The challenge was that it was harder to be subtle than strident.

Some Christians worried about a faith that was so embracing as to be meaningless, that exalted not the Almighty so much as the American way of life. When civil religion bleached the challenge from faith and left behind a watery patriotism, there was room for concern.

(Billy) Graham went through passages of hypochondria and his closest friends had to assure him that he was not about to die.