Graham weathers storm over remarks

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Billy Graham's birthplace is long gone, hauled off by fallen televangelist Jim Bakker to his now defunct theme park.

All that remains is a stone marker with a bronze relief of Graham, his fiery eyes and square jaw leaping off the plaque.

"Billy Graham is one of the giants of our time," reads the 1971 dedication. "Truly a man of God."

It's signed by President Richard Nixon.

Today, the great evangelist is haunted by words he said three decades ago to that same president in the presumed privacy of the Oval Office.

Nixon tapes

At 83, the ailing preacher is weathering a controversy over a newly released tape recording in which he makes disparaging remarks about Jews in a conversation with Nixon.

For some, the comments have all but erased the lifetime of good will Graham had built.

"I fear, and it's with great sadness, that his legacy will be tarnished by this permanently," says New York Rabbi James Rudin, past interreligious director of the American Jewish Committee. "All of that will be balanced, unfortunately, maybe even overwhelmed, by this legacy of his clear statements -- his anti-Jewish statements.

"And this is a very, very unforgiving ... society in ways of judging people."

But while many are disappointed that a man of Graham's stature would ever utter such words, they feel that the man should be taken for the whole of his actions and deeds.

"Obviously, there are people who are so blinded by single-issue morality that they will say that he is unworthy simply because of that lapse," says James Dunn, former director of the Baptist Joint Committee in Washington and a professor at Wake Forest University Divinity School.