Billy Graham, a preacher in American politics

Polls conducted in the United States of the most admired American of the past half-century show the Reverend Billy Graham to rank consistently near the top. In the postwar era until the present, no clergyman has conic close to rivaling the influence of this Southern Baptist revivalist in a predominantly Protestant society that has valued claims of a personal relationship to the Savior. Yet Graham himself, nominally remained a Democrat, had enjoyed a personal relationship with two American Presidents in particular. Both of them are Republicans; both may rank in polls conducted among historians as the worst occupants of the White House in that same era: Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush. The analyse of Reverend Graham's political judgments, values and practices can therefore contribute to the study of the role of religion in American public life, and complicate the picture of a firm division between church and state in the past five decades.