Mistake in yesterday’s Billy Graham post

I was traveling yesterday and, unlike actual journalists who wrote their Billy Graham obituaries and takes many years ago, felt the need to get some content out there on the internet.

Not a good feeling.

Anyway, I published a quick post while supposedly watching three kids, packing, and checking out of a hotel room.

Most of what I said was fine, but one point needs correction:

“It also irks me that few commentators note how dismissive Graham and his generation of neo-evangelicals was of Mainline Protestantism. I am not saying this was all malicious or even conscious. But it lay just beneath the surface of his ministry. Untold millions of those he converted were probably baptized members of the historic denominations. Was Billy Graham a sheep stealer? Not exactly, perhaps. And he avoids that charge by telling his converts to find a good, Bible-believing church. But this carries an implication that a certain kind of church may not be good or Bible-believing. I think this is a dastardly and undeserved insult of mainline Protestantism.”

In fact, Billy Graham himself was not especially dismissive of Mainline Protestantism – especially in comparison to the evangelicals who would come after him. I still think this is a point worth debating, but here I erred in trying to impute Reagan-era and subsequent evangelical disdain for mainline Protestantism to Billy Graham himself.

Read my original post and let me know what you think!