Speaker Johnson calls Billy Graham a ‘towering figure in my life’ at Capitol statue unveiling
WASHINGTON — Mike Johnson said he doesn’t normally get nervous before public speaking. But Thursday morning, surrounded by members of the North Carolina delegation and governor in Statuary Hall, he described a different feeling.
“I am nervous today, can I be honest with you? Because Billy Graham is such a towering figure in my life. As he is in all of our lives,” the House’s top leader said at the unveiling of a statue honoring the late evangelical minister. “And such a singular figure, the leading ambassador for the Kingdom of our lifetimes.”
The 7-foot bronze statue of the late reverend, who offered spiritual counsel to U.S. presidents and was designated North Carolina’s “Favorite Son” in 2013, finally arrived in D.C. nearly 10 years after approval from the North Carolina General Assembly.
The statue depicts Graham gesturing toward a Bible, atop a pedestal engraved with biblical verses. It joins the National Statuary Hall collection, which allows each state to display up to two statues honoring deceased individuals of historical significance.
Graham’s likeness replaces a statue of Charles Aycock, a former North Carolina governor and white supremacist who was one in a series of controversial historical statues to exit the Capitol in recent years, including Confederate General Robert E. Lee.
However special the moment was for Johnson, Graham’s sculpted presence in the building came with some controversy of its own for those who cited his complicated record on civil rights and homosexuality.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, hailed Graham, who was 99 years old when he died in 2018, as a flawed individual who nevertheless dedicated his life to equality.
“He brought together people of different faiths and different races. Today we acknowledge that he is a better representation of our state than the statue it replaces, which brought memories of a painful history of racism,” Cooper said. “He treated all with dignity and respect. He once said, ‘Racial prejudice, antisemitism or hatred of anyone with different beliefs has no place in the human mind or heart.’”
But ahead of the ceremony, critics of the statue, including secular groups advocating the separation of church and state, highlighted other parts of Graham’s legacy.
In a recorded conversation with then-President Richard Nixon that was released decades later, Graham can be heard perpetuating antisemitic stereotypes about Jewish people and lamenting their “stranglehold” on the country and media. (He later apologized for his comments.) And, although he rarely spoke about homosexuality or gay rights, he opposed same-sex relationships.
