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Guests Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy, Time magazine journalists, wrote the best-selling book The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham and the White House. Dean Lloyd hosts the authors in a discussion about faith and public life.

“Why this book, and why now?” asks Lloyd. Gibbs says that, after the most recent presidential election, the authors wondered whether journalists had “misunderstood or misinterpreted” the role of religion in political campaigns. Billy Graham, they realized, had been welcomed into relationships with every president since Eisenhower. They therefore asked the famed evangelist, then 88 years old, to reveal this aspect of his life’s work.

Duffy compares Graham to a “skeleton key” who not only opened himself to the project but also opened doors to presidents to whom he ministered, and to their families and colleagues.

In the 1950s, William Randolph Hearst perceived that Graham, whom the authors call a young “sawdust preacher,” carried his Christian message with great power. Hearst encouraged coverage of Graham, and other media quickly followed suit. “They recognized a star when they saw one,” Gibbs asserts.

In the aftermath of World War II, Communist governments had begun to proliferate. “Graham had an ability to speak to [contemporary] fears and needs in people,” Gibbs comments. Eisenhower, who had been raised in a pacifist Jehovah’s Witness family, recognized that Graham could help him pastorally and politically; he sought Grahamf’s counsel and even tried to hire him as a speech writer. As president, Eisenhower believed that religious revival would help the United States. He was the first president baptized while in office.

Graham’s influence quickly became both personal and powerful. “By 1956, Graham is counseling [then-Vice President Richard] Nixon how to stay on the ticket with Eisenhower,” Duffy says. A transition had been made from ministry to political strategy. Gibbs asserts, “I think you could say that Graham brought out the best in Nixon. I think you could say that Nixon brought out the worst in Graham.” Many years later, toward the end of Nixon’s presidency, Graham was shocked and devastated by Nixon’s behavior and words.

Graham had friendships with presidents of both major parties. Notably, he had a very intense personal, pastoral relationship with Lyndon Johnson. As Graham witnessed and shaped the interaction between politics and religion, he learned from his many experiences. In the latter years of his ministry, Graham warned, “You can’t preach to the left wing or the right wing; you have to have the whole bird.”

About the Guests

Michael Duffy is assistant managing editor of Time magazine and a veteran journalist covering presidential politics. He is co-author of a new book about the Rev. Billy Graham’s decades-long relationship with the White House entitled The Preacher and the Presidents.
Nancy Gibbs is editor at large with Time magazine and author of more than 100 Time cover stories, regular essays, and profiles. She is co-author with Michael Duffy of the New York Times bestseller The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House.



More about Nancy Gibbs

Nancy Gibbs is Editor at Large at Time magazine. Named by the Chicago Tribune as one of the ten best magazine writers in the country, she is the author of more than 100 Time cover stories and regular essays and profiles. She won the National Magazine Award for the black-bordered special issue on September 11, 2001, and was the lead Time writer on virtually every major news event from Oklahoma City to Hurricane Katrina, as well as the last three presidential campaigns. When the news is quiet, she has focused on stories exploring the intersections of religion, values and politics. Gibbs’ writing is included in The Princeton Anthology of Writing, Best Political Writing 2004 and numerous writing textbooks. She has twice served as the Ferris Professor at Princeton, where she taught a seminar on Politics and the Press.

She is a former elder and deacon of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City.

Michael Duffy has been at the center of the magazine’s political coverage for the past 20 years. Duffy served as Time’s Washington bureau chief from 1997 to 2005. He has covered the Pentagon, the Congress, national politics and, for six years, the White House. Duffy is a regular contributor on PBS’ Washington Week with Gwen Ifill, and a two-time recipient of the Gerald R. Ford award for distinguished reporting: once in 1994 for his coverage of the presidency, and again in 2004 for his reporting on national defense. He shared the 1998 Goldsmith Award for investigative reporting from the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He has also taught at Princeton University.

• Visit the website of The Preacher and the Presidents.
• Listen to a podcast of Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy interviewing Billy Graham about his relationships with 11 former presidents.
• Read an excerpt from The Preacher and the Presidents.
• Read recent Time magazine articles about Billy Graham and religion in the White House.
• Watch a PBS “Charlie Rose Show” interview about Graham with Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy.
• Read about an ABC “20/20” program on Graham and his relationship to the White House.
• Read an article about Time’s coverage of Graham over nearly 50 years, by Managing Editor Richard Stengel.
• Read a recent Time magazine article by Duffy and Gibbs responding to remarks about Graham by journalist Christopher Hitchens, entitled “Why Christopher Hitchens Is Wrong About Billy Graham.”
• Read a Time magazine profile of Graham on his 75th birthday in 1993.
• Watch a video clip of Woody Allen interviewing Billy Graham on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971.