The Billy Graham Rule

For those raised with urban values, rural sensibilities are often confounding, difficult to understand and even more difficult to internalize and accept. Combine these differentiating value systems with one of the most complex aspects of formalized religion: those allowed over the centuries to interpret a faith and add embellishments to it. While we see harsh Muslim clerics embrace austerity and chastity at levels that challenge everything we are, that proclivity to interpret has also been with Christianity since inception.

Most Christians are unaware that the New Testament took almost six centuries from the time of Christ to mature into acceptable text (and there are obviously different versions of that sacred tome). From the leaders of various forms of Orthodoxy and Catholicism to the challenges of Martin Luther and the interpretation of a litany of evangelical clerics, what is or isn’t accepted as “Christianity” has been fluid and evolving; very little of what is practiced being the actual words of Jesus Christ.

The glue of faith is often a bond stronger in those who live in isolation – homes not adjacent but separated by vast tracts of land – people whose very livelihood hinges on the bounty of weather and the freedom from natural catastrophe. Farm values. Lives impacted by nature, seemingly well out of man’s control. Faith, a belief that by following the perceived dictates of faith, God’s bounty will be their blessing, freedom from natural harm their gift. When natural harm imposes itself, when bounty seems withdrawn, there is often a search for what deviation from basic tenets may have angered God accordingly. Basic. Atavistic almost. But one very strong reason such evangelical passion is so exceptionally immutable.

Urban values tend to be built on the complexity of crowded human interaction. Mutual dependence. A notion that rules, laws and market forces are the drivers, not abstract weather patterns and natural phenomena. A belief that man makes, creates and controls. Bounty emanates from economic success, working hard or generating valuable capital. Land is called “real estate,” and its bounty is determined by “property values.” With more personal interaction, rules are more fluid, more realistic. Sex in a big city, where lots of people connect all the time, versus in a small rural community where contacts are sparse and sexual scandal can taint an entire town, straining relationships for decades.

Through most of the 20^th century and into the 21^st, one super-respected evangelist stood nobly above the rest. Coming from those rural roots, he proselytized four basic, fundamental and very conservative values by which Christians should live their faith. “William Franklin ‘Billy’ Graham Jr., [was] one of the nation’s most prominent Christian evangelists for more than six decades before his 2018 death. Graham preached to millions and was pastor to presidents.

“In 1948, Graham and his ministry established rules of conduct to shield themselves against the negative repercussions of a variety of misconduct, including financial and sexual, wrote professor of religion at Central Michigan University Sara Moslener in an essay for Religion Dispatches. One of those rules was that a man should never be alone in a room with a woman who was not his wife.” Suhauna Hussain writing for the Los Angeles Times, July 15^th.

When uber-conservative Vice-Presidential nominee Mike Pence, now Donald Trump’s second in command, declared that he could not be alone in a room with a member of the opposite sex, those with urban values scoffed. He was simply a relic of a bygone era that bore little or no connection to 21^st century American reality. But his belief resonated with fellow adherents of rural values, to those who followed the elements of Billy Graham dictates. Here is the most recent trigger of that value system:

“Robert Foster, a first-term Mississippi state representative running for governor, declined to allow a female reporter to cover a campaign trip — that is, unless she brought a male colleague with her… Foster said in a tweet that the rejection resulted from a pledge he made to his wife that he would follow the ‘Billy Graham rule,’ to ‘avoid any situation that may evoke suspicion or compromise of our marriage.’

“Larrison Campbell, the Mississippi Today reporter denied access, wrote in an article Tuesday night that Foster’s campaign manager told her a male colleague would need to accompany her on the 15-hour trip because the optics of a candidate alone with a woman could be used to insinuate an affair… Campbell and her editor thought “the request was sexist and an unnecessary use of resources given this reporter’s experience covering Mississippi politics.” Campbell says the practice has unfair and untoward implications for her and other women.” LA Times. To some, the MeToo# movement provides many examples to men of why they should not work with women. Not exactly what was intended.

What may seem unrealistic and even perverse to those with modern urban values, and definitely an obstacle in the path of an upwardly mobile, educated and ambitious woman, is just a fact of life to a rather large number of Americans. “What is the Billy Graham rule and where does it come from?...

“Jonathan Merritt, religion writer and author of ‘Learning to Speak God From Scratch,’ grew up in the Southern Baptist community. His father, who served as president of the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 2000s, and other prominent conservative pastors would essentially brag about how they never met alone with women, he said.

“Women’s bodies, said Merritt, were viewed as objects of temptation. Religious leaders were meant to be above reproach, and in order to maintain that status they avoided being alone with women, Merritt said… ‘Graham was known as an evangelical of impeccable character,’ Merritt explained. ‘He’s No. 1 — he’s the guy, and so it makes total sense that people make an effort to emulate him.’” LA Times.

In a country that is 85% urban, with tons of acceleration of ethnic, racial, gender and religious diversity, these are adherents of a view that sinful existence will punish the United States (like the natural disasters that urbanites blame on global climate change) and marginalize both their constituency and their values… values they associate with their vision of the United States of America. Immigration is also a vehicle for the erosion of their constituency and their values.

These diverse views of the universe, of faith, help explain the intransigence of Don Trump’s base. There are fighting for their God, their way of life and their values… so out-of-step with the urbanization all around them. They double down, dig in their heels, some ready to fight and kill to preserve what they believe is God’s intention. Time may correct this imbalance, this polarization, or it just might break this nation into pieces. Whatever happens, it is critical for the urbanized world to understand, even respect, where these diehard evangelicals are coming from. They are probably doomed to failure, given the rapid shift of American demographics, but expect them to go down fighting.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the vituperative polarization all around us is probably the anthesis of what our Founding Fathers intended but is very much a fact of America life today.