Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 114

EOfateSi in am: by Marguerite Michaels lf A 1970: The Rev. Billy Graham with President Nixon. BiHy Graham has talked with Jerry Falwell. "I told him to preach the Gospel. Thafs our calling.

I want to preserve the purity of the Gospel and the freedom of religion in America. I don't want to see religious bigotry in any form. Liberals organized in the '60s, and conservatives certainly have a right to organize in the '80s, but it would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it." "I appreciate his concern," says Falwell. "When I'm in the pulpit, my ministry is the Gospel.

But I reserve the right as a responsible, concerned, tax-paying citizen to speak but on conditions of the country that have brought about frustration and terrific unrest I'm sorry if people find the two hats I wear confusing. The alternative is to be silent. I can't do that." The Billy Graham who preached that God was on our side during the Cold War of the '50s wants no part of a Cold War in the '80s. Thirty years and more than 50 countries later, Reverend Graham has decided that God doesn't choose countries. God chooses people.

"It was a mistake to identify the Kingdom of God with the American way of life," says Graham. "I've come to see that other cultures have their own way that may be of just as great a value. I think we consume too much, and I think we have become too materialistic. I spend half my time abroad now. I feel that God has called me to a world ministry.

I don't look upon myself as an ambassador of the United States, as I did at one time. I look upon myself as a world ambassador." Graham no longer sees Communists as "disciples of Lucifer." "I've lost some of the rigidity I once had," he says. "There are still some people who think that Christians must be in revolt against any government that is not Christian. But thafs not what the Bible says: 'I became all things to all men, in order that I might ommunism is inspired, direct-I ed and motivated by the Devil I LT1 himself," railed the evangelist. "America- is at a crossroad.

Will we turn to the left-wingers and atheists, or will we turn to the right and embrace the Cross?" The Rev. Jerry Falwell, 1981 No. The Rev. Billy Graham, 1949. That was the kind of three-alarm rhetoric that catapulted Graham to super-evangelistic stardom in the '50s and '60s.

He eagerly functioned and was eagerly sought as God's seal of approval on three Presidents' Administrations. He played golf with Dwight Eisenhower, swam nude in the White House pool with Lyndon Johnson and defended his "close friend" Richard Nixon as "a man of high moral principles and integrity" who could not have been involved in any bugging or break-in "shenanigans." Watergate was a watershed for Billy Graham. "I am out of politics," he says now. And Graham is frankly worried that Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority is not. Moral Majority, a conservative political action organization led by TV evangelist Falwell, is dedicated to the return of "morality'' in America.

Its "agenda for the '80s" is pro-family, pro-life and against the ERA, gay rights, pornography, SALT II and defense cuts. "It would be unfortunate if people got the impression all evangelists belong to that group," says Graham. "The majority do not. I don't wish to be identified with them. "I'm for morality.

But morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice. We as clergy know so very little to speak out with such authority on the Panama Canal or superiority of armaments. Evangelists can't be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle in order to preach to all people, right and left. I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past.

I will be in the future." by all means save 1 Corinthians. I take that to mean I should adapt myself to different social conditions." raham has held crusades in 1 Hungary and Poland and is luj negotiating to speak in the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Baptists there. His most stunning turnabout was his endorsement of nuclear disarmament and the SALT II treaty. "I don't believe in unilateral disarmament," says Graham. "I am not a pacifist.

There is a possibility in working out some sort of an arrangement of arms control and hopefully, someday, a SALT the destruction of nuclear and chemical weapons which can destroy the human race. Somebody said that if the '60s were the age of rebellion, and the 70s were the age of frustration, the '80s will be the decade of survival. I am cautiously optimistic." Graham admits to a certain "mellowing" of his views at age 62. "Frankly, I wish I'd read more and spoke less," says Graham. "I've come to understand there are no simplistic answers to the exceedingly complicated problems we face as a country and as a planet." What hasn't mellowed at all is Graham's Biblical message.

"We evangelists believe that we have really found Christ. Something to give us security and stability in an insecure world, and a peace and joy in a country that is desperately trying to find purpose and meaning for itself. The message of Jesus Christ is: 'I forgive your sins, give you security and stability, purpose and meaning, in this life and in a life to Graham says he never expected his public ministry to last this long. The crusades are fewer, and shorter, but still fatiguing. Thirty years of hotel rooms have taken their toll on a never very healthy Graham.

The aura of electric energy that used to surround him is gone. "I'm human," says Graham. "Sometimes I wish it were over. I thought by this time it would be. I'd like to spend the rest of my life writing and getting to know my 15 grandchildren.

But as long as people are still responding we broke stadium records in Japan last year I'll continue to preach. There is such fear in the world of starvation, of war. The world has become a neighborhood without being a brotherhood. I think there's a nostalgia for morality and standards. Young people want to be told what's right and wrong.

The moral permissiveness has gone too far. It hasn't satisfied. There is a search for something more to life than sex or drugs. 6 PARADE FEBRUARY 1, 1981 COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY BEN WEAVERCAMERA 5.