Billy Graham exemplified what evangelical Christianity could be — and too often was not

For anyone who has read Sinclair Lewis’s “Elmer Gantry” or lived through the televangelist scandals of the 1980s — Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts — it is not difficult to identify Billy Graham’s most remarkable accomplishment. Over the course of a public career that lasted more than half a century, no one has credibly charged Graham with scandal.
Graham’s ability to stay above the muck, even as so many of his peers were eventually dragged down into it, matters. During its heyday, white evangelical America was a political and cultural juggernaut. Today, while they remain the dominant religious force in the GOP, a recent survey from the nonpartisan research organization Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that fewer than one in five (17%) Americans identify as white evangelical Protestant. This decline is particularly stark among young people: Only about 8 percent of young adults (age 18-29) are white evangelical Protestants.
Ultimately, the reckless behavior of the televangelists in the 1980s inflicted untold damage on their faith. Their refusal to be accountable led them into temptations they could not resist. All of them, and by extension, evangelical Christianity itself, were discredited. And while we cannot demonstrably connect the recent slide in evangelicals to this legacy of scandal, such stories are not likely to attract new converts.

Source:  nbcnews