Appendix: Behind the Billy Pulpit
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Appendix: Behind the Billy Pulpit “Today, I am writing the Easter message, so you’ll know when you hear it. Billy has been terribly busy, and on the run every minute, so I don’t see him much, but he has been so wonderful to work with, and so appreciative of all I have been doing.”1 These words, part of a 1954 letter that Robert O. Ferm wrote to his family from the famous Harringay Crusade in London, suggest that Billy Graham preached sermons ghostwritten by members of his staff. Shortly before Ferm wrote this revealing letter, he had petitioned for a leave from his position as Dean of Students at Houghton College for the purpose of conducting research for Graham at Harringay. Houghton granted the initial leave and then extended it after the evangelist had wired a personal request to the college’s president. Graham’s rationale for his request is especially clear in a telegram he sent to Robert’s spouse, Lois Ferm, shortly after wiring the president: “I have been greatly aided by his research and other services. In these days of unprecedented revival I have great need of his service.”2 The service rendered by Ferm and deemed indispensable by Graham included the ghostwriting of outlines and manu- scripts for sermons that the evangelist then preached, without ever publicly acknowledging Ferm’s contribution, at the Harringay Crusade, on the Hour of Decision radio programs, and on BBC radio. Ferm was not the first ghostwriter for Graham. In 1951 the evangelist had approached Lee Fisher, a wayward evangelist then working at a ranch for troubled boys in Florida, with a request to join the Graham team as a writer and researcher. In an interview conducted by Robert Ferm for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) Oral History Project and recently made public by the Billy Graham Archives at Wheaton College, Fisher reported that Graham had solicited his sermon-writing services by stating, “Lee, I don’t have anybody to help me in the writing or the research. I’ve never had anybody. Would you be interested in helping me in that capacity?”3 Longing for a return to fulltime evangelistic ministry, Fisher expressed enthusiasm at the possibility of becoming part of a world- wide evangelistic movement, and Graham invited him to begin writing and researching immediately. Another year would pass before Fisher would formally join the Billy Graham team, but he submitted sermon material to the itinerant evangelist 228 Billy Graham and the Beloved Community every week after their informal interview. “I was very pleased,” Fisher recalled, “to tune in the Hour of Decision and see that he was using it.”4 In 1952 Fisher then joined the BGEA as “research assistant,” and for the next twenty-three years he labored with a typewriter in a study far from the pul- pit at center stage, where Graham would use Fisher’s words to exhort mil- lions of people to confess their sins before God, receive the forgiveness made possible by the blood of Jesus, accept Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, and begin to live the Christian life. Restricting himself to behind-the-scenes ministry was not always easy for Fisher, and so he was delighted when BGEA eventually added “staff evangelist” to his formal title. But the Graham team rarely used Fisher as a preacher, and in remem- bering the promotion he suggested that the change of title actually served to “cover up for the very personal and intimate work I was doing for Billy.”5 Rather than admitting that others authored manuscripts he regularly preached, Graham reported in his autobiography that although he had turned to key staff members for background research and editorial work on his speeches, articles, and books, he had never relied on his staff for the preparation of evangelistic sermons. “It has always been helpful to talk over with others an article or special speech while I was drafting it. At the same time, I have always adapted and digested material until it was part of me. And I have never been able to have others help me do my evangelistic sermons.”6 This claim, however, is misleading, and the best available evidence for countering it is the small collection of letters that Robert Ferm wrote to Lois, who would later become an employee of the Association, and their family from London in 1954. Because this issue is so sensitive and will surely generate a chorus of Graham defenders, this excursus will document the Ferm correspondence. One of the earliest letters in the series, dated March 18, 1954, reveals that within the first week of his arrival in London, Ferm was already writing the entire script, including Graham’s sermon, for the Hour of Decision radio pro- gram. After relaying this exciting news home, the researcher was careful to inform his family that “his unusual service in [God’s] name” was “top secret,” not to be talked about outside the family.7 The discrete researcher soon discovered that his confidential work was increasing appreciably, so much so that by March 23, shortly after arriving in London, he was send- ing Graham one manuscript a day—a full sermon outline. “Right now,” he penned home, “I am giving B.G. one mss. a day, and that takes time. I am going to attempt two tomorrow, and if so, Friday I hope to visit Stratford on Avon.”8 Ferm found his new work consuming and lonely but also rewarding and talismanic. “Last night,” he wrote home on March 27, “it was another thrill to hear preached a message I labored over here alone.”9 A day later he added: “Billy has been using my messages right along, so although I seldom visit with him, I am sure he must be satisfied. It is a thrill to listen, after I have spent hours in thought and research and prayer, and then see hundreds Appendix 229 come to Christ. I know my limitations in preaching, but perhaps this is God’s way of making up to me what I lack in other ways.”10 Ferm would suggest time and again that although he was hidden behind the scenes, far from the public eye, his ghostwriting of Graham’s sermons was nothing less than the will of God. “You all know what my part in the work is,” he wrote his fam- ily, “and it is the kind of work that receives no glory and has to be done alone. But God has honored it and I will praise Him for it. Just pray...that I will receive special help from His Word as I am serving Him this way.”11 On April 9 the devout researcher reconfirmed what he had mentioned to his family earlier—that his daily contribution to the will of God now included both the completion of an outline for a crusade sermon and work on manuscripts for Graham’s Hour of Decision sermons. “After breakfast, I finished one more outline. I feel I must bring at least one a day, beside the H.O.D. messages.”12 Remarkably, Graham had begun by this point to depend on Ferm for the substantive content of the evening messages at Harringay—a dependence that the researcher detailed in a letter post- marked April 9: “When I brought the mss. to [Graham’s] room this after- noon, I talked a moment with Ruth, and she said he depended on my daily outline and notes for the evening message, so thank God for this service I can render.”13 Ferm found this news so significant that he repeated it just a few days later in yet another letter home: “[Graham] has been using my messages nightly, and depends on one to be brought to him each day.”14 Equally remarkable, the days for which Graham expected Ferm’s sermons included two of the most significant in the church year—Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday—as noted in Ferm’s April 10 request of his family: “Be sure to listen to the Palm Sunday H.O.D., for known reasons, and also Easter. Continue to pray for me, that I can do the work, and keep some degree of health to do all B.G. needs done.”15 The researcher also noted in this letter that Graham had asked him to begin writing two books, one on the law of God and one on reconciliation. Coupled with the intense pressure of writing sermons that thousands would hear at the crusade services and on the Hour of Decision was Ferm’s acute homesickness, and his discontent came pouring out in an April 9 letter: “I find I must constantly ask the Lord to keep me from being dis- contented, and to give me the spirit of Paul, who said, ‘I have learned that whatever state I am in, therewith to be content.’ ”16 Although he recog- nized the value of his work and expressed no desire to disappoint Graham’s expectations, Ferm became so discontented in England that he decided to take his problem directly to his boss; but the evangelist’s predictable response, given his dependence on Ferm’s daily sermons, was to insist that the homesick man stay with the crusade through the end of April. Ferm agreed, and it was at this point that Graham wired Stephen Paine, the pres- ident of Houghton College, with the request for an extension of Ferm’s leave of absence. Ferm relayed this important news to his waiting family on April 12 and then added: “Today I am writing the Easter message, so you will know when you hear it.”17 230 Billy Graham and the Beloved Community With the arrival of Easter Sunday, just days after he had learned that Graham also wanted ghostwriting services for sermons that he would preach on trips to Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen, Ferm found himself alone in his hotel room once again, writing yet another mes- sage for the evangelist.