Evangelist Franklin Graham tore into the magazine his father founded after the flagship evangelical publication called for President Trump to be removed from office.
In a statement posted to Facebook on Thursday night, Graham wrote, “Christianity Today released an editorial stating that President Trump should be removed from office, and they invoked my father’s name (I suppose to try to bring legitimacy to their statements), so I feel it is important for me to respond.”
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Conceding that his father helped establish the periodical in 1956, Franklin Graham maintained that Billy Graham, who died in 2018 at age 99, would not countenance the viewpoints espoused by editor-in-chief Mark Galli against the president. “Yes, my father Billy Graham founded Christianity Today,” Graham wrote, “but no, he would not agree with their opinion piece. In fact, he would be very disappointed.”
Revealing that the last vote his father cast was for Trump, Franklin went on to claim that Billy Graham “knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump. He believed that Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.”
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“For Christianity Today to side with the Democrat Party in a totally partisan attack on the President of the United States is unfathomable,” Graham continued. He pointed to the lopsided vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, in which no Republican voted in favor of impeachment. “I know a number of Republicans in Congress, and many of them are strong Christians,” said Graham. “If the President were guilty of what the Democrats claimed, these Republicans would have joined with the Democrats to impeach him.”
“This impeachment was politically motivated, 100% partisan,” Graham asserted. “Why would Christianity Today choose to take the side of the Democrat left whose only goal is to discredit and smear the name of a sitting president?” Graham closed out his statement by saying that Christianity Today “has moved to the left and is representing the elitist liberal wing of evangelicalism.”
Graham then cited Trump’s accomplishments for people of faith, such as opposing abortion and mitigating the reach of the Islamic State. Graham has been a staunch supporter of the president and has claimed that “a demonic power” is fueling the fury behind impeachment and the political turmoil roiling the nation.
Mark Galli, the editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, asserted Thursday that Trump’s July 25 phone call to the Ukrainian president was “profoundly immoral” and that the case against him was “unambiguous.”
“The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents,” Galli wrote. The magazine went on to rebuke the evangelicals who back Trump, warning that their support “will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel.”
