The Sword of the Lord

Foreword to The Sword of the Lord. I met Andrew Himes in 2004 through his masterful film, Voices in Wartime, a profound exploration of the experience of war.

“THE SWORD OF THE LORD…and of John R. Rice.”—from the masthead of John R. Rice’s newspaper, which began publication in 1935. The following is an excerpt from Andrew Himes' book, The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family.

Billy Graham was the skinniest kid Mary Lloys Rice had ever seen, and his hair was glorious. In 1940, Mary Lloys—my mom—plus her five sisters and my grandparents had moved a thousand miles north from Dallas and into their new home in Wheaton, Illinois on West Franklin Street, a big yellow frame house with white trim