According to a very juicy article in Mountain Xpress from Asheville, NC, Donald Trump has ignited a feud between the family of the late prominent pastor Billy Graham. On one side stands his son and very vocal Trump supporter Franklin Graham. And on the other is his grandchildren, Aram Tchividjian,and Jerushah Duford, and their mother and Graham's daughter Gigi Graham Tchividijian. Apparently this feud partly stems from Franklin's claim in 2019 that his father voted for Trump in 2016.
I hadn’t shared who my father @BillyGraham voted for in 2016 but because of @CTMagazine’s article, I felt it necessary share now. My father knew [Trump], believed in him & voted for him. He believed Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in the history for our nation.
Tchividjian, while not outwardly calling his uncle a liar, got highly shady with his response.
I’ll never forget that day in 2016 when my grandfather @BillyGraham, 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!
According to Mountain Xpress, this exchange blew open the door:
For those who hadn’t followed the insular world of evangelical Christianity, this exchange blew into full view a rip in the Graham family’s fabric that mirrors a larger split within the entire evangelical community – a split likely to be accelerated by Trump’s defeat for re-election. Tchividjian and his more outspoken sister, Jerushah Duford, whose mother, Gigi Graham Tchividijian, is Billy Graham’s oldest daughter, have emerged as the family’s most visible critics of their uncle and of Trump. Both have written several books, separately and together, about their grandfather and his worldwide ministry, which was rooted in the North Carolina mountains near Asheville. Although they are not the first among evangelicals to publicly charge Franklin Graham with undermining the memory of his father, the fact that they are bringing the charge from within the family brings powerful momentum to it. Graham declined to comment through a spokesperson.
In an exclusive interview with the publication, Duford called out her uncle for his support of Trump, which she also contends is hurting her grandfather's legacy and the overall integrity of Christianity:
“My grandfather’s goal was to introduce people to the saving love and grace of Jesus and he stayed out of politics for the most part because he knew that he would alienate an audience if he was involved,” Jerushah, 42, said, then adding a reference to her uncle: “He is too polarizing of a personality to be introducing people to Jesus. People outside the church are not going to listen to Franklin.” Her brother, two years older, said that his uncle Franklin’s public claim about Billy Graham voting for Trump was “such blatant baloney” that he couldn’t resist responding with the sarcastic tweet. Tchividjian said that he now regards his uncle and Trump as “two peas in a pod.”
The article deserves reading and sharing. It also proves yet again that karma does not play.
1 comment:
It’s good to see some riposte to Franklin’s claim. Franklin is doing such harm to the cause of Christ by his supporting this evil man, it is difficult to see how any decent non-Christian would ever be open to consider Jesus’ message or claims. If Franklin and other purported Christian leaders are supposed to represent Jesus, he doesn’t come across looking very good. One popular “prophet,” Jeremiah Johnson, who predicted a Trump win is trying to do damage control. He says that Satan is trying to steal what God wanted. A false prophecy, according to Deuteronomy 18, can’t be damage controlled. Unless Trump somehow stages a coup or gets certain governors to coerce their electors (in the electoral college) to ignore the popular vote in their states, Biden will be president. I consider myself to be a pretty hardline evangelical (the kind that take the Bible very seriously) but I also think of myself as a friend to the gay community.* As such, I would hope that both your gay and straight Christian readers will be relentless in prayer and intercession that this corrupt president will not destroy our democracy.
*(The Bible does not condemn caring, monogamous same-sex relations. My argument is in the book *Human Suffering and the Evil of Religion,* 89–97,—and I don’t twist scripture to reach my conclusion.)
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