“American Experience” (9 p.m., PBS, TV-G, check local listings) profiles Billy Graham, a preacher with an enormous influence on religion, politics and media in the second half of the 20th century.
The documentary offers a wealth of footage as well as interviews with Graham biographers and historians, who describe a figure who became a worldwide sensation at a very young age, gaining massive influence over politicians and presidents. They also show a charismatic preacher who employed the evolving media of television. Along with his wife and growing family, he became a kind of religious celebrity, who introduced evangelicals to a wider world.
that had previously dismissed them as bumpkins.
Graham’s ability to stage large revivals in Los Angeles, New York and London demonstrated an appetite for his emotional appeal, revealing a spiritual hunger that mainstream religious institutions had not met.
We learn that Graham gained some of his powers of persuasion not from Bible college but from work as a door-to-door salesman for the Fuller Brush Company. Central to Graham’s story is the endorsement of his early revivals by aging media mogul William Randolph Hearst. Hearst saw Graham’s religious crusade as an antidote to the New Deal and rising power of unions that Hearst despised. Young Graham echoed deeply conservative thinking that often equated organized labor and government programs with socialism and even communism. Who needs a union when you’ve got Jesus?
Throughout his career, Graham would preach the power of personal salvation while remaining very supportive of a conservative approach to business and government. Even as he integrated his revival meetings and befriended Martin Luther King Jr., he insisted that any civil rights movement must obey existing laws. That was a difficult roadmap for those having endured centuries of “legal” slavery and segregation.
Politicians courted Graham for his influence. Many fundamentalists had hitherto avoided politics, or even voting, as too worldly. He famously annoyed Truman, enchanted Eisenhower and tried to keep Kennedy, a Catholic, from entering the White House, before befriending both Johnson and Nixon.
His close embrace of Nixon would haunt him after recordings emerged showing Graham tolerating and even encouraging Nixon’s worst impulses. Curiously this “Experience” omits Graham’s most “worldly” transgression, his note urging Nixon to bomb dikes holding back floodwaters in North Vietnam, an act that might kill more than a million civilians, a tactic Nixon declined and one that Henry Kissinger considered a “war crime.”
Clearly chastened by his links to Watergate, Graham retreated from domestic politics and emerged as a kind of world statesman in his later years. By the ‘80s, he was moving in the opposite direction of other religious leaders who formed a “Moral Majority” with an unambiguous endorsement of Ronald Reagan and other Republicans. While Graham refused to endorse Jerry Falwell’s group, he had clearly paved the way for its rise.
With its emphasis on Graham’s public life, “Experience” avoids much discussion of Graham’s theology or its societal impact. We do hear that mid-century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr found his preaching emotional and simplistic and worried about a radical emphasis on personal salvation that downplayed a citizen’s duty to look out for society or his neighbor.
TONIGHT’S OTHER HIGHLIGHTS
— A bride loses control on “9-1-1” (8 p.m., Fox, TV-14).
— The voices of John Goodman and Billy Crystal animate the 2001 comedy “Monsters, Inc.” (8 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).
— Lola gains a political mentor on “All Rise” (9 p.m., CBS, TV-PG).
— Tommy needs help on “9-1-1: Lone Star” (9 p.m., Fox, TV-14).
— Nikki Glaser hosts “Movie and TV Awards: Unscripted” (9 p.m., MTV, CMT, MTV2, VH1), a separate awards show for reality fare.
— A dream deferred on the season finale of “Bull” (10 p.m., CBS, TV-14).
— Evidence defies consistency on “Debris” (10 p.m., NBC, TV-14).
— Claire’s hero needs medical care on “The Good Doctor” (10 p.m., ABC, TV-14).
CULT CHOICE
— The late George Segal stars in the searing 1966 adaptation of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (5:30 p.m., TCM, TV-14).
SERIES NOTES
Memories of Calvin’s dad on “The Neighborhood” (8 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) … The top nine perform on “The Voice” (8 p.m., NBC, TV-PG) … Laura feels abandoned on “All American” (8 p.m., CW, TV-PG) … An impulsive move on “Bob Hearts Abishola” (8:30 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) … The better part of valor on “Black Lightning” (9 p.m., CW, TV-14).
LATE NIGHT
Timothy Olyphant is booked on “Conan” (11 p.m., TBS) … Jimmy Fallon welcomes Pink, Eric Bana, Natti Natasha and Becky G on “The Tonight Show” (11:35 p.m., NBC) … Julianna Margulies, Josh Duhamel, Alaina Castillo and Brian Frasier-Moore visit “Late Night With Seth Meyers” (12:35 a.m., NBC) … President Barack Obama appears on “The Late Late Show With James Corden” (12:35 a.m., CBS).
