“When I arrived at the airport, Mr. Graham himself was waiting for me. I expected to be chauffeured in a Rolls Royce or at least a Mercedes, but we got in his Oldsmobile and he drove it himself. I couldn’t believe he came to the airport driving his own car. When we approached his home I thought he would live on a thousand acre farm and we drove up to his house of made of logs. No mansion with crystal chandeliers and gold carpets, it was the kind of house a man of God would live in. I look up to him.” (Billy Graham: God’s Ambassador)

MONTREAT, NC (Associated Press, 9-17-79). Muhammad went to the mountain and apparently he liked what he saw.

Muhammad Ali, three-time world heavyweight boxing champion, spent several hours Sunday with Billy Graham in the evangelist’s home atop a mountain in Montreat.  Ali said his visit was one of “looking and searching” in an effort to “learn more about other people.”

Sitting on the porch of Graham’s home, Ali looked at the evangelist and said, “He comes before me, I’m just a boxer–famous and all that…but he leads people to God. I look up to him.”

“I’ve always admired Mr. Graham, I’m a Muslim and he’s a Christian, but there is so much truth in the message he gives, Americanism, repentance, things about government and country–and truth.  I always said if I was a Christian, I’d want to be a Christian like him.”

Ali spent the afternoon talking with Graham, then left for Louisville, KY, to address the National Conference of Christians and Jews on Monday. Ali retired from the ring recently and said he was “trying to figure out what to do now.”

Actor Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther/T’Challa in the new “Black Panther” movie. Photo courtesy of Marvel Studios

By Adele M. Banks, Religion News Service

(RNS) — Xavier Cooper went straight from his shift as a cook at a fast-food restaurant to an early showing of the “Black Panther” movie — sponsored by his church.

As his elders at Jonahville African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Huntersville, N.C., had hoped, the film had a profound effect on the young man, a leader in the church’s youth group.

Cooper exited the theater with a buoyed confidence about his dreams after spending two hours watching the futuristic kingdom of powerful black people in Wakanda.

“Being an African-American, it shows you that you can do anything you want to,” said Cooper, 17, who wants to own his own record label and production studio.

Across the country — from California to Chicago to Virginia — members of black churches have bought out theaters for screenings and dressed in their favorite African attire to see a superhero who looks like them. And others, from a New York multicultural congregation to a Detroit Muslim professor, are also tapping into the movie’s messages they hope will be particularly affirming to young people of a range of races and religions.

To read entire column, click HERE.

The 1969 Miami Rock Music Festival featured the Grateful Dead, Santana, Canned Heat, Johnny Winter, Vanilla Fudge and, interestingly enough, Billy Graham.

What follows is Billy Graham’s description of his countercultural gospel message at the Miami Rock Music Festival found in his autobiography Just As I Am.

It was eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning, but I was most definitely not in church. Instead, to the horror of some, I was attending the 1969 Miami Rock Music Festival.

America in 1969 was in the midst of cataclysmic social upheaval. Stories of violent student protests against the Vietnam War filled the media. Images from the huge Woodstock music festival that took place just six months before the Miami event near Bethel, New York – for many a striking symbol of the anti-establishment feelings of a whole generation of rebellious youth – were still firmly etched in the public’s memory.

Concert promoter Norman Johnson perhaps hoped my presence would neutralize at least some of the fierce opposition he had encountered from Miami officials. Whatever his reasons, I was delighted for the opportunity to speak from the concert stage to young people who probably would have felt uncomfortable in the average church, and yet whose searching questions about life and sharp protests against society’s values echoed from almost every song. Continue reading →

Image: SLADE Paul / Getty Images

By Tony Carnes

Billy Graham and Johnny Cash were the best of friends, mutual confessors, and fishing buddies. Their wives, Ruth Bell and June Carter, were prayer partners. The two men could sit for hours in the same room without saying a word—Billy working on a book and Johnny on his songs. Once in a while, Johnny would interrupt and try out a song on Billy or ask a question about the Bible. At mealtimes, the families would gather to pray, sing, and eat. Usually the subject moved quickly to family and friends, problems and challenges. Johnny always had a list of friends he wanted Billy to call, while Billy would ask Johnny for advice and prayer for his loved ones.
***
Billy and Johnny had a superficial connection based on their roots in the hardscrabble rural South. They grew up around Baptist churches and barns. Barbecue, cornbread, and pork and beans would set their mouths watering.

On a deeper level, though, their backgrounds couldn’t have been more different. “Johnny came from the wild side, while Billy had never been through that phase. Billy walked the straight and narrow,” observes [Steve] Turner.

Even after his return to faith in 1967, Johnny’s life was pretty bumpy with what he called his “goof-ups.” And when he slipped back into amphetamine usage, he could get out of control. Johnny also felt let down by some of the ministries that he had latched on to for help. Turner says Johnny felt that “some failed him, some exploited him.” Continue reading →

By Steve Beard

With the passing of the Rev. Billy Graham, there have been innumerable mentions of his relationship with politicians – notably Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush – as well as other celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Bono, Johnny Cash, Martin Luther King Jr., and Kathie Lee Gifford.

One of the more interesting pop culture connections was the effect that Graham’s ministry had upon the life of renowned pin-up model Bettie Page (1923-2008). Known for her jet black hair and iconic rockabilly bangs, The Los Angeles Times described her as a “taboo breaker who ushered in the sexual revolution of the 1960s.” At one point, she was arguably the most photographed female on the planet. After a religious conversation in 1959, she was never photographed again and disappeared from the public radar.

Ironically, in some ways Bettie Page is more popular today than she was in the Eisenhower-era. Her image can be found on playing cards, t-shirts, lunch boxes, beach towels, lighters, key chains, and fridge magnets. Of course, there is even a Bettie Page bobblehead.

For nearly forty years, no one knew what happened to her. Journalists Karen Essex and James L. Swanson were the first to track her down and publish her authorized biography, Bettie Page: The Life of a Pin-Up Legend in 1996.

After her notorious modelling career, Page’s disappearance and religious pilgrimage eventually landed her in Los Angeles where she worked at what would eventually become Biola University (known at the time as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles). She also attended the Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland and Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.

While she was living in Chicago in 1962, she was a counselor at a Billy Graham crusade. “I’m more proud of my work with the crusade than of anything else I’ve ever done,” she said. “I get emotional just thinking about it. If ever there was a man of God, it’s Billy Graham.”

Page wanted to be a missionary and applied to various mission boards but was rejected — not because she had been a fetish pin-up, but because she had been divorced. She spent the rest of her life living quietly and happily in obscurity, working as a secretary, a teacher, and then eventually living modestly off of Social Security. She had no idea that the world was intrigued by her whereabouts.

She never changed her name, or her famous hairstyle. When she was asked if she was Bettie Page, she would playfully reply, “Who’s that?”

“I was never trying to keep away from people, I was just through with modeling and went on to other things,” she told Essex and Swanson. “I went right on living my life in the open all the time.”

Bettie Page died on December 11, 2008, at the age of 85.

Steve Beard is the creator of Thunderstruck.

To read more about Bettie Page, click HERE.

Happy Birthday Johnny Cash (1932-2003). One can only imagine the homecoming hoopla when Johnny Cash and Billy Graham are reunited with their sweethearts, June and Ruth, in the everlasting presence of the God they loved. #JohnnyCash #BillyGraham

One of my fave stories from 2018 Olympics from South Korea was the fact that Mr. T called and gave the USA Mens Curling team a pep talk before their gold medal match-up! “USA! USA! We did it! We’re bringing home GOLD FOOLS. #Gold #curling #curlingiscoolfool #usacurling #TeamUSA“

(Photo: Lars Baron | Getty Images)

“Oh my gosh, did we just win the Olympics?” Jessie Diggins asked her teammate Kikkan Randall when they had just become the first Americans to win Olympic gold in cross-country skiing. I love their story! Fittingly, Diggins carried in the Stars and Stripes at the closing ceremony.

The pair are the first Americans to win any medal in cross-country skiing since 1976. Their victory did not sink in until the medal ceremony. “That was when I felt like, ‘OK. We really get to keep these medals. That really happened,’” Diggins said. “I wasn’t ready for how emotional it was going to be seeing our flag raised. It’s literally never happened before. That was pretty cool to think about.