exit the barn through massive glass doors at the foot of the cross. The passage is staffed by solicitous and energetic greeters who swing wide the doors for all, ensuring guests encounter no physical obstacle or delay entering the hall. This is not the only cross visitors will encounter as they explore the complex and grounds. The cross is engineered into the architectural and physical environment in such a way that unknowing visitors may think they are simply strolling along nicely cobbled paths traversing the manicured grounds and inviting gardens, only to come to the sudden revelation that the rambling footpaths actually form crosses, and we are now, like the steadfast women who stood vigil by a broken Christ, ourselves standing at the base of the cross. At the BGL, the cross is more than a mere symbol to be read as a divine memento mori, it marks a fateful encounter, the eventual rendezvous toward which we all make a literal pilgrim’s progress. Visit the BGL and you will be brought to the cross.

Once in the hall, all visitors are required to get a free ticket and queue up for an introductory chat with Bessie the welcoming cow. When Bessie concludes her spiel, she playfully tells us to “mooove along.” The docents leading us into the next portion of the BGL echo the cow when they too tell us to “mooove along.” After meeting Bessie and just prior to setting forth through the immersive exhibits proper, visitors are shown short films that acquaint guests with the multiple arms of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and a second introductory film that justifies the necessity to commemorate Billy Graham’s journey in such a monumental and elaborate fashion. This last film follows a kindly grandfather, walking staff in hand, as he strolls through a wooded glen with his curious grand-daughter recounting what it was like to be an eyewitness to history when Graham took up the cross. “Billy Graham,” the elderly man says, “a man called by God.” The film concludes with a long zoom out that reveals the pair are walking on a groomed trail that leads to a handsome stone Church on the grounds of Graham’s instructional retreat near his Montreat mountain home. While they may not yet know it, like our on-screen doubles, visitors to the BGL are also walking to the Lord. As the films end, exit doors open automatically, in concert with the entrance doors that sprang open on our arrival, and we are ushered into the main body of the museum. The doors close of their own accord and we are compelled to go forward.

On this journey, and as part of an “ongoing Crusade,” these uniquely uncanny doors speak volumes. They have no handles and they swing wide and close automatically. As they lead us out and bar us from retreat, the doors leave us no choice but to advance. In the words of the BGL attendants, only a small portion of the museum is “self-directed.” As the New Testament commands, there is but one way to the Lord, and the BGL is designed in strict keeping with that tenet.

On one visit to the BGL with friends whose personal politics and sexual orientation are likely to be atypical of the usual visitor profile, my friends were made genuinely uneasy by the automatic doors that drove us onward. We elected to leave, but could not head back as the doors without handles made it impossible to retreat. I asked a docent where to find the exit. She had to radio to a higher up to authorize our untimely departure and for permission to lead us through a hidden labyrinth that allows only elect BGL employees free egress and access to all portions of the facility.

Sensemaking

From Christian Post, November 18, 2015:

The Rev. Franklin Graham, CEO of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, gives remarks at the eighth annual Bikers With Boxes event at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina, October 17, 2015.

Outspoken evangelist the Reverend Franklin Graham has stated that the attacks in Paris and Beirut have shown that “Islam has declared war on the world.”

In a statement posted on his Facebook page Monday evening, the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association also mentioned other brutal attacks by Islamic terrorists.

“Islam has declared war on the world, and it’s high time we acknowledge it and respond decisively,” wrote Rev. Graham.

“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live under Islam. I will bow my knee to no one except Almighty God.”

Graham also wrote that the United States needs “to elect a president and leaders willing to take the fight to the Islamic State.”

“We need to join forces with Russia who was our ally in WWII, France who is our oldest ally, Germany, and others to destroy this enemy,” continued Graham. (Gryboski, 2015, n.p.)

At the sign of triumph

Satan’s host doth flee;

On, then, Christian soldiers,

On to victory. (Baring-Gould & Sullivan, 1865/1871)

According to Wacker (2014), Billy said in a 1989 interview, “I have great respect and tolerance for [the Muslim people]. Because we are a pluralistic society, we are going to have to recognize that we are no longer just a Jewish and Christian society” (p. 120). In contrast to the commemoration of Billy’s small town America childhood depicted at the BGL, and the consolidated celebration of American exceptionalism and American provincialism that permeates many of the exhibits, the Library also highlights Billy’s ecumenical work throughout the world, to people of every “group, race, and class” (Wacker, 2014, p. 35). At these junctures, when exhibits place an emphasis on the different branches comprised by the global Family of Man, each walk with God is informed by local culture, unique historical circumstance, and divergent ethnicities. Despite our all too evident diversity, each of our stories must be regarded as just one complementary journey among many. In this sense, even as we and our kinfolk can be seen as distinct threads in the great human tapestry, Billy comes as a messenger from God to lead all peoples and nations to the true cross and the great crucible of a pan-American, neo-latitudinarian melting pot in which we shall commingle as One in the name of the Father.

Making sense of the BGL experience is complicated by the fact that much of the design work for the complex was not overseen by traditional theologians and academically trained curators. Unlike most cultural treasuries which look to discerning scholars to take the lead in designing facilities that value education over diversion, much of the BGL is designed by Orlando, Florida–based ITEC Entertainment Corporation. ITEC has a global footprint and creates spectacular immersive stages, theme restaurants, alluring retail environments and top-shelf amusement parks across the planet for a variety of corporate and not-for-profit clients. A short list of ITEC’s completed and in-progress projects include Universal Studio Orlando’s Bob Marley—A Tribute to Freedom eatery where intrepid diners are ensconced in a replica of Bob Marley’s Jamaican home while consuming authentic Caribbean fare; Norway’s Asgard Viking Adventure Park; Cartoon Wonderland in Jiangsu, China; the Scriptorium at Holy Land Experience in Orlando; and The Mystery of St. Michael in Prague (ITEC Entertainment, n.d.-a). The Mystery, housed in a deconsecrated 12th century Church, “takes guests on a disconcerting walking tour through the tormented imagination of the 20th century Czech writer Franz Kafka” (ITEC Entertainment, n.d.-b).

In light of the common hand at work in each of these fantastic looking glass projects, a trip through the BGL is not all that dissimilar to a trek through destination retail meccas and multinational theme parks. It may be the firm intention of the BGL board to ensure that the guiding light of the Gospel illuminates the meaning of Jesus’s gift and Graham’s life work in like manner for every visitor to the facility, but contemporary design practices typical of late-Capital amusement parks and post-modern retail plazas are going to introduce a degree of unintended play into solid structures purposely erected as bulwarks of the true Cross. Disneyland, the BGL, and kindred entities, including the recently completed replica of Noah’s Ark in Williamstown, Kentucky (which bills itself as “Bigger Than Imagination!”), are all-enveloping sensory experiences which simulate a hybrid blend of what we can imagine, what we know as truth and what we take on faith. In the land of imagination, belief and special effects engineers, it’s hard to negotiate the line between fantasy, reality, Biblical storytelling, and good common horse sense (Ham, 2016).

The Message

From The Washington Post (Stepp, 2006), December 13, 2006:

A Family at Cross-Purposes: It is a struggle worthy of the Old Testament, pitting brother against brother, son against mother, and leaving the famous father, the Rev. Billy Graham, trapped in the middle, pondering what to do. Retired and almost blind at 88, the evangelist is sitting in his modest log house on an isolated mountaintop in western North Carolina and listening to a family friend describe where Franklin Graham, heir to his father’s worldwide ministry, wants to bury his parents. . . . But at this moment everyone’s attention is on the visitor, crime novelist Patricia Cornwell, who is talking about a memorial “library” that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, headed by Franklin, is building in Charlotte. Cornwell toured the building site and saw the proposed burial plot. . . . The building, designed in part by consultants who used to work for the Walt Disney Co., is not a library, she says, but a large barn and silo—a reminder of Billy Graham’s early childhood on a dairy farm near Charlotte. . . . “The whole purpose of this evangelistic experience is fundraising,” Cornwell says to Billy Graham. “I know who you are and you are not that place. It’s a mockery. People are going to laugh. Please don’t be buried there.” Billy Graham’s eyes never leave Cornwell’s face as she talks. Ruth Graham sighs. A lot. “It’s a circus,” Ruth says at one point, softly. “A tourist attraction. . . .” (Stepp, 2006, n.p.)

The article goes on to state that Ruth notarized a statement that says: “My final wish is to be buried at [our mountain home] the Cove. Under no circumstances am I to be buried in Charlotte, North Carolina [at the Billy Graham Library].”

Hell’s foundations quiver

At the shout of praise;

Brothers, lift your voices,

Loud your anthems raise. (Baring-Gould & Sullivan, 1865/1871)

At the BGL, we stroll down the path through the woods to Ruth’s grave, the white cherry blossoms on the trees forming an angelic backdrop against the blue spring sky. Round an embankment and our red brick pathway is bisected at right angles by another trail; together the intersecting footpaths take on the striking form of a cross. The design is not immediately apparent—clearly the grounds are designed for guests to encounter the cross-walk in a sudden and unanticipated revelation; Ruth is buried at the foot of the cross. A sign near her grave reads “End of construction: Thank you for your patience,” and on her gravestone is the Chinese ideograph for righteousness, a borrowed blazon commemorating her long years spent as the child of medical missionaries in Eastern China. The gently sloping path meanders down to the grave of Billie Barrows, wife of Cliff Barrows, both longtime musicians who traveled with Billy’s Crusades for near the entire extant of Graham’s remarkable career. Billie’s gravestone asserts she “was devoted to building God’s kingdom through music, hospitality, and the loving nurture of her family.” The empty plot next to Ruth’s grave lies fallow waiting for Billy to come home to Charlotte and his Maker.

For Ruth Graham, and Billie Barrows—the most well-known of the many women providing essential backstage support for the men of the Crusade—their role is consistently framed as a subservient, inspirational helpmate for their husbands in keeping with the dictates of the Lord. Throughout, the Library reifies a conservative view of women’s roles just as it yearns for a return to a lost idyll and a sanctified union with the Lord for all the lost and wayward. The BGL unequivocally conveys Billy’s fundamental message that God saved mankind from sin (“A message of love for mankind,” and “God’s forgiveness of man’s sin”)—even the Good News is gendered in this setting. Taking the lead for the many stragglers lagging behind, the BGL, we are told, is “the story of a man who has been about his Father’s business” (emphasis added).

Early on in his personal mission and later through the outreach done under the aegis of the Billy Graham Evangelical Association (BGEA), Graham recognized the necessity to employ new media to best save a fallen world with the “old, old story of Jesus and his love” (Hankey, 1869). Beginning with a Chicago radio ministry on powerhouse AM station WGN and then over television airwaves and the production of Christian feature films offering a sobering alternative to racy, Hollywood dreck, global satellite transmission and a robust Internet presence, the Graham ministry makes exemplary use of new communication technologies to relay an ancient promise of eternal Salvation. In this respect, as with the use of the latest interactive communication technologies in immersive commercial environments, the Graham ministry is employing the most persuasive and captivating communication channels available.

As the BGL has multiple exhibits dealing with Graham’s technological foresight and the work of his organization to figure out how to best deploy new media to sound the Call, it is clear that the Graham team has long thought strategically about the relationship between sharing the Gospel and mediated communication technologies. In keeping with the contemporary praxis of museum curation in exploiting bleeding-edge telecommunication to better address institutional goals and further public outreach, the BGL is just as deliberately working through what it means to disseminate mustard seeds of faith via novel modes of communication. In making sense of the Association’s long-term media strategy, it is certain that they are not McLuhanites. The medium is not the message, and worldly communication technologies can be used to disseminate the sacred good no matter who else or how else others utilize them in the service of very different ends. The message may reflect an orthodox commitment to sound tradition, but Graham and the BGL are model institutional pioneers and enthusiastic early adopters for whom holding on to the time-tested rituals of old time religion was never good enough.

One of the compelling rationales for employing new media for the Graham ministry is that new communication technologies afford unprecedented opportunities to share the Holy Word. Potential audiences ignorant of God’s grace and unbelievers who have hardened their hearts against God just might be open to revitalized messages proclaimed via new channels of communication. In addition, the Christian obligation for the faithful to proselytize meshes perfectly with the diffusion of technological advances. Time and again, the BGL takes especial care to document and celebrate the astonishing size of the unserved multitudes which have had the opportunity to connect with Christ through an engagement with plural channels of messaging dispersed with always innovative communications. These displays also affirm not just the absolute necessity to bring the Gospel to the entire world, but also how to interact with unbelievers once a connection has been secured. The requirement to treat doubters, the unknowing, and even harsh critics with love and charity is most powerfully underscored in those sections of the museum spotlighting Graham’s interviews with secular media stars. In intimate congress with opinion leaders, news anchors and chat show celebrities, including Johnny Carson, Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Phil Donahue, Oprah Winfrey, and Woody Allen, among many others, Graham holds court with great conviviality and an equally great measure of unshakeable conviction. Graham is always at ease conversing with worldly media figures. He is rock-steady and unyielding in the presentation of his straightforward argument that concludes with our eternal salvation washed in the blood of the lamb: (a) We are sinners. (b) We will go to hell for our unwashed sins. (c) God loves us. (d) Repent and be cleansed. Billy’s summation of the Lord’s omnibenevolent nature is clear: “God is a God of judgement . . . and of love” (BGL).

When media luminaries playfully mock His message and are demonstrably uneasy with the transcendent injunction to unconditionally accept God in his capacity as a stern but loving authority, the ever amicable, avuncular Graham has no trouble testifying to his unwavering commitment to Godly principles. Graham is never, ever ruffled in the face of doubt and knowing jibes. His unyielding belief is predicated on his steadfast faith in the ultimate authority of the Bible: “It’s not what I claim, I’m just telling you what the Bible says,” Billy tells Phil Donahue as they face off and gently contest moral foundations and First Principles. Howsoever his old-fashioned rectitude and core values are challenged, Graham never comes off as judgmental, self-righteous, or unduly stiff. Comparing God’s commandments to the rules of the road that allow us to avoid deadly mayhem and reach home safely, Graham demonstrates that it is both possible and desirable for Christians to interact with non-believers in warm public exchanges. Graham’s untroubled engagement with those who question his devotion demonstrate the principle of Christian agape for all who come within the benevolent purview of an authentic Christian voice. Again and again, no matter the question or degree to which Graham’s interlocutor departs from Christian tradition, these dialogues always end with a congenial Graham returning to his bedrock understanding that resolute faith is predicated on the conviction that God’s word is true. So long as the connection to that fundamental touchstone is maintained, believers need not be troubled when they are in the company of men and women not yet ready to accept God’s dispensation. Billy’s unshakeable trust in God’s Word and Bond is signposted from start to finish as guests journey through the complex; archival and commemorative plaques alongside homey signage and needlepoint samplers repeat and underline this commitment at every footfall.

The newest exhibit at the library dovetails exactly with the promise of the original Graham home, the exhibit of Ruth’s journey, and the instructive headstones of Ruth and Billie Barrows, and enjoins visiting recruits to take up arms in the culture wars. Those looking to broaden the meaning of marriage to encompass unions beyond the pale must not succeed. Titled “The Power of Christ in the Home: Make Christ the Foundation of Your Marriage,” the exhibit features personal artifacts from Billy and Ruth Graham’s Montreat sanctuary and offers visitors “insights and timeless truth from what the Bible says about parenting, including an intimate look into Billy and Ruth Graham’s Christ-centered home.” A recent message from this exhibit provides counsel to couples in need of spiritual direction:

God gave marriage to us, and He has a plan for us far better than our own. He purposefully blessed men with women and women with men—to enjoy each other’s company, to help each other in times of need and to strengthen our relationships for His glory. He planned for marriage to be a life-long promise and commitment, not only to each other but also to Him. (BGL)

Reinforcing Franklin’s heteronormative call to end the travesty of “homosexual marriage” and the BGL’s message that there is but one narrow Way leading to His Kingdom, this exhibit sums up the Library’s absolute commitment to gender and sexual conformity and obedience. Following the Way and the Word, the True believer commits to a narrow interpretation of scripturally mandated behaviors and norms. As numerous historians and religious scholars have noted, Graham never gave center stage to homosexual torts over the course of his very long career (Long, 2008). The rekindled enthusiasm for fire, brimstone, and righteous heterosexuality represents the opening of a new front clearly undertaken at the behest of a new CEO.

The Politics

From Western Journalism (Dareing, 2016), January 13, 2016:

Franklin Graham Urging American Christians to do the 1 Thing That Could Save USA: Christians need to run for political office if they want to change the direction of America, according to one of this country’s leading evangelists. Franklin Graham, who leads the worldwide charity Samaritan’s Purse, jump-started his call to action with his Decision America 2016 tour in Florida on Tuesday. Decision America is a national campaign for Christians to pray and then to get involved in the political system according to what they believe to be God’s will. Graham plans to go to state capitals all over the country to hold prayer rallies, and to encourage people to become active in local governments. “We need Christian men and women running for school boards,” Graham said. “Can you imagine if the school boards in America, [if the] majority were evangelical Christians, the impact this would have for years come?” Graham said the idea that believers should stay out of politics is wrong. He added that “the enemy says that,” and encouraged for more Christians to step into political waters. “I believe God honors those in high places who honor him,” Graham said as he spoke to hundreds standing around the front of the Capitol Building in Tallahassee. “Our job as Christians is to make the impact of Christ felt on every aspect of life—religious, social, economic, political.” (n.p.)

Like a mighty army

Moves the Church of God;

Brothers, we are treading

Where the Saints have trod. (Baring-Gould & Sullivan, 1865/1871)

As visitors move on from the exhibit documenting the Graham ministry’s visionary application of new communication technologies, you hear guttural foreign voices, sirens, and the threatening bark and snap of attack dogs. Navigating a blind corner, visitors find themselves caught short by a convincing life-size replica of Checkpoint Charlie. Through the window of the guard hut, just scant feet from museum guests a sharp-cut video image of a young East German member of the Grenztruppen comes to life. The alert guard has heard something suspicious and nervously unshoulders his weapon. The guard listens hard and prepares to fire. Given our immediate proximity to the display, the soldier can only be listening for us to make a false move and betray our position. Ambient sounds of military action grow louder as guests find themselves pinned down by brilliant spotlights focused directly in captive eyes. In keeping with the experience of immersive exhibits in other museum spaces, as with the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., guests are no longer simply looking at objects in a collection, they are now positioned as the anxious subjects of an immediate and disconcerting showdown. Caught in a border crossing panopticon, guests find themselves vulnerable quarry in an alien and alarming historical context.

Taking us just to the brink of fight or flight, the troubling image of the Red gunner is replaced by news reel footage of Graham touring Communist satellite states and the Soviet Union. We learn from the solemn announcer that for many years, Graham was prohibited from preaching behind the Iron Curtain. Eventually, Graham’s prayers are answered. The footage of him praying alone in the vast expanse of an otherwise empty Lenin Stadium in 1959 is superseded with footage of Graham preaching at packed revivals across the Godless East as a multitude of famished souls press forward to hear the Word of the Lord. Images of the Wall being torn down by elated Germans follow and the video that started with an edgy guard preparing to mow us down concludes with the massed Red Army Choir singing a full-throated rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in Moscow’s Olympic Stadium. Going wholly unmentioned is the serious political divide among evangelicals occasioned by Graham’s frequent and controversial meetings with Soviet authorities. His long entente with the Soviet state was subject to harsh criticism by many Christian leaders who regarded any dalliance with the atheist empire as the work of a quisling (Kidder, 1982).

While the video display walking us through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of East Berlin contains silent images of powerful figureheads including Ronald Reagan, Michael Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, each of whom played consequential roles in the Cold War that ultimately ended with the fall of the Wall, the final import of the exhibit is unquestionable. The Wall fell when God answered the prayers of his people. Save for the hearty chorus of Soviets, we never hear a word from anyone other than Graham at the pulpit and the grave narrator explaining Graham’s decades-long campaign to preach to throngs of the dispossessed brought low by state-sponsored atheism. The collapse of the Soviet Empire was not a question of policy and politics. As when Joshua’s trumpet blast brought down the walls of Jericho, the barbed Curtain came down when God’s word was finally broadcast. In support of this miraculous intervention on the world stage, consider the unprompted testimony of one of the docents as the BGL was closing up shop for the day:

This is my favorite part of the library. Did you see the how many of the [Red Army] chorus had no sheet music when they were singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic?” They did not need the music. God was in their hearts.

Despite the undeniable power of the exhibit to turn unwary guests into temporary hostages and thankful adherents liberated by the hand of God and the prayers of a tireless messenger, the Checkpoint also marks one of the stations along the tour that likely evokes alternative responses to the dominant BGL narrative. No matter how much startled guests feel like praying when, with sirens blaring, we find ourselves at the wrong end of an assault rifle, trapped in the white hot blaze of a sentry tower spot light, sizable numbers of reasonable people are likely to attribute the collapse of the Soviet Union to a complex variety of interrelated factors in which Billy Graham’s revivals play a role of little or no significance. The BGL Berlin Wall experience makes you feel a tangible sense of physical catharsis as the Wall is breached and reunited believers celebrate, but no reputable history of the Cold War highlights Billy Graham as a motive force responsible for the disintegration of a tyrannical State. Furthermore, as recent events in Russia demonstrate, it would be possible for many displaced citizens of the former Soviet Union to come to Charlotte, visit the Berlin Wall exhibit, and regret that Vladimir Putin had not been in charge when a bellicose American President demanded the Wall come down.

The Berlin Wall exhibit in the BGL gives non-believers insight into what it would mean to contemplate history as it unfolds under the protective gaze of an omniscient God who knows when every sparrow drops and is ready to answer the massed prayers of faithful supplicants. Most Americans are likely to think of Ronald Reagan’s commandment to “Tear Down This Wall” as the speech act that tipped the balance and assured the Soviet Union’s collapse, but the BGL offers a divinely ordered, alternative interpretation to Cold War histories celebrating American Exceptionalism and the strong leadership of President Reagan. Not only did God and his Carolina envoy bring down the Wall, but the age of miracles, living Prophets, Divine Intervention in everyday affairs, and the life of the Godly nation-state has not passed. In this fashion, authoritative claims articulated by museum exhibits and the supporting data offered by informative placards, interpretive guides, and immersive simulacra construct a “politico-religious” experience that makes clear God’s plan for Man.

In 2010, the BGL was renovated to address Billy’s concerns that the Library’s focus was not sufficiently trained on God (Young, 2010). The renovations added eyewitness testimonies recounting how Billy Graham led people to God and information about the current activities of the BGEA, under the leadership of Franklin. In recalibrating the exhibits and jiggering with the relics on display, the Museum’s own history suggests that no matter how a Believer makes his or her way to God, there are multiple avenues to the Divine. If there were only one inerrant path taking us to the Lord, the BGL and museum collection need never be subject to alteration and revision. In the dedication for the renovations, Billy Graham prayed, “Bless Franklin, as he leads our whole organization and Samaritan’s Purse. . . . We commit this library and museum to you” (Young, 2010, n.p.). With an eye to the future, the BGL will likely undergo repeated transformative makeovers in the years to come as Franklin assumes greater control over the messaging and leadership of the interlaced branches and missions that compose the BGEA.

Each time we have visited the BGL, Franklin’s presence is more and more prominent and Billy’s less so. Upon each return, the newly politicized and gendered nature of the Library’s gospel has felt stronger and stronger, more and more exclusive and marginalizing to people whose beliefs and/or lifestyle may take them on an alternate route to the Kingdom of the Lord. And, we have been more and more surprised and alarmed at how Billy is being re-constructed as a lifelong arch-conservative totem as Franklin’s increasingly hardline influence waxes. One such exhibit captures a rapt Sarah Palin gazing up at Billy’s face in an engagement that calls to mind some curious time-bending transmogrification of Christ communing with Mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, or other distaff biblical notable. In images like these, familiar Sunday school encounters are reborn in the visual iconography and political cross currents of the present day. Also given pride of place in the cavalcade of Billy and world historical figures is a prominent picture of Billy and Franklin side-by-side with the headline “Father and Son Preach the Good News Together.” The sword has been passed from the father to the son in a radical act of hegemonic unification which melds Christ’s sacrifice and triumph with the hopes of a fractious right wing coalition that includes Christian Hawks, resurgent Cold War Warriors, Christian Dominionists, a myriad of Evangelical sects and other Godly cliques looking to claim a victory for Christ’s great army in the current epoch of the Culture Wars and Trump Ascendant. As the photo and striking headline make clear, this is a new trinity that boldly condenses the figures of the Godhead with Billy and Franklin leading the way for a new, muscular era of Christian witness.

The Invitation

From LifeSite News (Bourne, 2016), January 6, 2016:

America will fall without a moral revival: Franklin Graham launches 50-state tour ahead of 2016 election: The Reverend Franklin Graham believes the United States of America is in danger, and will only be saved by turning back to God. And this can only be accomplished by Christians praying and bringing their faith to the public square. America’s problems are across the board, Rev. Graham said; spiritual, economic, and even racial, an area in which he believes the country is actually going backward. And he insists the answer is not found in politics. . . . In Des Moines, Graham kicked off his Decision America Tour 2016, with which he intends to challenge Christians in each of the 50 U.S. states to live their faith in all aspects of life—at home, in public, and when they vote. . . . Rev. Graham recently renounced the Republican Party for failing to stop the recent spending bill that fully funded Planned Parenthood, despite the abortion giant’s role in trafficking the remains of human beings aborted at its facilities. . . . The son of renowned preacher Billy Graham and president of the evangelistic ministry that is his father’s namesake, as well as the international relief organization Samaritan’s Purse, Graham has been vocal about upholding biblical values in the past as well. In June of last year, he called for a boycott of businesses that promote the homosexual agenda, and backed it up by moving accounts for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse from Wells Fargo bank because of the company’s promotion of homosexual “marriage” in its advertising. . . . “The most important thing we can do as Christians is pray,” he told the 1000-plus crowd gathered in 30-degree temperatures at the Iowa Capitol. “God hears prayer and God answers prayer.” Rev. Graham likened the walls of Jerusalem being broken and the city’s destruction in Nehemiah Chapter 1, verse 2 with the U.S. today, faulting in part, political correctness. (n.p.)

Onward, then, ye people;

Join our happy throng.

Blend with ours your voices

In the triumph song. (Baring-Gould & Sullivan, 1865/1871)

After seeing two brief films recounting what it means to accept Jesus into your heart and being handed an RSVP card that asks for our prayer requests along with an invitation to make Jesus our personal savior without delay, guests are disgorged into the BGL’s final passage. The exit through which all guests must venture is a mirrored hall constructed in the shape of a cross. Every surface is mirrored and edged in LEDs so that as you step into the hall, guests are subsumed in an infinite regress of lambent Platonic crosses. In harmony with the Berlin Wall experience which also spirited us out of the here and now, the loss of spatial coordinates in the play of lights and mirrors immerses visitors in a dimension beyond the realm of ordinary experience. Here, adrift in a repetitive wash of sublime reflections, we are transported by a transcendental simulation of the boundless Eternal hereafter. The entry to the last room is scribed with the passage from John 14:6 which encapsulates the entire journey and summative meaning of a trek through Library: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” All guests take their place in the nimbus of the enveloping cross.

Conclusion

The BGL enacts a highly politicalized Christianity in immersive stories, tailored landscape, striking visuals, and captivating sound. In the evangelical theater of the BGL, we experience signal, historical events as spectacular apologia allowing guests to witness God’s invisible hand as history unfolds and Christ’s foretold return draws closer. The endless parade of images of Billy with U.S. and world leaders, as well as countless secular celebrities, functions to not only capture the specific moments when Billy encountered the greats of the twentieth century, it also serves as an elaborate visual tapestry that leads us to the self-evident conclusion that the humble messenger of God, Billy Graham, is the single thread that binds together the interwoven histories of the most accomplished and powerful men and women on the planet, as well as the earthly emissary who unites the anonymous, everyday hordes of believers who followed His call. At the same time as the BGL promotes Billy’s story as the biography of God’s venerable messenger, it also promotes Franklin’s political aspirations and hidebound vision, introducing Franklin as the only anointed scion fit to lead Billy’s ministry into battle for our collective future. In so doing, the sweeping arc of Billy’s lifelong ministry is recalibrated and the aim of the BGEA is now clearly committed to marshaling God’s people for one last, climactic resolution to the Manichaean Culture Wars.

In harness to the consolidated call for a return to God and a time when American culture embodied the Good, the overriding message of the BGL is the strength of our individual spiritual agency and the concomitant ability to author our spiritual destiny (“all you have to do is repent”). No matter how often the principle of self-determination is repeated during a trip through the BGL, this is a false premise. As Billy says, anyone can accept God’s offer of love and grace. Yet, the introduction of Franklin’s political entanglements into the Library program foregrounds the proscriptive nature of conservative beliefs about what being a Christian entails. Taken in total, while the ostensible message is that everyone is welcome in God’s kingdom, the foundational fiat upon which the entire institution rests is that people with alternative lifestyles, social or gender roles, or behaviors need not apply. The road to God demands we toe the line. The Library represents an artful articulation of doctrine, nostalgic yearning, ideological brinksmanship and rhetorical resolve to pursue and promote a specific political agenda through a gospel of love transcendent and exhaustive hagiography. In the last instance, a failure to accept the terms of the bargain offered to visiting pilgrims at the BGL is framed as a willful rejection of God. If God’s love has not changed your heart, so the message goes, the fault lies with you and your inability to accept God’s magisterial mercy and transcendent wisdom.

The through way organizing a journey traversing the BGL hails guests to keep to the straight and narrow—the rules for the King’s Road of the BGL are heteronormative, gendernormative, and ethnocentric. All people are welcome in the kingdom except those with lifestyles, beliefs, and practices arising from alien cultures that stray too far from the well-ordered social practices that defined some halcyon golden age in the American Heartland circa the mid-twentieth century. The BGL documents the remarkable career and faith of an American legend and his prospective replacement. Going forward, will Franklin define the course Christians and expectant Christians must travel or will a more ecumenical and charitable vision for the Christian life emerge? Going forward, when the BGL is once more temporarily closed and exhibits reworked, what refurbished glories await pilgrims seeking the Lord?

From the Facebook page of Franklin Graham, May 15, 2015, 8:01 p.m.:

What are the principles and beliefs that you would not compromise under any circumstances? Even if it meant putting your life on the line? . . . Will you stand against ungodliness? What are you willing to take a bullet for?