All in the Family
As Billy Graham steps down, will his kids shape the future of American evangelicalism?
Healing. Indeed, Franklin has taken a lead role in prodding fellow evangelicals into the battle against AIDS. "The church has been late on this issue," he says. "So many Christians think of AIDS as a homosexual disease, so they don't want to get involved." But with 40 million infected with the AIDS virus, and 100 million new cases expected over the next decade, says Graham, "AIDS is the gravest threat to world security--it's not Saddam Hussein. There's no cure, no vaccine. These people have no hope. We need to reach out to them, care for them, whether they are gay, straight, children, or whatever. When people came to Jesus, he never said, `Before I heal you, tell me what type of sin or high-risk behavior were you engaged in.' He healed them, and as they were leaving he'd tell them, `Go and sin no more.' "
Anne Graham Lotz, meanwhile, also has faced critical scrutiny. In a TV interview shortly after the attacks, she said she believed "God would use [the attacks] as a warning to his people. And I believe if we don't repent that we're going to see something worse. I believe you can't shake your fist in God's face, as we seem to have done over the last few years." The comment seemed to echo those of Jerry Falwell, who suggested after the attacks that God was judging America because of the sins of abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, the American Civil Liberties Union, and others. But in an interview with U.S. News, Lotz said her comment was misconstrued. "I don't believe September 11 was a judgment for our sin," she said. "But I think it's a warning to people, and to the church foremost, to wake up and get right with God. . . . We have told him with vehemence over the past few years to get out of our schools, get out of our government, get out of our marketplace . . . and then when something like this happens we ask, `Where is God?' "
If the two Graham siblings have a harder edge than their father, say some family observers, it probably reflects the bumpy road they traveled growing up Graham. For Franklin, expectations were high for the elder son of an American legend. So he rebelled as a teenager: He drank, smoked, and was expelled from college before accepting Christ at age 22. "I wanted to live life on my terms," he says of those years. Even after his conversion, when he felt God calling him to Christian relief work, he vigorously avoided the pulpit. "I was afraid I'd be compared to my father," he says, "and I could never be him." It was only after the persistence of one of his father's associates that he reluctantly agreed to give preaching a try--haltingly at first, in small venues, until he gained experience and confidence. Now he says he's comfortable with the preaching ministry and holds several of his own crusades (he calls them festivals) each year. "I don't think I would have done it without this man pushing me," he says. Though he didn't know it at the time, his father had put the man up to it.
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