c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Nearly 50 years ago, when Harry S. Truman was poised on the brink of the Korean War, a lanky, 31-year-old evangelist, as green as his pistachio-colored suit, came knocking at the gates of the White House to lend the president his prayerful support.

Few people knew who Billy Graham was in those days. And Graham didn’t know much himself _ especially how to handle what has become known as the media. So when the White House press corps asked him what went on in his brief meeting with Truman, Graham related every word that was exchanged. And then he and three preacher pals obligingly re-enacted Graham’s prayer with the president for the cameras.

The photograph of the four greenhorn preachers kneeling on the White House lawn made Graham persona non grata at the Truman White House from that day forward. It also taught him a lesson about how pastors to the powerful should comport themselves.

Such self-deprecating anecdotes are part of the charm of Graham’s autobiography,”Just as I Am”(HarperCollins/Zondervan), a book tracing his evolution from a rawboned preacher out of North Carolina to something akin to our national pastor. But anyone hoping to plumb the psychic depths of this star-spangled American evangelist has a lot of digging to do in this 720-page book.

Graham acknowledges his book is less a memoir than a carpentry project, hammered together by a committee of contributors. And, with the exception of a couple of revelatory chapters, it reads like one.

At its best, it is a homey collection of memories, entries from the journals of his wife, Ruth, and a sea of anecdotes of golf games with presidents, from Eisenhower to Clinton. There are encounters with movie stars, crowned heads and assorted celebrities as well as photo-ops in trouble spots from Northern Ireland to Beijing. At worst, it’s an evangelistic travelogue, formulaic accounts of numerous crusades so wearying after the first dozen or so, the reader feels caught in some righteous version of jet lag.

Still, there are moments in which Billy Graham, the human being, does shine through, revealing his flaws, failings, accomplishments and regrets. Wholesome, likeable and Hollywood-handsome, Graham put a postwar spin on the Christian gospel. Preaching with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, he persuaded millions that Jesus is the solution to human woes from the Cold War to the alienation of the postmodern heart.

Blending the tools of modern mass communication with the ancient art of preaching, he lifted the tent revival tradition up from the sawdust and transformed it to sports-arena spectacle.

His sincerity, passion and reputation for personal integrity set him apart from the charlatan evangelists who have done so much harm to the Christian message.

Friend to the fallen and counselor to the mighty, Graham has always had the knack for being present at points _ high and low _ in our national life. He has praised presidents at their inaugurals and prayed at their funerals. He kept faith with soldiers in Vietnam; kept vigil at the White House during the Gulf War; and helped orchestrate the nation’s mourning in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. He has even performed a diplomatic mission or two, as emissary for the Clinton administration with North Korea.

Graham has become an American institution. His Minneapolis-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is a multimillion-dollar empire with all the trappings of a dynasty. Now, at 78 and slowed down by Parkinson’s Disease, Graham has handed much of the responsibility to his elder son, Franklin, to concentrate on other things, including his memoirs.

His life-long love affair with Ruth Bell Graham illuminates this book. The story of their courtship and marriage is charmingly told, mostly in Ruth’s words. And passages from her later journals, conveying the hardships she suffered raising their five children while her husband evangelized the world, are poignant.

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Particularly wrenching is a poem she wrote in 1978, weighing the worth of her husband’s calling at a time when sons Franklin and Ned were acting up with drink, drugs and women.”But what of the ones forsaken, Lord, even for You?”she wrote.”These sons, now grown, who’ve never known fathers who had undertaken to leave all and follow You … these, Lord, are what it cost.” For the record, the two Franklin boys did finally straighten out. And in retrospect, Billy and Ruth acknowledge mistakes were made. It was only after the kids grew up that the parents understood they had erred in deciding never to fight in front of the children. His daughters, Graham recalls, complained that their parents’ seemingly perfect marriage made them feel inadequate when the inevitable tensions surfaced in their own marriages.

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What would Billy Graham have done differently in his life? Speak less. Study more. Spend more time with his family. Meditate more on the truth of the Bible rather than spend time finding the right passage for his next sermon.

But the most surprising revelation is that if he had it to do all over again, Graham would avoid any semblance of partisan politics.

Graham expresses surprise that Richard Nixon skillfully manipulated their personal friendship for political purposes. He blithely insists that Elizabeth Dole had no political motives for attending a Graham crusade during her husband’s presidential campaign. And he muses that Bill Clinton’s conciliatory gifts balance out his apparent moral shortcomings.

Is that naive? I don’t think so.

Billy Graham could not have succeeded if he did not appreciate the uses of power. Perhaps his desire to seize the politician’s platform and transform it into his own pulpit blinded him to the ways in which he would be used in return. But if such desires are sinful, by a few glimmering passages in a cumbersome memoir, Billy Graham has repented.

MJP END CONNELL