c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Having spent his life in the limelight, Billy Graham now lives at his mountain retreat in relative seclusion, while down below there is a clamor to crown his successor.

(By the way, I should say at the outset, this is a subject that holds zero interest for Graham himself.)

After megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s recent interview with his “buddies” John McCain and Barack Obama, The Economist reported that Warren has emerged as “the most powerful evangelical in America” and a likely successor to Graham.

The Chicago Sun-Times once asked whether young maverick Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., and producer of the video series NOOMA, is a more likely successor. ABC singled out evangelist Luis Palau; a 2001 Time cover story on T.D. Jakes, pastor of The Potter’s House in Dallas, asked “Is This Man the Next Billy Graham?”

Two of Graham’s children have received honorable mention: Franklin Graham and Anne Graham Lotz, often described as the best preacher among the Grahams. But evangelicals generally don’t ordain women and Franklin seems too prone to shoot from the hip, as he did after Sept. 11 when he proclaimed that Islam is a “very evil and wicked religion.”

On occasion Oprah Winfrey’s name comes up, certainly not as a doctrinal compatriot, but hey, she’s got TV ratings and a yearning to set our collective souls free with her own blend of homey spirituality. Somehow, I can’t see Graham and Eckhart Tolle sharing double billing.

The very diversity, and frankly incompatibility, of the names mentioned thus far raises an important question: Just what are the qualifications for Graham’s successor?

Certainly Graham’s most basic identifier is as an evangelist, a preacher of the good news, most notably via large-scale campaigns and the media. This is where people like Palau and Harvest Christian Fellowship’s Greg Laurie fit the bill, but they have not captured Graham’s widespread cultural notice.

Graham is a genuine cultural media celebrity, a Larry King go-to personality. Over the years we’ve seen this role filled by the likes of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and more recently Joel Osteen. Falwell is dead, Robertson’s wild prognostications have rendered him unreliable and Osteen’s wife was involved in a lawsuit with a flight attendant. Graham’s reputation is pretty squeaky clean.

Graham has been the “president’s pastor,” ministering to virtually every occupant of the Oval Office since Dwight Eisenhower. Three presidents called Graham when he was hospitalized in 1976 (Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter). Bill Clinton brought in Bill Hybels and Tony Campolo during the dark days of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and Warren’s cell phone has a direct line to McCain and Obama. But somehow the sheer breadth and decades-long span of Graham’s role seems incapable of being duplicated.

Graham was a global statesman welcomed by heads of state. The pope may best fill this role, but evangelicals won’t find this choice acceptable.

Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins and William Young (of the current best-seller “The Shack”) are all successful authors like Graham, but so were Bruce Wilkinson and John Eldredge. These days, writers’ fame is fleeting. Can anybody actually say they’ve reread “Prayer of Jabez” or “Wild at Heart” recently?

Most of us agree with Fuller Theological Seminary’s Richard Mouw, who said Graham “came into public awareness at a time when it was still possible for a single individual to initiate something new and become a leading spokesperson. I don’t think we’ll see a person like that come along again.”

And who wants this “next Billy Graham” anyway?

It seems a sad commentary on a culture when the best it can hope for is a new version of someone who fit the unique needs of a previous culture.

Graham himself was more interested in perpetuating a brighter future than in a nostalgia for the past.

Franklin Graham recalls years ago when his father was speaking before 10,000 evangelists and was asked who would take his place when he retired. He stretched out his arms to them and said, “You.”

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)

DSB/PH END STAUB

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