DESCRIPTION
Series: Library of Religious Biography
An honest portrait of the most significant evangelist since the Apostle Paul.
For more than five decades Billy Graham (1918–2018) ranked as one of the most influential voices in the Christian world. Nearly 215 million people around the world heard him preach in person or through live electronic media, almost certainly more than any other person. For millions, Graham was less a preacher than a Protestant saint. While remaining orthodox at the core, over time his approach on many issues became more irenic and progressive. And his preaching continued to resonate, propelled by his powerful promise of a second chance.
Drawing on decades of research on Billy Graham and American evangelicalism, Grant Wacker has marshalled personal interviews, archival research, and never-before-published photographs from the Graham family and others to tell the remarkable story of one of the most celebrated Christians in American history.
Where Wacker’s previous work on Graham, America’s Pastor, focused on the preacher’s relation to the nation’s culture, One Soul at a Time offers a sweeping, easy-to-read narrative of the life of the man himself.
AWARDS and RECOGNITIONS
Christianity Today 2020 Book Award of Merit in History/Biography
REVIEWS
Russell Moore
— author of The Storm-Tossed Family
“When I hear the word ‘evangelist,’ the first face I imagine is always that of Billy Graham. And when I think of careful analysis of Graham’s monumental reshaping of the world religious landscape, the only name I can imagine is that of renowned historian Grant Wacker.”
Molly Worthen
— author of Apostles of Reason
“This fast-paced biography cuts through Billy Graham mythology to reveal who the great evangelist really was as a human individual.”
Kenneth L. Woodward
— author of Getting Religion
“Easily the best short biography of Billy we are likely to get.”
R. Marie Griffith
— John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics
“A beautifully crafted, eloquent, and deeply illuminating account of Billy Graham’s unparalleled evangelistic career, penned by one of the most eminent American religious historians of our time.”
Harry S. Stout
— Yale University
“Grant Wacker is the finest Billy Graham scholar in the world today. . . . A must read for anyone interested in the amazing story of evangelical revivals in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.”
Publishers Weekly
“This detailed, enjoyable biography will please readers interested in Graham’s political life and influence on American culture.”
Booklist
“This newly written book is a presentation of Graham as he himself might have done. . . . The Graham that develops in these pages is a man who maintained his primary message of salvation through Jesus Christ as he softened his own dogmatic tendencies and strove to live and treat others with ever-increasing compassion and humility.”
Publishers Weekly
“This detailed, enjoyable biography will please readers interested in Graham’s political life and influence on American culture.”
The Living Church
“Wacker’s book, page after page, confronts us with a man who no longer seems possible: a good politician who never needed to run for office, but shaped his life so he could tally as many votes for Jesus as possible instead.”