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.

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