There's no good reason to honor a religious bigot who spent his life serving as an obstacle to civil rights

May 13, 2024

On Thursday, a statue of the late Rev. Billy Graham will be unveiled in the U.S. Capitol. Since there’s no good reason it should be going up, it’s worth remembering how and why this is happening.

Each state is allowed to request two statues in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. In 2018, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper asked for a statue of former governor Charles Aycock (an avowed white supremacist) to come down to make room for the Charlotte-born preacher. Legislators in the state actually approved the change in 2015, but the formal request for a statue couldn’t be made until Graham died, which he did, at age 99, in 2018. After that, there was a ten-step process the state needed to go through, but lawmakers slowly checked everything off the list. They hired a sculptor to create a model of the statue, a congressional committee approved of it, etc.

The seven-foot bronze statue will show Graham “gesturing toward an open Bible in his hand.” He’ll be standing on a pedestal “engraved with verses from the Bible”—specifically John 3:16 and John 14:6. Because if there’s anything we’ve learned from the Bible, it’s how much God loves idols.

Where is the estimated $650,000 cost for the statue coming from? The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, not state funding. This isn’t really a church/state separation problem, but it raises the question of why the hell anyone would think Graham should be an icon representing North Carolina.

After all, he’s the guy who once told President Richard Nixon: “This stranglehold [that Jews have] has got to be broken or this country is going down the drain.” He told Nixon that if he were re-elected, “we might be able to do something” about it.

This is the guy who thought people who disagreed with him would burn in Hell for all eternity.

This is the guy who said AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality.

This is the guy who urged people in the state to vote against marriage equality in 2012.

This is the guy who responded to Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s “Letter From Birmingham City Jail” by saying that civil rights leaders needed to “put the brakes on a little bit.”

This is the guy whose biggest claim to fame was perpetuating mythology that, if he truly inspired the Religious Right, has steered our country into a ditch. Even if he said in his final decade that he regretted some of his earlier statements, the things he proudly stood for weren’t worth defending either.

It’s one thing for Christians to say he was an inspiration. But people willing to look at his full résumé, his blemishes, and (dear lord) his god-awful children should be embarrassed by what Graham has come to represent.

When his likeness is finally unveiled on Thursday, Graham won’t be the only religious statue in the building. Utah has Mormon leader Brigham Young. Hawaii has Catholic priest Father Damien. Still, it seems appropriate that the statue will be placed next to the one of former North Carolina governor Zebulon Baird Vance, a slaveowner who served in the Confederate army… and also promoted white supremacy.

Which means a man who stood for bigotry and oppression… will have his statue next to a literal slaveowner.