Scholars fear Franklin Graham will cut off access to Billy Graham archives
Published: June 3, 2019 at 3:02 PM
Tim Funk, Religion News Service
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/06/03/Scholars-fear-Franklin-Graham-will-cut-off-access-to-Billy-Graham-archives/4881559586306/?tt=3
CHARLOTTE, N.C., June 3 (UPI) – This week, at Wheaton College in Illinois, specially trained movers will begin organizing, preparing and packing 3,235 boxes of paper items, 1,000 scrapbooks of news clippings dating back to the 1940s and more than 1,000 linear feet of videos, cassettes, reels, films and audio.
All of it documents the life and ministry of evangelist Billy Graham, the Christian college's most famous alumnus. And soon, all of it will be headed to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Charlotte, N.C., Graham's hometown.
The big transport trucks that will haul the valuable cargo won't make the nearly 800-mile trip until mid to late June. But the controversy over moving the Graham materials all began more than two months ago. That's when it was announced that, after June 1, the materials would no longer be housed at Wheaton's highly regarded Billy Graham Center Archives.
Since it opened with Billy Graham's blessing in 1980, more than 19,000 scholars, journalists and other researchers from around the world have spent 67,000 hours doing work there.
The BGEA's Charlotte site does include the 12-year-old Billy Graham Library, but it was not designed as a research facility. Instead, it is a presidential-like museum celebrating the life of Graham, who died last year at age 99, and is a brick-and-mortar continuation of his worldwide evangelism efforts.
"The so-called [Billy Graham] Library is not a library," said Edith Blumhofer, a longtime history professor at Wheaton who is completing a study of the music of the Billy Graham Crusades. "It has no archives. It has no archivist."
Scholarly inquiry
In a Sunday email answering questions posed by Religion News Service, Franklin Graham, now president of the association his father founded in 1950, said that "it is the intention of BGEA leadership to provide a first-rate research facility and archival operation with an openness to those who have an interest in studying the life and ministry of my father in the greater context of a library that clearly demonstrates and reflects the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ."
But many scholars who have written or are writing books and articles about Billy Graham and evangelicalism have sounded the alarm.
Their fear: that this move is part of a bid by Franklin Graham to control his father's legacy and make it more closely echo his own conservative political and theological agendas. They worry that Franklin Graham may deny access to the archival materials to scholars and others who don't share his views or who are unwilling to promote what one called a "sanitized history" of the evangelical movement.
"Nothing about Franklin's public persona over the last two decades suggests that he would encourage open scholarly inquiry into the legacy of Billy Graham," said Steven P. Miller, author of Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South and one of more than a dozen scholars interviewed by RNS.
Elesha Coffman, a professor of history at Baylor University who writes about religion, agrees.
"The fear is that it's over, that with the relocation of the archives, there will be no more high-quality, objective scholarship on [Billy] Graham and his legacy," Coffman said.
'Temporary storage'
Scholars also worry that no seasoned archivist or ready-to-open research facility will be waiting for the Graham materials when they arrive in Charlotte later this month.
Franklin Graham said in his email that there are plans underway for a new facility – a "research center building" – to go up on the BGEA site.
"It's currently in the development stage with a plan for construction as soon as possible," he said.
William Martin, whose A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story is widely considered the definitive biography of Graham, said he agrees with Franklin Graham. It makes sense, he said, to have the archives in the same place as the library.
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