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William Franklin Graham, Jr., was born on November 7, 1918, on a dairy farm near Charlotte, North Carolina. His parents, zealous members of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, enjoyed a reasonable standard of living and avoided many of the social and economic ills associated with the 1930s and the Great Depression. Graham's upbringing revolved around discipline, labor, and scriptural teachings. He graduated from Sharon High School in May 1936 and attended Bob Jones College, in Tennessee, and the Florida Bible Institute. It was at Wheaton College, in Illinois, in the early 1940s that Graham began to fulfill his religious calling and developed his unique style of lecturing, teaching, and preaching. Founded in 1860 by Wesleyan Methodists, Wheaton College established itself during and after Graham's student days as a robust center of neo-evangelicalism. Graham studied anthropology at Wheaton, graduating in 1943.

In his first official year as a minister (1943-1944) at First Baptist Church, in Western Springs, Illinois, Graham showed himself to be a compelling pulpit presence, captivating congregations. Through the 1940s Graham's reputation as an evangelist came to earn him the sort of celebrity recognition normally afforded a gifted musician or an athletic star.

In 1949, with the support of the tycoon William Randolph Hearst, Graham gave a series of simply organized outdoor addresses in Los Angeles that put him on the front pages of American newspapers and further broadened his appeal. In the 1950s Graham's touring revivals within the United States and around the world left him firmly positioned in the spotlight. During the 1960s and 1970s his reach and voice became thoroughly global. He was heard in countries behind the Soviet iron curtain; he spoke out against apartheid in South Africa in 1973; and a sermon in Seoul, South Korea, was delivered to an estimated live audience of one million. His early writing eagerly embraced all manner of political messages. He saw Communism as reprehensible and had no doubt that Western capitalism and the free market system represented the best avenue to achieve happiness and spiritual peace. In his later years he was less involved in political posturing, and his writings sought to promote social freedom, economic justice, and world peace through nuclear disarmament. Graham continued preaching into his eighties in the twenty-first century; his extraordinary longevity helps explain both his prolonged impact and the persistence of his role in American society.

References:

1. Ashman, Chuck. The Gospel According to Billy. Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1977.

2. Cornwell, Patricia. Ruth, a Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham. New York: Doubleday, 1997.

3. Dullea, Charles W. A Catholic Looks at Billy Graham. New York: Paulist Press, 1973.

4. Pollock, John. Billy Graham, Evangelist to the World: An Authorized Biography of the Decisive Years. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.

5. Pollock, John. To All the Nations: The Billy Graham Story. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985.

6. Streiker, Lowell D., and Gerald S. Strober. Religion and the New Majority: Billy Graham, Middle America, and the Politics of the 70s. New York: Association Press, 1972.

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