As just about everybody must know by now, a major fissure emerged on the Evangelical Right yesterday when Christianity Today, founded by the late Billy Graham, endorsed Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal from office.
The First Felon, y’all will not be surprised to learn, isn’t taking this lying down.
….have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President. No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close. You’ll not get anything from those Dems on stage. I won’t be reading ET again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019
Sadly, because evangelicals appear to have merely substituted the Trump cult for the Christian cult, without ever acknowledging the shift, I doubt this will cause many Trumpists to reconsider their support. In fact …
I'm guessing this will cause the mag more actual pain than the First Felon, but even so it's nice to see Trump rebuked by a well-known voice in his base … https://t.co/eHBvKDQKs8
— Bob Felton (@BobFelton) December 20, 2019
Franklin Graham wasted no time assuring the Faithful that his daddy would disapprove of the editorial.
.@CTMagazine released an editorial saying @POTUS Trump should be removed from office & they invoked my father’s name, so I felt I should respond. Yes, @BillyGraham founded Christianity Today; but no, he would not agree w/ their piece. He’d be disappointed. https://t.co/XO5Fj0hxnc
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) December 20, 2019
Well … who knows? It’s well-established that daddy was just fine with Richard Nixon’s coverup of the Watergate burglary, and was an anti-semite as well, so junior could be right: Ol’ Billy, who never once in his life got on the wrong side of power, may indeed have been just fine with Trump’s behavior.
Now, the more thoughtful evangelicals — Granted, a rarity — generally explain their support for Trump in transactional terms. “Sure Trump is sewage,” they’ll say, “but he’s our sewage and giving us the judges we want and letting us sidestep regulations that apply to everybody else.”
Well, OK, I guess that’s politics, and there is no reason why the Devout shouldn’t be as corrupt and hypocritical as everybody else. But I would love for some evangelical to tell me where the Inerrant Bible authorizes His people to make a deal with the devil.