At
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BILLY_GRAHAM?SITE=MIDTN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
, "Graham says NYC revival probably his last",
"Now 86 and in frail health, the Rev. Billy Graham is all but certain that his revival meeting in New York City next week will be the last he ever leads in the United States....
...After six decades on the road, he now spends most days at his mountainside home in Montreat, N.C., where wife Ruth is largely bedridden.
...Cautious even in his more active years, Graham now seeks to shun all public controversies - preferring a simple message of love and unity through Jesus Christ. Asked about gay marriage, for instance, Graham replied that "I don't give advice. I'm going to stay off these hot-button issues."
...He also sidesteps the opportunity to dispute Franklin's 2001 remark that Islam is "a very evil and wicked religion."
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Instead, Graham says that he's proud of his son's leadership, yet recalls that when he arrived for a Fresno, Calif., revival a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, his first step was to visit a mosque where some people had been throwing rocks - in order to express solidarity with local Muslims.
"I don't throw rocks at anybody," he said. "That's not my message. My message is the Gospel of Christ."
After Sept. 11, the "crusade" label for Graham's mass meetings was dropped due to Muslim sensitivities, but local sponsors revived it at Pasadena's Rose Bowl last year and for the New York City event because the term is closely associated with Graham's ministry.
Are evangelicals getting too deeply enmeshed in political issues? "I don't give it much thought, to tell the truth," he said. "My thought is getting ready to go to heaven and to keep myself as fit as possible physically."
...The world's best-known Protestant preacher was glued to the TV during Pope John Paul II's funeral: "He taught us how to live, I think, how to suffer and how to die." Graham said he was asked by the Vatican to lead the American delegation to the pope's funeral, but his health wouldn't permit it.
...He said he's returning to New York this time because area Christian leaders told him that since the terrorist attacks "there was a new receptivity and quest for purpose and meaning in peoples' lives."
Looking back, the son of North Carolina farmers said one regret is that he didn't join the battle for civil rights more forcefully. Graham ordered racial integration of seating at his meetings in the South a year before the Supreme Court's school desegregation ruling.
But "I think I made a mistake when I didn't go to Selma" with many clergy who joined the Alabama civil rights march led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "I would like to have done more.""
