A 72-minute documentary, Billy Graham: An Extraordinary Journey, is now available for free on Netflix for its subscribers.
The film, produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is (as one would expect) uniformly laudatory regarding the evangelist’s remarkable life and influence for Christ.
The one thing that a film like this can do that books can’t is to allow you to see and to hear the key players. In this case, we are treated to documentary footage not only of Graham in his early 20s but also in his late 80s, along with interviews with his mother, his brother, and other associates. It’s a breezy and compelling introduction to a man who was gripped with a passion to go anywhere to tell everyone about the greatest news in all the world.
For careful, critical, though respectful interaction with Graham’s story and legacy, see in particular the following:
- William Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story, updated ed. (Harper, 2018).
- Steven Miller, Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
- Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Harvard University Press, 2014).
- Andrew Finstuen, Anne Blue Wills, Grant Wacker, eds., Billy Graham: American Pilgrim (Oxford University Press, 2017).
- Grant Wacker, One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham (Eerdmans, September 2019).
