GetReligion
Wednesday, April 02, 2025

The Charlotte Observer

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Ticking clock in Charlotte: Billy Graham has already answered the 'who comes next' question

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Journalists and religion scholars started talking – seriously – about the retirement of the Rev. Billy Graham back in the mid-1980s.

I remember that when the evangelist's 1987 Rocky Mountain Crusade was announced, people were already preparing lists of where he could go "for the last time" to do full-scale crusades before semi-retirement. It wasn't a long list.

In the 1990s, a news hook for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was its efforts to extend the reach of crusades by using satellite signals to other locations – multi-site events. That way, more people could hear Graham preach live, in real time, since he was really starting to limit the number of boots-on-the-ground events.

Of course, people were already asking the question: "Who is the next Billy Graham?"

Some of the nominees on those early lists are now approaching retirement.

I bring this up because of an interesting piece that ran the other day in The Charlotte Observer that, I imagine, gives us a hint of what that newspaper is planning for its memorial edition for the pulpit legend, who is currently 98 years old.

How many pages will there be in that special edition? How many new and pre-written stories will they run on the day after his death? Can you imagine receiving this assignment from your editor: Sum up the life of Billy Graham in one story. You have about 2,000 words. (Actually, I can imagine that. I already know that I will have 750 words, because that's the assigned length for my syndicated "On Religion" columns.)

You can see hints of what is to come in the current Observer feature's overture:

Who will be the next Billy Graham?
The Charlotte-born Graham is now 98, lives quietly in his mountain home in Montreat, N.C., and hasn't preached to a packed-stadium crusade in 12 years.


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Better late than never: New York Times gets around to running a Cliff Barrows obituary

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Through the decades, I have been assigned many different tasks as a journalist – but I have never had to write a full-scale obituary. Thus, I admit that I don't know how long it takes to write one of those features.

Oh, I've written plenty of columns about religious leaders who have died, columns that served as features or sidebars adding (I hoped) interesting details to the coverage that newsrooms were providing in traditional obits. But I have never written one of those long, detailed obituaries that attempts to provide an overview of a public figure's life.

Of course, the more important the public figure – at least in the eyes of journalists – the earlier editors will assign an obit specialist or feature writer to put some basic material on file, "just in case." I am sure that elite American newsrooms already have large packages of features ready on Caitlyn Jenner and the Kardashian crew.

So what does it mean when a newspaper of record – that would be The New York Times – produces its own obituary about someone's life almost two weeks after the person died and obits ran in other publications? In other words, what is the statute of limitations on an obituary? Better late than never?

Quite a ways back – Nov. 16, to be precise – I ran a post focusing on the obituaries for the Rev. Cliff Barrows, the musical director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association who was also one of the famous evangelist's closest friends and advisors. The local paper on this story, The Charlotte Observer, tried to show the behind-the-scenes role that Barrows played in Graham's life and work. In other words, there was much more to this story than a man directing giant choirs at evangelistic crusades. The Associated Press obit? No need to go there.

I noticed, at the time, that The New York Times ran the AP story on its website. This did not surprise me. I would imagine that the life and work this Graham associate was not on the radar of many editors in that newsroom.

Later – as in Nov. 25 later – the Times ran its own Barrows obit. Why the delay? Did someone simply forget to do one? Did it take that long to get an in-depth feature done?


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Memory eternal, Cliff Barrows: A strategic voice inside the Billy Graham team

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Back in the mid 1980s, people were already starting to talk about the Rev. Billy Graham doing his "final crusades." Thus, when the Graham team came to town for the Rocky Mountain Crusade in 1987, that event was hailed as the great evangelist's last major event in Denver and the press handled it that way.

I was at the Rocky Mountain News (RIP) at the time and flew back to Charlotte, where I had worked for the Charlotte News and the Charlotte Observer, and then drove up into the mountains to spend most of a day interviewing Graham. I was planning on writing a magazine piece on Graham's marriage to the brilliant, and very independent, Ruth Bell Graham – so we talked quite a bit about issues linked to marriage and family.

In that context, Graham made an interesting comment about the core team that built the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and made the strategic decisions that set its course.

For some reason, he said, writers keep underestimating the role played by music director Cliff Barrows. The youngest member of the team was much more than the man who directed stadium-sized choirs and served as emcee for Graham events of all kinds. What they didn't understand was how important his voice was in private, offering counsel and advice at strategic moments, stressed Graham.

Now Barrows is gone, at age 93. Sure enough, the Associated Press obituary for Barrows – at least the one I am seeing online – is 126 words long and it seems even shorter than that. The basics are there, barely.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Cliff Barrows, the long-time music and program director for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has died after a brief illness. He was 93. ...
The two men met in 1945 while Barrows was on his honeymoon, and together they went on to form the association. Barrows traveled the world with Graham since his first crusade in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1947. Barrows also hosted the weekly Hour of Decision radio program for more than 60 years.

As you would expect, the tribute in The Charlotte Observer is much, much longer and captures more of this man's role in the Graham organization, even if key links are not made explicit.


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A mysterious murder: An ISIS wannabe and the case of the generic burning Buddhas

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Journalists need to face this basic fact: It's hard to cover the Islamic State and its victims without talking about religion. This is especially true when a story involves a convert to ISIS and its radicalized form of Islam and the convert's story in set in a neighborhood in the American Bible Belt.

Consider the following short item from The Charlotte Observer that caught the eye of a GetReligion reader. It's a tragic story about an ISIS convert, his family and his victim and it's easy to sense that readers are not getting all of the details.

For example, try to figure out the timeline of the tragic events in this report. Here's the top:

Prosecutors announced ... that they will seek the death penalty against a Burke County teen and ISIS supporter accused of robbing and killing his neighbor to get an assault rifle so he could commit mass murder.
Justin Nojan Sullivan, 19, was arrested last June and is accused of plotting to kill up to 1,000 people in support of ISIS, an Islamic terrorist organization. Court documents unsealed last month link him directly to the previously unsolved 2014 murder of John Bailey Clark, 74, who lived down the street from Sullivan and his parents on Carswell Road in Morganton.
Court documents said Sullivan planned to use the money he stole from Clark to buy the rifle. Clark was shot several times in the head. Deputies found him in a shallow grave on his property.

So there was an unsolved murder in 2014. Then Sullivan is arrested in June of 2015. What linked the young man to the earlier murder?

At this point, the story adds another rather fascinating date to the timeline.

The investigation started after a 911 call in April 2015 from Sullivan’s parents who said their son was pouring gasoline over their religious items.


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