ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 returns to the character who opened the book, Billy Graham (1918–2018), but asks how he was received almost a decade after his triumphant first crusade. Dismissed or demonised as an agent of American evangelical imperialism during his 1968–1969 crusades and by some historians since, Graham’s national identity was presented by him and received by Australians in much more complex ways. Drawing on extensive and largely unexamined archival material, this chapter situates Graham’s return visit within a complex transnational narrative of American influence on post-Imperial, post-Christendom Australian Protestantism. By investigating Graham’s view of Australia and Australians’ views of Graham on issues like the Vietnam War, it explores the relationship between evangelistic preaching and national identity. It argues that the Billy Graham crusades were more indicative of globalisation than the Americanisation of Australian evangelicalism, and reflect the broader Australian experience of modernity and its discontents.
