With everything going on lately (Biden dropping out of the presidential election and Harris taking up the mantle to run), I've got bogged down and behind on my blogging. I almost missed this incredible moment of basic truth.
Recently Mark Wingfield, executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global, verbally ripped into Franklin Graham, calling him a " the poster child for Christian nationalism" and " "liar" for his speech during the recent Republican National Convention in support of Donald Trump.
The basic point of Wingfield's piece, underscored by the passage below, is that when it comes to Graham, it's all about earthly power and he's willing to exploit his faith to shield any liar who will give it to him.
To understand the insidious nature of Christian nationalism, look no further than Franklin Graham’s appearance at the Republican National Convention last night. Graham already has demonstrated he knows no shame in endorsing, blessing and lionizing the most corrupt president in American history, yet people continue to send his nonprofits millions of dollars, enriching him as one of our most highly paid partisan preachers.
. . . Graham started telling flat-out lies.
“For as long as I’ve known President Trump, I’ve found him to be a man of his word,” he declared.
Apparently, Graham hasn’t listened to any of the small-business owners who have been jilted by Trump through the years, hasn’t listened to any of the women who say Trump assaulted them, hasn’t paid attention to the hundreds of documented lies Trump spews between breakfast and dinner each day.
No, it turns out Graham has some other measure in mind: “When he told me and our country in 2016 that he was going to appoint conservative justices, guess what, he did. In 2016, he said he would defend religious liberty and, guess what, he did.”
By “religious liberty,” of course, Graham means the liberty of evangelicals like him, not the liberty of all people.
And then Graham threw out this whopper: “In 2019, I was with him at the United Nations when the first president in the history of this country stood there to advocate for religious liberty worldwide.”
So no other U.S. president in history has advocated for global religious liberty? That is patently false and insulting. It makes Trump out to be a hero he is not. Not only have other presidents advocated for worldwide religious liberty, Trump has not. He doesn’t want religious liberty for Palestinians. He doesn’t want religious liberty for Muslims. He doesn’t want religious liberty for Democrats.
Like Graham, Trump has only shown interest in advocating for religious liberty for his political base. All others be damned.