Posted on 04/25/2019 2:44:58 PM PDT by Ennis85
It’s hard to think of a single prominent American Christian who better illustrates the collapsing Evangelical public witness than Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son. His commitment to the Christian character of American public officials seems to depend largely on their partisan political identity.
Let’s look at the record. In 1998, at the height of Bill Clinton’s sex scandals, the younger Graham wrote a powerful op-ed in the Wall Street Journal combating Clinton’s assertion that his affair was a “private” matter. Clinton argued that his misdeeds were “between me, the two people I love the most — my wife and our daughter — and our God.” Graham noted that even the most private of sins can have very public, devastating consequences, and he asked a simple question: “If [Clinton] will lie to or mislead his wife and daughter, those with whom he is most intimate, what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”
Graham was right: Clinton, it turned out, wouldn’t just lie to mislead his family. He’d lie to influence courts, Congress, and the American people.
Fast-forward 20 years. By 2018, Donald Trump was president — and helping to win important policy victories for religious conservatives — and Graham’s tune had changed dramatically. He actively repudiated his condemnations of Clinton, calling the Republican pursuit of the then-president “a great mistake that should never have happened,” and argued that “this thing with Stormy Daniels and so forth is nobody’s business.”
Graham was wrong: Trump, it turns out, doesn’t just lie to mislead his family. He lies all the time to influence courts, Congress, and the American people.
So is this the “new normal” for Evangelicals? Is politics entirely transactional now? Do we evaluate politicians only on their policies and leave the sex discussions to the privacy of their own bedrooms?
Apparently not, according to . . . Franklin Graham. Now that the Democratic primary is gaining steam and a gay candidate is surging forward, Graham has rediscovered his moral voice. Yesterday he tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/Franklin_Graham/status/1121070184922525701?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1121070184922525701&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2F2019%2F04%2Ffranklin-graham-and-the-high-cost-of-the-lost-evangelical-witness%2F
Yes, marriage is the union between a man and a woman, but Trump married a woman, then married his mistress, then married a third woman, then had an affair with a porn star while that third wife was pregnant with his child. Yet Graham says, “God put him” in the presidency and we need to “get behind him and support him.”
The proper Evangelical position toward any president is not hard to articulate, though it is exceedingly difficult to hold to, especially in polarized times when one party seems set on limiting religious liberty and zealously defending abortion: We should pray for presidents, critique them when they’re wrong, praise them when they’re right, and never, ever impose partisan double standards. We can’t ever forget the importance of character, the necessity of our own integrity, and the power of the prophetic witness.
In other words, Evangelicals can never take a purely transactional approach to politics. We are never divorced from our transcendent purpose, which always trumps political expediency. In scripture, prophets confronted leaders about their sin. They understood a core truth, one clearly articulated in the Southern Baptist Convention’s 1998 Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials: “Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God’s judgment.”
All too many of our nation’s Evangelical leaders haven’t just “tolerated” serious wrongdoing by Trump, they’ve rationalized and minimized it. Some have even given the “thumbs up” in front of a Playboy cover. (What would Nathan, who dramatically confronted David over his infidelity and murder, say?) In so doing, they’ve seared the consciences of the culture and the church, and granted their secular opponents all the ammunition necessary to question our sincerity as believers.
Scripture repeatedly warns that Christians should expect to be despised by the world, and in many quarters of our culture (the academy, Silicon Valley, Hollywood), Evangelicals are among the most-hated members of all. But whenever someone hates us, we should ask why. If it’s because of our faith, we should rejoice; if it’s because of our sin, we should be humble enough to repent. Even the best of men are far from perfect, and our troubles can be our own fault.
Franklin Graham is under fire today. He should be. His double standards have cost the church. This mistake should not define him — he has done much good and preached the Gospel faithfully for many years — but it should grieve him. Through his blatant hypocrisy, he has earned his critics’ wrath.
“Graham was wrong: Trump, it turns out, doesn’t just lie to mislead his family. He lies all the time to influence courts, Congress, and the American people.”
Okay, quote me one. Just one.
These leftwad coprophages keep accusing Trump of lying, but they never quote a lie.
“David French” ... predictably anti-Trump.
“Scripture repeatedly warns that Christians should expect to be despised by the world”
Well, you despise Trump, so I guess that’s about right.
I’ll take a playboy over a boy who thinks he’s a playgirl any day of the week.
+1
I personally give Melania a lot of credit in bringing Trump along. I think she is truly a devout believer.
You are right, throughout both the Old and New testaments, God repeatedly used flawed individuals to achieve His ends. Very few evangelicals are blind to Trump’s flaws, but - given the alternatives of Democratic Christian haters and feckless, spineless Republicans - Trump became their choice by default. I might have preferred a Mike Huckabee or even Ted Cruz, but they didn’t resonate with enough people.
“We accept a flawed Trump”
What flaws? We’re all sinners, but how is Trump especially bad that you call him “flawed?”
Agree!
Great point.
He’s sowed his oats, hopefully asked forgiveness for his sins, and sees like a genuinely good and Christian man.
And America HAS acted like a playboy for a long time.
Good to have someone who went there but came out of it for the better.
So do I
Generally the Left loves to attack folks who try to urge us to seek the high moral road. Graham is a realist. He knows that no man is perfect and he doesn’t claim to be, but the media will single in on his belief in Christ, and that some things are just wrong, and trash him because of it. “Oh he’s narrow minded and judgemental.”
Trump on the other hand has not made any claims. He does ask us to support what is good for the nation. Even that becomes the focus of the Leftists and their media lap dogs.
Trump does not claim to be some level of Christian, as it relates to sin or him being a paragon of virtue. He does try to promote Christian support of doing the right thing.
I see Trump as me on that sort of thing. I’m far from perfect, but I do know what is right and wrong generally. So does Trump.
We are both sinners. We both throw ourselves on the Mercy of the court (God’s judgement), and try to do things that are good most of the time.
Let’s see the press and the Left claim that. LOL
Of course they would, but it would be a hoot hearing it. As if...
Well said
French and his globalist, anti-American, anti-US self-government neocon NeverTrump pals did everything they could to throw the 2016 election to Hillary.
Hillary who attacked and smeared Bill’s rape and sexual assault victims and committed numerous crimes from her barely-disguised bribe as cattle futures profits to mishandling US national secrets to destroying evidence to launching a coup against the Constitution with the rigging by her and the Obama administration law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the investigation of her and the framing of Donald Trump. Not to mention her gross incompetence and lies with respect to Benghazi and the illegal war against the Libyan regime and pretty much everything her withered hand touched.
French is a deeply dishonest and deeply disturbed person.
That National Review gives this poisonous fraud a platform makes them an enemy of all decent Americans.
Matt Walsh tweeted something similar. I get real tired of the “holier than thou” Walsh.
Donald Trump had trouble at one point answering questions about the “ask forgiveness for sins” part — but both God and the devil are in the details. Donald Trump’s answer to that pointed to the Holy Communion. One could have a worse answer spiritually; the Holy Communion points to the Cross, Jesus’ once-for-all acts of forgiveness.
Believing in the Lord’s Prayer means, among other things, praying of the Father “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.” Forgiveness is a thing offered by God, but He insists that the favor be passed along to be valid. And Trump has forgiven a lot of people even while rebuking them for what they have been doing.
Donald Trump is still a diamond in the rough. We shouldn’t expect him even now to be the John Bunyan of this age. Neither does God. Perhaps this will be refined in Mike Pence.
I wish her own salvation story was better known. She had been a playgirl in her heyday. Then something happened.
Agree with all of it.
When you said we are all sinners — that’s enough.
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