Billy Graham's granddaughter joins 'Evangelicals for Harris,' quotes Isaiah to blast Trump supporters

The granddaughter of the late Rev. Billy Graham endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris during an "Evangelicals for Harris" Zoom call Wednesday and suggested that Christians who support former President Donald Trump are causing people to turn away from Christianity.

Jerushah Duford, whose mother Virginia "Gigi" Graham Tchividjian is Graham's oldest daughter, spoke in a recorded video because she was unable to attend the virtual event, which also included speakers such as former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and "public theologian" Ekemini Uwan, who has claimed "whiteness is wicked" and that churches should pay global reparations to "people of African descent."

The event reportedly reached 40,000 people as the Harris campaign attempts to court Evangelical voters despite her liberal views on issues such as abortion and sexuality.

"I was thinking this morning that if you told me 10 years ago that I would be taking an active role in politics, I'd have laughed. But then I had to stop and realize this is so much more than politics," Duford said in her recorded video.

"In 2016, when a man bragged about assaulting women, various leaders of my faith then propped up this man as a poster boy for godly manhood and leadership," she continued. "This broke my heart as I have watched — quite frankly, for the last eight years — people who were curious about Jesus and His teachings [have] done a 180 and walked in the other direction from my faith."

Duford went on to reference Isaiah 1:30, which likens the rebellious and unfaithful Israelites in Jerusalem and Judah to "an oak whose leaf withers" and "a garden without water." She implied that Trump supporters are similar.

According to biblical commentator Matthew Henry, the prophet's mention of oaks in Isaiah 1:29-30 was an apparent allusion to the sacred groves where the Israelites worshiped Baal, Ashtoreth and other false gods, whose rites often included child sacrifice and sexual immorality.

"Isaiah talks about an oak whose leaves wither and a garden going without water," continued Duford, who has ties to The Lincoln Project and whose website describes her as an "LGBTQ+ friendly" licensed professional counselor in Greenville, South Carolina. In 2020, she also penned a letter in support of Evangelicals Concerned Inc., an organization that advocates for Evangelicals to support same-sex marriage.

"These things happen slowly over time. First, people professing the Lord made excuses for [Trump's] lack of kindness, then for the name-calling. Soon it was making excuses for assault. Then it became making excuses for January 6, and now making excuses for convicted assault and 34 felonies," Duford said on the Wednesday night Zoom call.

"The oak leaves don't wither overnight. And I'm terrified to think of how far this turning our head the other way and making excuses will take our country — but more importantly, our witness to the world," she added.

Duford went on to note that Micah 6:8 was her grandfather's favorite verse, and that while she does not expect her president to be a Christian, she "will be watching for my faith leaders [to] support actions that reflect mercy, justice and humility, and for my faith leaders to rebuke actions that are the antithesis of that."

"Voting Kamala, for me, is so much greater than policies. It's a vote against another four years of faith leaders justifying the actions of a man who destroys the message Jesus came to spread, and that is why I get involved in politics," she said.

Duford closed her remarks by admonishing her listeners to "pray for the faith leaders in our country to take a stand for justice, mercy and humility." She also urged them to "take the Evangelicals for Harris pledge on our website" and to "go perform actions of service in your neighborhood or community, and then come back and share your story with the Evangelicals for Harris campaign."

Duford has used her relation to Graham as a platform to criticize Trump and his supporters before. In an op-ed in 2020, she urged Christian women to reject Trump, claiming "the church honors Trump before God" and accusing Trump of tear-gassing protesters in Lafayette Park for a Bible-toting photo op in front of St. John's Church, which is a claim that a federal probe found to be false in 2021.

"It seems that the only evangelical leaders to speak up praised the president, with no mention of his behavior that is antithetical to the Jesus we serve," she wrote at the time. "The entire world has watched the term 'evangelical' become synonymous with hypocrisy and disingenuousness."

In 2020, she also accused Trump of trying "to hijack our faith for votes," and the next year she signed a letter blaming the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol on "Christian nationalism" while decrying it as "heretical and antithetical to the teachings of Jesus."

Duford's uncle Franklin Graham, by contrast, has been a staunch Trump supporter and blasted "Evangelicals for Harris" on Wednesday for using a clip of his father in one of their ads in a way he claimed was deliberately misleading.

The ad depicted a sermon during which Graham asked his listeners if they have been to the cross to say, "Lord, I have sinned. I'm sorry for my sin. I'm willing to change my way of life."

The ad then cut to a 2015 clip showing pollster Frank Luntz asking Trump if he had ever asked for God's forgiveness.

"I am not sure I have. I just go on and try to do a better job from there. I don't think so. I think if I do something wrong, I think, I just try and make it right. I don't bring God into that picture. I don't," Trump replied, though he later backtracked.

"The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris," Graham wrote. "They even developed a political ad trying to use my father [Billy Graham's] image. They are trying to mislead people. Maybe they don’t know that my father appreciated the conservative values and policies of President [Trump] in 2016, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed."

After Christianity Today published an editorial calling for Trump to be removed from office in 2019, Graham revealed that before his father died in 2018 at 99, the last vote he cast in a presidential election was for Trump in 2016.

Aram Tchividjian, Duford's brother, responded to Graham's claim in 2019 with a sarcastic tweet suggesting his uncle was lying, tweeting: "I’ll never forget that day in 2016 when my grandfather [Billy Graham], shrugged off the symptoms of Parkinson’s and hydrocephalus, got up out of bed for the first time in a year, drove down to the polling station, and cast his vote. What a glorious memory!"

Her father failed her.

Her father failed her because he was a Swiss-Armenian Clinical Psychologist with a doctorate from Marquette University.

Gigi married Stephan, a Swiss-Armenian, at the age of 17, in what she calls an arranged marriage, and moved to Switzerland where they found her father-in-law’s controlling influence intolerable. After about eight years the couple moved to the states so Tchividjian could pursue a college education. He earned a doctorate in clinical psychology at Marquette University, in Milwaukee, where he interned under the late Larry Crabb, a popular Christian counselor and author who encouraged Tchividjian to move to South Florida. Tchividjian built a thriving practice, and in the 1980’s founded Life Management Ministries, focused on training for small groups, at First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale. He also hosted a radio talk show on what was formerly WMCU.
Raising a family in South Florida While Stephan pursued his career, Gigi was busy at home managing their large family and household. Writing on scraps of paper between chores, she has since published more than 10 books and developed an inspirational speaking ministry. When the family first moved to Florida, they briefly attended Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church under the leadership of the late Rev. D. James Kennedy, where in 1974 the Rev. Graham spoke at the dedication of their new church sanctuary to an overflow crowd. A few years later, the family became members at First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale, pastored by Dr. O.S. Hawkins, where Tchividjian developed the counseling ministry, and the Hawkins became close family friends. Their large family filled the front row pews, and Gigi chuckled as she recalled Hawkins as an instigator with the children.
In a phone interview, Hawkins, now president of Guidestone Financial Resources, agreed, “I totally was. When Antony was about six years old, I’d pay him money to run up and touch the prayer altar and run back and sit down, and they’d go crazy!”
Remembering the time fondly, Hawkins said “God was doing a fresh work in Fort Lauderdale.” In 1985 the Rev. Graham conducted an eight-day crusade at Lockhart Stadium in Fort Lauderdale that attracted crowds estimated in excess of 25,000 per day, to hear a gospel message encouraging a personal relationship with Christ. The Rev. Graham was welcomed by then Florida Governor Bob Graham, who called the preacher “a son of Florida returning to Florida,” according to a Sun-Sentinel article. Graham attended Florida Bible Institute in Tampa and preached his first sermon in Palatka, Fla. During the crusade, the entire family was involved in some form.
“There is no doubt that Stephan and Gigi were a powerful ministry couple in the 80’s,” said Hawkins, adding “Stephan helped so many broken lives become whole… and apart from her own relationship with Christ, Gigi’s strength was in her family.”
Asked if it was difficult being the daughter of “America’s pastor,” Gigi said, “We were never sacrificed for public opinion.” However, with her father travelling about 70 percent of her childhood, her mother chose to move the family to North Carolina to be near her parents, who were former missionaries in China. “I could go on talking for hours about my mother, and I do at The Cove.” (The Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove is a Christian Conference and Retreat Center in Asheville, N.C., where Gigi currently serves as a family ambassador, speaking and welcoming guests.) “She was a character,” Gigi said of her mother. “She was a wonderful writer, a poet, theologian and intellectual, but she had a streak in her that could think of things, and they were fun!”
Gigi recalled that when she was a child, busloads of tourists came on their lawn and called the family out by name, just so they could take pictures. “And in the 1960’s there were so many threats against my dad, the FBI made him put up an electric fence and get guard dogs. My mother was furious and said, ‘This is an afront to my guardian angels!’ She was spunky! Spunky with her grandchildren too.”
Of her seven children, Gigi said Tullian was the one always running out the door with a surfboard. “He came in one day with his ears pierced and I was horrified! And he always fixed his hair in some strange way, so I felt like I was sitting in the front row at First Baptist Fort Lauderdale with six children and a chicken! But after he had pierced his ears, my mother sent him a box of earrings. Then for thanksgiving, she sent him a knife and a fork for his ears. She was teaching me, ‘Gigi, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.’ She had a wonderful way of teaching. She didn’t get on to him. She didn’t criticize him, and he got over it pretty quicky, but that taught me a great lesson.”
Gigi described both her mother and daddy as nonjudgmental. As an illustration, she recounted attending the celebration of the 75th Anniversary of TIME Magazine with her father. It was a black-tie affair in Rockefeller Center to which everyone who had ever appeared on the cover was invited and it was a motley crew. This was during the Clinton administration in the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, so there was a little tension, and they were seated at President Clinton’s table. “In the taxi on the way back to the hotel, I asked Daddy, how do we as Christians deal with these sorts of things? And his answer to me was, ‘Honey, the New Testament teaches, our job is to love, the Holy Spirit’s job is to convict, and it’s God’s job to judge.’”

Gigi Graham Tchividjian on God’s Faithfulness to Their Legacy Family

So my question was what do psychologists think about religion?

And the response was from Wikipedia:

Psychologists consider that religion may benefit both physical and mental health in various ways, including encouraging healthy lifestyles, providing social support networks and encouraging an optimistic outlook on life; prayer and meditation may also benefit physiological functioning.

Nothing there about Faith or Grace. The psychologist's daughter is woke blind on the goodness of President Trump. And Bill Graham told her mother that, "it’s God’s job to judge."

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