Influential US preacher Billy Graham dies

Last updated: 22 February 2018, 10:11 am

The Rev Billy Graham, who transformed American religious life through his preaching and activism, becoming a counselor to presidents and the most widely heard Christian evangelist in history, has died.

Spokesman Mark DeMoss says Graham, who long suffered from cancer, pneumonia and other ailments, died at his home in North Carolina on Wednesday morning.

He was 99.

Graham reached more than 200 million people through his appearances and millions more through his pioneering use of television and radio. Unlike many traditional evangelists, he abandoned narrow fundamentalism to engage broader society.

Among the first to pay tribute were Donald Trump and his vice-president Mike Pence, the most recent beneficiaries of the voting power of US evangelical Christians.

From the 1930s until the early years of this century, Graham drew crowds of thousands to hear his rallying cry for Christianity. Over almost six decades, it is estimated that he preached to more than 200 million people.

As well as his US coast-to-coast roadshows and tours across every continent, Graham harnessed the power of the media to reach millions, deploying television and radio networks, newspaper columns, feature films and satellite hookups.

He wrote dozens of books and his sermons were translated simultaneously into 48 languages and transmitted to 185 countries by satellite.

Trump tweeted: “The GREAT Billy Graham is dead. There was nobody like him! He will be missed by Christians and all religions. A very special man.”

Pence, himself a renowned evangelical, said his “matchless voice changed the lives of millions. We mourn his passing but know with absolute certainty that today he heard those words: ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’”

Jesse Jackson, the civil rights leader and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, described him as “the pope of the evangelical movement”, the dominant strand of American Protestantism.

Jimmy Carter, the former president, said Graham had “shaped the spiritual lives of tens of millions of people worldwide. Broad-minded, forgiving and humble in his treatment of others, he exemplified the life of Jesus Christ by constantly reaching out for opportunities to serve.”