Was Billy Graham the Father of the Religious Right?

Wacker suggests that although Graham helped to inaugurate the modern evangelical overlap between religion and politics, especially Republican politics, he was not a direct progenitor of the Religious Right. Graham did not overtly endorse the work of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, or other leaders of that political movement in the 1980s. Wacker thinks that if Graham still maintained a public presence, he would not approve fully of the political activism of his son Franklin (who has recently been one of Donald Trump’s most dogged evangelical supporters). And Graham took positions on issues such as desegregation and nuclear disarmament that frustrated some other white evangelicals across the course of his career. He was never fully in lockstep with what would become the Christian Right.