Billy Graham Responds to Lingering Anger Over 1972 Remarks on Jews

The Associated Press The Rev. Billy Graham, left, with President Richard M. Nixon at an evangelistic crusade in Pittsburgh in 1968. A tape of a 1972 White House conversation between them has angered Jewish organizations.

It seemed impossible, when H. R. Haldeman's White House diaries came out in 1994, that the Rev. Billy Graham could once have joined with President Richard M. Nixon in discussing the "total Jewish domination of the media." Could Mr. Graham, the great American evangelist, really have said the nation's problem lies with "satanic Jews," as Mr. Nixon's aide recorded?

Mr. Graham's sterling reputation as a healer and bridge-builder was so at odds with Mr. Haldeman's account that Jewish groups paid little attention, especially because he denied the remarks so strongly.

"Those are not my words," Mr. Graham said in a public statement in May 1994. "I have never talked publicly or privately about the Jewish people, including conversations with President Nixon, except in the most positive terms."

That was the end of the story, it seemed, until two weeks ago, when the tape of that 1972 conversation in the Oval Office was made public by the National Archives. Three decades after it was recorded, the North Carolina preacher's famous drawl is tinny but unmistakable on the tape, denigrating Jews in terms far stronger than the diary accounts.

"They're the ones putting out the pornographic stuff," Mr. Graham said on the tape, after agreeing with Mr. Nixon that left-wing Jews dominate the news media. The Jewish "stranglehold has got to be broken or the country's going down the drain," he continued, suggesting that if Mr. Nixon were re-elected, "then we might be able to do something."

"I go and I keep friends with Mr. Rosenthal at The New York Times and people of that sort, you know," he told Mr. Nixon, referring to A. M. Rosenthal, then the newspaper's executive editor. "And all — I mean, not all the Jews, but a lot of the Jews are great friends of mine, they swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I'm friendly with Israel. But they don't know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances."

Mr. Graham, who is now 83 and in poor health, quickly issued a four- sentence apology, but he did not acknowledge making the statements and said he had no memory of the conversation, which took place after a prayer breakfast on Feb. 1, 1972.

The brevity of the apology and Mr. Graham's refusal to discuss the matter further have angered many of the same Jewish organizations that for so long counted Mr. Graham as their best friend among evangelical Christians. The taped remarks have become the subject of synagogue sermons and columns in Jewish newspapers, with some Jewish leaders suggesting that Mr. Graham had hidden anti-Semitic views for decades.

"Here we have an American icon, the closest we have to a spiritual leader of America, who has been playing a charade for all these years," Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said in an interview last week. "What's frightening is that he has been so close to so many presidents, and who knows what else he has been saying privately."

Mr. Foxman urged Mr. Graham to return the award he won in 1971 from the National Conference of Christians and Jews — one of many such awards presented to him.

Yesterday, Mr. Graham's organization issued a longer apology, in which Mr. Graham acknowledged making the statements, but repudiated them.

"I don't ever recall having those feelings about any group, especially the Jews, and I certainly do not have them now," he said. "My remarks did not reflect my love for the Jewish people. I humbly ask the Jewish community to reflect on my actions on behalf of Jews over the years that contradict my words in the Oval Office that day."

Mr. Foxman subsequently issued a statement accepting the new apology, but for many Jews the damage had already been done. In a recent column in several Jewish newspapers, the Washington journalist James D. Besser said the remarks should awaken Jews to the intense dislike for them among many evangelical Christians, except insofar as Jews are useful to the fulfillment of Christian apocalyptic prophecies.

The tapes have been particularly disturbing to people and groups who have worked to find common ground between Jews and evangelical Christians, many of whom say that their progress has now been significantly set back. For years, Mr. Graham stood apart from other evangelicals in his refusal to proselytize Jews directly, sharply disagreeing on the issue with his own denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. Because of that stance, the American Jewish Committee presented Mr. Graham with its National Interreligious Award in 1977, calling him one of the century's greatest Christian friends of Jews.

The taped remarks, however, will only help perpetuate the stereotypes that Jews and evangelicals hold about each other, said Rabbi Yechiel Z. Eckstein, president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, based in Chicago.

"Jewish friends are coming up to me now and saying, `See, we told you so — they're all frauds,' " said Rabbi Eckstein, an Orthodox Jew who has become a liaison between Israel and evangelical Christians.

Mr. Graham's friends and biographers have tried to come up with some explanation for an act that so sharply diverges from five decades of almost universally admired public behavior. Lewis Drummond, the Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism and Church Growth at Samford University, a Southern Baptist institution in Birmingham, Ala., said he believed that Mr. Graham was referring throughout his conversation only to those few Jews he considered unethical for distributing pornography.

"There's not an anti-Semitic bone in his body," said Dr. Drummond, a longtime friend of Mr. Graham's who has written a book about him. Dr. Drummond recalled that Mr. Graham had always preached against intolerance, refusing — in the South of the 1950's and 60's — to hold his crusades in segregated auditoriums and inviting the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to join him in the pulpit.

Another biographer, William Martin of Rice University, suggested that Mr. Graham was thinking only of liberal Jews with whom he disagreed politically. Mr. Martin said that just as Mr. Graham grew up in a culture of segregation and moved beyond it, he had also evolved beyond what his thoughts were in 1972.

Mr. Graham's statement yesterday expressed hope that he had grown past his words that day in the Oval Office. Describing himself as "an old man of 83 suffering from several ailments," he said his life had been a pilgrimage of growth and change.

"Every year during their High Holy Days, the Jewish community reminds us all of our need for repentance and forgiveness," he wrote. "God's mercy and grace give me hope — for myself, and for our world."

I thought we were talking about Billy Graham? The only reference to him in this post is to the fact that he was being hounded by the IRS. If you wish to demean a man's character, you are not going to accomplish that by showing him to have been victimized by the IRS.

It didn't take long for you to stoop to personal attacks.

You did not answer the question, and it's not a personal attack to ask you the question in light of your comments on this thread. Are you an anti-semitic bigot like Richard Nixon ? Do you privately agree with him while while publicly pretending not to ? Billy Graham has since repented and apologized for this sin.

I thought we were talking about Billy Graham?

Billy has repented and apologized but his supporters stand by the comments he has repudiated. I thought we might put it all in context with the saints he was fellowshipping with when he issued those bigoted remarks.

If you wish to demean a man's character

I wish he had not demeaned his character.

I wish others would not demean their character by advocating the bigotry he repudiated.

Your article says "he asked to have some of them investigated". Some is not all.

A day later, meeting with Haldeman and political aide Charles Colson, Nixon is quoted as asking: ``What about the rich Jews? The IRS is full of Jews, Bob.'' Later, he added: ``Go after 'em like a son of a bitch!''

"...when he issued those bigoted remarks."

It is unfortunate that you don't possess the subtlety of understanding to enable you to recognise that his remarks were not bigoted.

If people would not be so PC, they would see there was no anti-Jewish bias in Graham's comments, only a disapproval of the fact that many Jews in the media adopt promiscuity as one of their 'values.' As it is, they tiptoe and back away in horror from his legitimate complaint of their influence here, despite his backing of a state of Israel, presumably though not necessarily a home to Jewish spiritual teachings. He may have been hypocritical in not bringing up being offended by this looseness ethic, although he may not have thought it had a place in his support of Israel advocacy.

It is especially repugnant that he would bear false witness. There is no excuse for what he said nor how he lied about it.

I agree. It looks like he also owes Haldeman an apology.

It is unfortunate that you don't possess the subtlety of understanding to enable you to recognise that his remarks were not bigoted.

I know, I'll never be accepted into a Neo-Nazi movement. But we knew that already.

He strikes me as far more bigoted than any of the people he is accusing.

I submit that is due to a character flaw on your part.

"I submit that is due to a character flaw on your part."

And I submit that, as I said before, you are crazy. And I am not the only one who thinks so.

And I submit that, as I said before, you are crazy. And I am not the only one who thinks so.

I'm sure you have many friends who share your support for Mr. Graham's and Mr. Nixon's comments.

The People for the Un-American Way, and the ACLU,both Diamond Merchant organizations.. Both of em... Both very anti-American... Gun Grabbin, Christian Hating, communist organizations...

The ACLU a Communist organization?

You guys throw around the word 'communist' as if you had some idea what it meant. Obviously, you DON'T. The ACLU may be 'liberal', but to call it communist only shows YOUR ignorance.

It's about as accurate as calling libertarians 'socialists', or calling Republicans 'believers in limited government'. It's just not true.

Believers in personal liberty and free markets are NOT Communists, even if they believe in more freedom than you do.

Why do you keep bringing in Mr. Nixon. I have said nothing about Mr. Nixon.

As for my remarks concerning your sanity, just to show you I bear you no ill will I am going to give you a more detailed diagnosis for free. You suffer from paranoid-schizophrenia. And until a few hours ago, I didn't even believe that paranoid-schizphrenia existed as an objectively defined malady.

I believe that I am pretty tolerant of people with different views than my own. And I don't readily resort to suggesting mental instability when someone expresses views different from my own. My allegation was a response to the following quote from witness's post 75.

"How many weapons do you have at home, and how do you plan to use them to take care of the Jews you despise before the LORD God of Israel sends your soul to .... ?"

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