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But social commentary has never been the core of Graham's mission. His ministry rests on the notion that if individuals are brought to God and their lives transformed, they in turn will go out and transform society. That priority, and even more his zeal for social orderliness, often kept Graham on the sidelines, particularly during the civil rights movement. Though he insisted on racially integrated seating at his revival meetings, Graham says Martin Luther King Jr. himself advised in a lengthy talk that "if you go to the streets, your people will desert you, and you won't have the opportunity to have these integrated crusades." But then and ever since, he has been criticized for his role. "He should have been more deeply involved earlier on," argues Dean Joseph Hough Jr. of Vanderbilt University's Divinity School. "Had he been, he could have had quite an impact."
To this day, the spotlight on Graham is so bright that spiritual gestures are taken as political statements. "I was distraught and offended when he spent the night in the White House before Bush launched Desert Storm," says Alan Neely, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary. "I saw that as Graham giving his sanction for what was about to take place. I don't think that's the role of the Christian minister."
His congregation of past Presidents sees it rather differently. "Billy came to the White House to give me the kind of reassurance that was important in decisions and challenges at home and abroad," says Gerald Ford. "Whenever you were with Billy, you had a special feeling that he was there to give you help and guidance in meeting your problems."
Graham is intent on saving time for his family, time he rarely had for them when he was traveling at least half the year. Each day becomes precious. "It doesn't make me feel any different, turning 75, than when I turned 45," he muses. "But when I see pictures of my 19 grandchildren and four great- grandchildren, I know some time has passed. I let days like that slip by and try to forget it. I'm not looking backward. I'm looking to the future."
The ceaseless demands leave him with hard decisions to make. He wants to preach redemption to as many people as possible while he still can: he is already committed to Atlanta, Cleveland, Ohio and Tokyo for next year. Then comes a career climax, a 1995 revival meeting that will span the entire globe at once. In this technological Pentecost, sermons will be translated into dozens of languages and transmitted by satellite TV to about 130 nations -- possibly including mainland China.
And yet achievements and the numbers, mighty as they are, mean less and less now. Sitting in Montreat, Graham muses about America's spiritual life. "It seems we've gotten caught up in numbers. We have so many polls that give different figures about how many go to church and synagogue, how many are saved and unsaved. When I ask people to come forward and a thousand people respond, I know in my heart they're not all converted." He mentions Bibles. Everyone used to bring them to his revival meetings before. Now only a small percentage do. It is as if they could not find copies.