Did you know about this? In 1981, the world famous evangelist Billy Graham said:
“I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form… It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” – Billy Graham
Many have questioned whether this really is true so
and unlike most of the things the MAGA movement is claiming nowadays, it’s completely accurate. In the 1 February 1981 cover story of Parade magazine; Billy Graham’s commented his conversations with fellow pastor Jerry Falwell, who helmed the conservative political group the Moral Majority (which was neither moral nor a majority). The full quote from Graham is:
I told him to preach the Gospel. That’s our calling. I want to preserve the purity of the Gospel and the freedom of religion in America. I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. Liberals organized in the ’60s, and conservatives certainly have a right to organize in the ’80s, but it would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.
This recent ad from Evangelicals for Harris is a stark reminder that the Gospel that Graham was preaching was nothing like the hateful, bigoted lies that Trump is building his authoritarian campaign on that tries to destroy democracy:
While Billy Graham’s son Franklin has joined the MAGA movement and desperately tries to claim that Billy would have been a Trump supporter as well if he had lived today, you can’t erase what has clearly been written down in history as the foundations of evangelical belief.
Micael Grenholm is a Swedish church historian, author and an editor for PCPJ.
Pentecostals & Charismatics for Peace & Justice is a multicultural, gender inclusive, and ecumenical organization that promotes peace, justice, and reconciliation work among Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians around the world. If you like what we do, please become a member!
PCPJ 
Graham also said, “A lot of Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth. But they don’t know how I really feel about what they’re doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them.”
Graham denied his anti semitism for most of his life but the tapes leaked. Any comments about disavowing religious bigotry were about optics and PR because the contempt for Jewish people and the Jewish faith this man held is astounding.
This article lies by omission in portraying Graham as anything other than a promoter of bigotry that would make him right at home with the MAGA movement.
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Anyone who hates MAGA, no matter his personal beliefs, is a friend of mine. And just because you dislike someone of a different faith does not make you a “faith’ hater. Your faith is your own business.
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