Nancy Beck Young: How Franklin Graham betrayed his father's legacy

[Eugene]

Source: Washington Post

How Franklin Graham betrayed his father’s legacy

Instead of treating issues of sexuality with compassion, Graham has weaponized them.

By Nancy Beck Young
Nancy Beck Young is professor of history at the University of Houston and author of multiple books including "Why We Fight: Congress and the Politics of World War II" and the forthcoming "Two Suns of the Southwest: Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism."
May 2

Religion. Politics. Sex. Separately, the three subjects can provoke controversy, but when mixed, the combination can be toxic.

The most recent example comes with tweets written by Franklin Graham, son of evangelical preacher Billy Graham and a staunch supporter of President Trump, about Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Graham’s messages merged conservative politics and religion in ways that are unfortunately familiar in the early 21st century. Graham avowed, “As a Christian, I believe the Bible, which defines homosexuality as sin, something to be repentant of, not something to be flaunted, praised or politicized.”

Graham’s jarring commentary stands in stark relief to how his father handled a similar intersection of sex and politics during the 1964 presidential election. The difference between their approaches reveals a toxicity in our politics that, ironically, has arisen even as our broader culture has become far more tolerant and welcoming.

-snip-

That fall, Johnson was cruising toward an easy victory over his far-right Republican challenger, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Goldwater had courted Graham, suggesting that their shared concern about moral decay offered the preacher a reason to support his campaign. But Graham rebuffed him, dismissing any interest in politics.

On the surface, Johnson agreed with this stance, telling the Baptist preacher: “Now, Billy, you stay out of politics.” Nonetheless, the president relied heavily on Graham during a potentially explosive moment in his campaign. The incident reveals both the compassion of the elder Graham and the hesitancy of some far-right conservatives in the 1960s to exploit issues of sexual preference for electoral gain.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/02/how-franklin-graham-betrayed-his-fathers-legacy/

[trotsky]

1. "Betrayed"?

Frankie is just his father with a less polished veneer.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-soul-crushing-legacy-of-billy-graham-200536/

...The first thing that seemed to set Graham apart from the general run of fundamentalist preachers was his famous insistence, in the 1950s, on integrating his crusades. In 1957, during a historic crusade at Madison Square Garden in New York, Graham even invited MLK to deliver a prayer. “There is no room for segregation at the foot of the cross,” Graham famously thundered. This gave him the halo he wore for the rest of his days. “He is on the plus-side of history,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson on hearing of Graham’s death.

The reality was a good bit more complicated: Once the Freedom Buses started rolling South, and civil disobedience spread in the early 1960s, Graham’s support for civil rights dissipated. When King wrote his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail in 1963, Graham told reporters the Alabama preacher should “put the brakes on a little bit.” He began to criticize civil-rights leaders for focusing on changing laws, rather than “hearts.” He mocked King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, saying, “Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.” And he broke with King altogether over his opposition to the Vietnam War, which Graham enthusiastically championed.

...In 1969, with his friend Nixon finally in the Oval Office, Graham advised him to try and end the Vietnam conflict in a blaze of glory, with a bombing campaign that Nixon himself estimated would kill one million civilians. This was too much even for Nixon, but not for America’s Pastor. Graham provided a steady stream of military and political counsel to Nixon, including copious notes about campaign strategy in 1972.

When the tapes that sealed Nixon’s doom came out, and the vulgarity and hatefulness of the president were revealed, Graham pronounced himself “shocked” at the kind of language the president used, in addition to his criminal behavior. It would be decades before tapes of Graham’s own conservations with Nixon were made public. In brief conversations from 1972 and 1973, Graham comforts and cheers Nixon during his darkest hours, partly by engaging in anti-Semitic banter. The Jews, he told Nixon, were the ones “putting out the pornographic stuff.” Prominent Jews, Graham said, “swarm around me and are friendly to me. They don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country.”

[Runningdawg]

2. I was about to say exactly the same thing

[magicarpet]

3. So called disciples of Jesus as if...

... while these Fascist daemons teach hatred, isolation and the gospels of intolerance and human elimination from their pulpits when they preach to their flocks on the Sunday Holy Day.