Billy Graham lay in state at the Capitol Rotunda almost as long as Mike Huckabee sat on the board of the Country Music Association’s charitable foundation.
Both ordained Southern Baptist ministers, the two men shared many theological and cultural views. Yet Graham, 99, died a national hero who received bipartisan acclaim, while Huckabee, the father of President Trump’s press secretary, is a more polarizing figure than when he was governor of Arkansas.
Why the discrepancy? Some of it has to do with the differences between Graham and Huckabee; much of it, the changes in American society.
Graham took stands on controversial social issues, supporting civil rights before that reflected the national consensus and opposing abortion in our current political climate. But he spread the Gospel first and waged culture wars second, sometimes eliciting criticism from sometime allies who wished he would be more outspoken on issues ranging from racial equality to traditional family values.
Huckabee has devoted much of his life to Christian ministry as well. But he is nationally prominent chiefly as a partisan figure who has fought pitched battles on the divisive issues of our time. He also cast himself as the product of a specific cultural subset of our country — in 2015, Huckabee published a book titled God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy.
Graham was bipartisan in his counsel to presidents. His lowest moments, in fact, may have come when he identified too closely with former President Richard Nixon and declined to speak truth to power during Oval Office remarks disparaging Jews.
Politics can be an honorable profession and is a natural outgrowth of Christian social witness. At the same time, Graham would almost certainly have been less effective at changing people’s lives if he muddled his calling by becoming a politician first and a preacher second.
Balancing the Great Commission and robust political debate in a divided America is going to be a challenge for evangelicals and other conservative Christians going forward, whether they are Mike Huckabee, Franklin Graham, or Rick Warren. It is a delicate task often ignored in angry political shouting matches.
In retrospect, one of the clearest signals that Trump was going to run for the Republican presidential nomination was his presence at Graham’s 95th birthday party.
Religion can get meaner as it becomes more politicized. And politics can also grow crueler when it is divorced from transcendent morality or the conviction that opponents are created in the image of God.
Those divisions reflect the changes in our country too. When Graham was ascendant, there was a Judeo-Christian cultural consensus in American. Even people who did not share Graham’s theological commitments felt bound to respect them. And Graham’s ministry focused on taking his evangelical message to mainline Protestants, Catholics, and others, inclusive in the context of the time.
This consensus no longer exists. “We worship an awesome God in our blue states,” said Barack Obama, who was among the former presidents to celebrate Graham’s legacy. Obama is not wrong. Yet it is also true that religion divides along political lines. The same year Obama gave his speech about blue state religiosity at the Democratic National Convention, liberals circulated an Internet meme depicting the states George W. Bush won as “Jesusland.”
Huckabee’s views about marriage, nearly universally held as recently as Bill Clinton’s presidency — and indeed nominally espoused by Obama for almost all of his first term — are now shunned by country music elites. This is the case even though many of their fans’ beliefs more closely resemble Huckabee’s than the Dixie Chicks.
It is hard to imagine a future evangelical leader celebrated at the Capitol upon his death, much less receiving the Congressional Gold Medal or the Presidential Medal of Freedom, unless they were primarily associated with a progressive political cause. Some, citing the First Amendment’s establishment clause, already believe Graham should not have been so honored.
Neither Graham nor Huckabee’s era is without sin. What is less clear is whether our current trajectory is especially conducive to reconciliation and forgiveness.
Perhaps a future minister will lead a revival.
