Billy Graham Library Dedication

May 31, 2007
Charlotte, NC

Thank you. Thank you very much, distinguished platform guests, Mrs. Bush, Mrs. Graham. To Ruth, we’re thinking about you. Billy, I am very honored to be here, grateful to have been asked to a day I wouldn’t have missed for the world.

I was listening to Jimmy Carter talk and thought they just put the real odd couple together. They used to say George Bush and I were the odd couple, but here we may be the odd couple, two Southern Baptist Democrats who were both profoundly influenced by Billy Graham.

Billy Graham has known me since 1985, but I have known him for nearly 50 years. I am here because of both the public Billy Graham and the private Billy Graham. I am here because, beginning in 1989, I have seen firsthand his kindness when following a crusade he preached in Little Rock. He had known that my then pastor was dying of cancer and had only a couple of months to live. With all that he had to do, Billy Graham let me take him to my pastor’s home, who then weighed less than 90 pounds. I listened to them talk about life and afterlife. It was a conversation that will stay with me until the day I die. He didn’t have to do that. No one would have known if he hadn’t. Not a single soul would have thought a bit less of him. He did it because of who he is.

When I was in the White House, on many occasions Billy would come by to visit with Hillary and me, or call, or just write a letter when some foreign crisis or something was going on, and always it was incredibly kind.

In the Scripture, Jesus tells us that the most important commandment is to love God with all our heart, and the second is, quote, “Like unto it, to love your neighbor as yourself.” I have seen him do that in private when no one was looking. Every President, truth be told, is mostly grateful to him because of that personal kindness. When he prays with you in the Oval Office or the upstairs of the White House, you feel that he’s praying for you, not the President.

But I want to say something about the public Billy Graham, to echo something President Carter said. Almost 50 years ago, when I had been a Christian for just about three years, my Sunday School teacher took me to Little Rock to hear Billy Graham’s crusade. The schools were closed because of the Little Rock Central High School integration crisis, and I had exactly the same experience Jimmy Carter did. The White Citizens Council in Little Rock tried to convince and even pressure Billy Graham and all of his people to preach to a segregated audience in War Memorial Stadium, our football stadium. He told them if they insisted on that, he would cancel the crusade and tell the whole world why. Well, they folded like Dick’s hatband and I’ll never forget it. So, here we were with neighborhood after neighborhood in my state on the verge of violence, and yet tens of thousands of black and white Christians were there together in a football stadium. And when he issued the call at the end of his message, thousands came down holding hands, arm in arm, crying. It was the beginning of the end of the old South in my home state. I will never forget it.

Fast forward to 1971 when I was pursuing my wife. I was in Oakland, California, and I took her to a Billy Graham Crusade. It was one of the best dates we ever had. Fast forward 34 years later, Billy Graham came to New York for his last crusade in Queens, and we had a whole different, diverse America. There must have been people from 100 or more countries there. Hillary and I were there too.

In this world today, most of the people getting killed who are totally innocent are being killed by politicians who are often parading as religious people, claiming that our common humanity is a fiction and all that really matters is our differences. It’s a great gift to have a man whose public ministry has reached hundreds of millions simply because he believed God had called him to use his massive talents to show that he loved his neighbor as his Savior told him. Every life Billy Graham ever touched, including people who never became President, is better because he was a good and faithful servant of the two most important commandments.

Thank you.