Billy Graham

Billy Graham stands among the most influential Christian leaders of the twentieth century. Perhaps no single doctrine, practice, political position, or preacher has united the sprawling and diverse world of evangelicalism like Billy Graham. Throughout his six-decade career, Graham mainstreamed evangelicalism and through that tradition brought about major changes to American Christianity, global Christianity, church and state, the Cold War, race relations, American manhood, intellectual life, and religious media and music. His life and career provide a many-paned window through which to view the history and character of our present and recent past.

Billy Graham: American Pilgrim offers groundbreaking accounts of Graham's role in shaping these phenomena. Graham stayed true to evangelical precepts yet journeyed to positions in religion, politics, and culture that stretched his tradition to its limits. This book's distinguished contributors capture Graham's evolution and complexity. Like most people, he grew in fits and starts. But Graham's growth occurred on an international stage, influencing the world around him in ways large and small. This book delves into this influence, going beyond conventional subjects and taking a fresh and nuanced look at the complex life and legacy of one of the most important figures of the last century.

Andrew Finstuen is Dean of the Honors College at Boise State University. He is the author of Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety and a co-producer of the documentary film An American Conscience: The Reinhold Niebuhr Story (2017).

Anne Blue Wills is Associate Professor of Religion at Davidson College. She is currently writing a biography of Ruth Bell Graham.

Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (2001), and America's Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (2014).