Billy Graham, Evangelicalism’s UnCelebrity

The border between fame and celebrity is as undetectable as it is ill-defined, and not all detect or define it the same way. Katelyn Beaty, in her new book, Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits are Hurting the Church, explores Billy Graham in what I would call – she does not – the UnCelebrity. I say this because he did not play the part, or if he did, not well.

Here's my question: What makes a person a celebrity?

I’ve been mulling this over with these terms: unknown but local, known locally and more, well-known, famous, and celebrity. Something happens on the spectrum of being known when one punches the keys that type out the word “celebrity” and I’m curious what you think happens with that term that is different from famous.

Graham, Katelyn Beaty observes, “joined a tradition of charismatic men who preached an individualistic gospel, used mass media to amplify their message, and aligned themselves with mainstream celebrities to lend cultural credence to their message.”

The tradition that gave rise to someone like Graham — and she hops over Edwards, Whitefield, Wesley, and Finney — was J. Wilbur Chapman, then Billy Sunday, and then D.L. Moody, as well as Mordecai Ham, the evangelist that got to Billy Graham as a 16-year-old. Then Graham. That’s his tradition. She gets this exactly right.

Graham, though he did not ignore institutions, got his power from his “charisma, passion, and communicative power.” And his good looks. His gospel emphasized individual decision. He was not unique in that (and some would point to Whitefield here for the origins of this emphasis on the capacity of the person to choose in evangelism). But Graham’s power and reach and platform were such that he “replaced the local church as the link between Jesus and sinners.” (For some, for sure.) She’s quick to observe that Graham’s team always connected with local pastors and churches but his work remained outside the “purview of the local church.”

As I mentioned last week, Beaty emphasizes a celebrity as someone with “social power without proximity” and I just am not settled with that, though it undoubtedly points to something important about what “celebrity” means. There is something, too, about curating one’s image. In this Graham chp she ponders celebrity in these terms: it’s about knowing about more than knowing why and knowing who the person is. She observes that Billy Graham has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Does that make him a celebrity?

Graham, building especially on Moody, used the media to expand his platform so he could extend his message to more and more. Newspapers, radio, TV, films, press conferences, TV appearance on stages like Phil Donahue, and esp famous friends (like Johnny Cash) – all a part of Graham’s way of ministry. She affirms with Neil Postman that the medium will shape the message. She lets Postman use terms like “desacralizing” and “naivete” – and while she does not explore this with Graham, she will with the names to come in her book.

Graham, and Beaty likes Graham, “invested in institutions that didn’t depend on his gifts or charisma to succeed” but more importantly, he was both aware of his own celebrity and safeguarded himself from its three pitfalls. They were all expressed in the famous Modesto Manifesto: the temptations of sex, money, and power. He’s known for the Billy Graham Rule, and she observes that Graham also safeguarded money and power.

She develops this more in an important paragraph and it’s why I call him the UnCelebrity:

• he paid attention to accountability,

• to the desire to live like the rich,

• “to go it alone,”

• and to “fudge the truth” about numbers.

Institutions for many today have become personal platforms to enhance their power and persona (all played with in different ways in the title and book).

I don’t know of a seminary that doesn’t need to read this book. Not one.