When Billy Graham - possibly the most famous American televangelist of all time – died on 21st February 2018. The event was greeted with very mixed reactions within the jewish community, because while Billy Graham – and his extended family – (1) were certainly pro-Zionism and by extension pro-Israel. (2) This is not necessarily because they were pro-jewish but rather – as Sizer explains – they were firm believers in a premillennial dispensationalist theology, (3) which sought to utilise the return of the all jews to Palestine as a means by which to force the second coming of Jesus to occur. (4)
The irony is that while Graham was indeed a long-time supporter of Israel. Jews were – and are - deeply worried about statements he made in a private conversation with President Richard Nixon in 1973 with his references to jewish power in the media, being the main purveyors of pornography and also being an extremely powerful force within the US political establishment. (5)
All of these statements were – and are - true incidentally. (6)
However, what I think really surprised – and I dare say shocked – the jewish community were Graham’s comments about the ‘Synagogue of Satan’ and ‘satanic jews’. (7) These are the classic rhetorical tropes of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism – which are not the same thing by-the-way – and while Michael Brown at TownHall was quick to defend Graham of ‘merely toadying’. (8)
This defence really doesn’t stand up to any serious scrutiny. Since Graham didn’t have to use these particular tropes and nor did he have to mention jewish power or the jewish stranglehold on pornography (then and now), but yet he did so.
The real origins of Graham’s remarks are not difficult discern if we but look at early commentaries on Graham’s views rather than modern ones that cast an alternatively hagiographic or jaundiced eye over Graham’s subsequent career.
George Target’s 1968 balanced if hostile account of Graham’s ideas didn’t charge Graham with anti-Semitism, but rather pointed out that Graham was bitterly and even violently opposed to Communism. (9)
Graham – Target charged - saw Communism as ‘atheistic’, (10) ‘satanic’ (11) and ‘inspired by demons’. (12) He also wanted to fight a war against Communism in the name of Christianity. (13)
If you add in the indisputable fact that jews were – and still are – heavily involved with Soviet Communism as well as in a variety of Communist parties internationally. (14) It is not hard to see that the origins of Graham’s remarks about the ‘satanic Jews’ come from his undoubted awareness of the prominent role that jews played in promoting Communism that Graham defined himself as being opposed to.
If you add into the mix Graham’s dispensationalist premillennial Christian theology with its own glorified ‘Final Solution’ to the jewish question via cramming the jews into Israel and then triggering the Second Coming of Christ causing most jews to be tipped in the fiery furnaces of hell thus expunging Judaism .
Then one can only conclude that Billy Graham did hold classic anti-Semitic views – after all why would he openly oppose converting the jews and thus in his own theology actively prevent them from suffering the fiery torments of hell – (15) combined with classic Christian anti-Judaism and because of these two combined points of view. He was pro-Israel and pro-Zionism.
This nicely highlights the complicated issue of labelling criticism of the jews as ‘anti-Semitic’ when there are two other categories of criticism that are not in and of themselves ‘anti-Semitic’ in the form of anti-Judaism and anti-Zionism.
However this confuses many jews in large part because they tend to falsely assert that any criticism of Judaism or Israel is in and of itself inherently ‘anti-Semitic’ in nature and no-where is the idiocy – as well as the fact that it hamstrings their own analysis – of doing so more obvious than in the case of Billy Graham. Where jews are unsure of whether he is to be labelled an anti-Semite or a philo-Semite so they just screech hysterically that he was both good and evil at the same time.
References
(1) Stephen Sizer, 2004, ‘Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?’, Inter-Varsity Press: Nottingham, pp. 85; 243
(2) Ibid, p. 243
(3) Ibid, p. 86
(4) Explained in detail in Ibid, pp. 106-253
(5) See for example: http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/praise-for-rev-graham-despite-anti-semitic-comments-in-70s/ ; https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/billy-graham-nixon-and-anti-semitism-the-bombshell-tapes-1.5844419; http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/billy-graham-and-the-jews/2018/03/07/)
(6) For example cf. Stephen Isaacs, 1974, ‘Jews and American Politics’, 1st Edition, Doubleday: New York
(7) http://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/praise-for-rev-graham-despite-anti-semitic-comments-in-70s/
(8) https://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbrown/2018/03/05/how-billy-graham-might-have-responded-to-george-will-n2457621
(9) G. W. Target, 1968, ‘Evangelism Inc.’, 1st Edition, Allen Lane: London, pp. 8; 127
(10) Ibid, p. 127
(11) Ibid, p. 158
(12) Ibid, pp. 161; 240; 276
(13) Ibid, p. 127
(14) Cf. Bernard Wasserstein, 2012, ‘On the Eve: The Jews of Europe Before The Second World War‘, 1st Edition, Profile: London
(15) http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0218/chafets022818.php3