Billy Graham on Baptism

Believers only, on profession of faith

THE POSITION

Baptized as an infant in the Presbyterian church, he was immersed as a young man and ordained a Southern Baptist minister. When a 1961 Lutheran Standard interview was read as endorsing infant baptism, he said the paper had "misinterpreted several statements I made," that his children had been baptized at nine and ten by their own choice "in the Presbyterian faith of their mother," and, in Time's words, "Convinced Baptist Graham said that while he respects the opinions of those who have different views on baptism" his convictions were his denomination's. The quotation therefore reaches believers' baptism through the denomination he names, not through an argument of his own, and he never treated the question at length in anything read, so the state is a lean. Statements BGEA publishes in his name treat baptism as the convert's act of obedience and witness, "a necessary and meaningful experience" for one who has received Christ.

9 OTHERS HOLD THIS

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Evangelist of the citywide crusades from 1947 to 2005, ordained a Southern Baptist minister, founder, with L. Nelson Bell, of Christianity Today (1956) and convener of the 1974 Lausanne Congress. He is generally reckoned to have preached in person to more people than anyone before him and was the public face of postwar evangelicalism. This entry rests on sermon texts dated 1951 to 2005 that the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association republishes on the Decision magazine website, his recorded Billy Graham Minutes, his daily devotions, interviews he gave to Time, Christianity Today, Newsweek and Robert Schuller, and the My Answer column that ran under his name. By the standard account the column was written with staff, so cells that rest on it say so.