They wanted to make reasonable efforts, like the apostle Paul, not to be perceived as “peddlers of God’s word” (2 Corinthians 2:17) but as those who had “renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways” (2 Corinthians 4:2). Knowing the love of money to be the “ root of all evils,” Graham and his team resolved then, ahead of time - before one subtle concession after another dulled their conscience to the danger and accustomed their tastes to indulgence - to steer clear of such “financial abuses” and to “downplay the offering” and “depend as much as possible on money raised by the local committees in advance” (128). The temptation was great to push the extra buttons to wrest as much income as possible out of each town, like the televangelists of the next generation would learn to do on cable TV. As they moved from town to town, supporters had no clear sense as to whether the evangelistic team had fallen behind on its costs, or was way ahead, and living in hidden luxury. Traveling evangelists had little accountability in those days. What, then, were these four resolutions (rather than one rule) that made up the “Modesto Manifesto,” as Graham and his team came to call it?įirst, they renounced “the temptation to wring as much money as possible out of an audience.” I’m not aware of any public outcry then or today against this first resolve.

(The 500-word section in Graham’s autobiography on the four resolutions is available online at .) First Up: Money “It did,” he says, “settle in our hearts and minds, once and for all, the determination that integrity would be the hallmark of both our lives and our ministry” (129).

Importantly, Graham says these resolutions among the four founders “did not mark a radical departure for us we had always held these principles.” Yet the act of resolving, and doing so together, had purpose and effect. the poor image so-called mass evangelism had in the eyes of many people.” Then he adds, “Sinclair Lewis’s fictional character Elmer Gantry unquestionably had given traveling evangelists a bad name” (127). In the fall of 1948, as Graham contemplated leaving the security of a respected and rooted ministry to found his own evangelistic association, he saw an imposing obstacle on the horizon: “the recurring problems many evangelists seemed to have, and. (The fictional Gantry would make another pop culture appearance in the 1960 summer film bearing his name, introducing the character, and his notorious lack of character, to yet another generation.) Hallmark of Integrity And this just two years after the 1925 “ Scopes monkey trial,” reported on by Mencken, as part of the growing social critique of “fundamentalist” Christianity. On the one hand, it was banned in Boston and denounced by evangelist Billy Sunday, Graham’s forerunner, as “Satan’s cohort.” On the other, it became the bestselling fiction work of 1927. The title character was a narcissistic, womanizing evangelist. Mencken called him - published the satirical novel Elmer Gantry, dedicated to Mencken, his fellow satirist. Twenty years before, in 1927, author Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) - the “red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds,” as H.L. Graham and his team were not the only ones aware of such stories. Such men slid from one small degree of compromise to the next in their desires for money, power, and illicit sex, all under the cloak of Christian ministry and seeming fruitfulness. They heard their share of stories, and personally knew evangelists whose “success” became devastating. And they longed not to become, or even appear to be, what characterized some evangelists in the first half of the twentieth century. Now, he was beginning to launch out on his own, to begin a new work as an independent evangelist, and he and his team felt the weight of the public scrutiny they’d be under. He had been working as an evangelist for a large and long-established ministry called Youth for Christ.

During a two-week crusade in Modesto, California, in October of 1948, the 29-year-old Graham found himself at a critical juncture. In his autobiography, Just as I Am, published in 1997, Graham himself tells the story of the beginning of the now (in)famous “Rule” that bears his name.

Graham says it was an “informal understanding among ourselves.” Just as He Was Graham and his three closest ministry associates made four resolutions, not one - and importantly, they did not call them rules (to enforce on others) but resolutions (embraced for their own lives). The choice of the singular “Rule” also may represent two additional misunderstandings. If not - or if the name only vaguely rings a bell - then you might, like many today, lack an important bit of context for understanding the origins of the so-called “Billy Graham Rule.”

Billy elmer