Graham had the opportunity to lead fundamentalists into a new era. He could have pushed them to take social reform seriously as a God-given mandate to save the world from environmental destruction. He could have tackled racism, America’s original sin, by championing the federal government’s aggressive civil rights policies.

But he squandered it. He could not overcome the speculative end-times schemes of his cohort of evangelicals, with their anti-government hostilities.

Graham had good intentions, as his work desegregating his crusades demonstrated. But when his influence really would have counted, when he could have effected real change, real social transformation, he was too locked into last-days fearmongering to recognize the potential of the state to do good. We are all paying the price.

It was his right to preach the theology of the second coming and therefore we should believe that will solve all of our problems. The problem is that when it influences so many people that it starts to affect the life's of others such as myself who know that is just a fantasy and a myth and should not be used to affect the government or our laws or social programs. 

People have a right in America to believe that we should do nothing to protect the environment because Thor is going to come down and use his hammer to refresh the whole environment with one swing and all we have to do is to change our whole government toward that theology. Worshiping Thor is fine, but inditing that Thor is the only true God and that only Thor worshipers can hold government positions and we can never elect a Congressperson or Senator or President who is not a Thor Church goer, etc is going to damned far. Does that mean the non-Thor believers are to be damned by the government that is being run by Thor worshipers? Will Thor be taught in public school? Will praying to Thor be allowed in public schools? We can't stop pollution, because the second coming of Thor is going to fix it anyway. Pour all the coal and oil runoff you want into the rivers and streams. When Thor comes back he is going to create a Paradise for all Thor believers. Put filthy oil pipelines across your grain water supplies. Thor will make sure it won't leak and will magically clean it up if it does, if you just pray to Thor hard enough! If your grain IS destroyed, well obviously it's because there are too many gays and liberals and pro-choice people pissing Thor off, so it's all their fault for making Thor angry and if just get rid of all of them or put them all in jail or maybe even sacrifice them all on an alter in the name of Thor then Thor will be happy and the whole world will be in peace with plenty for all again, just as soon as Thor comes back. Just as soon as Thor comes back. He is coming back. Really he is. I swear he is. You must believe it. Pray harder and Thor will come back. Someday. Soon. I am sure. Believe it. Keep praying to Thor. Someday. Soon.

Then again read the above paragraph and insert the name of any mythical god you wish such as Ra or Isis even the current Judaeo-Christine god that is talked about for now. It's all the same bullshit.

You pray to Thor...I'm praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

p.s. great comment!

My FSM name is Pasta Ram Das. I too have been touched by His Noodly Appendage. My we all someday be drenched in his hot and holy sauce. RAmen!

Here's an existential question : Are spaghetti and ramen equal as pasta deities ?

I honestly don't know if the Church has ever made a ruling on that question? Of course that would lead to questions of such as are Chinese Noodles from whence Spaghetti came from are superior to Spagetti or are one in being with Spaghetti such as the holy spirit is? Perhaps Chinese Noodles, Spaghetti and Ramen form the Holy Trinity of the Church of the FSM? Three Pastas that are One Pasta and yet are still Three Pastas at the same time! It's a Mystery.

The FSM did say that the noodles in canned soup are an abomination unto Him.

Perhaps I will ask on the Church site and see if I get an answer?

I sent the founder of the FSM Church, Bobby, an email to ask. I hope he answers as I think this is a very important question to Pastafarians everywhere.

Only hand-made whole-wheat noodles are righteous in His eyes.   Canning sucks the soul out of noodles.

Some say that those who consume whole-wheat noodles are apostates, but such divisions are what start lengthy religious wars steeped in tomato sauce.

My wife is an apostate as she mixes in vodka sauce with her tomato sauce and then, when she had made her Spaghetti, instead of even trying to appreciate it as it is then, she sprinkles sugar on it! Then again she has never appreciate the power of the FSM.

True story. I had lost contact with on of my sons for about 15 years because of circumstances I'd rather not go into. But when we became father and son again about 7 years ago, we discovered we had both become members of the Church of the FSM without even knowing the other had before we reunited! Such is the power of both good DNA and the power of the FSM! Though even he and I have had a division between if the proper way to type RAmen is with the first two letter in capitals or not. He does his as Ramen and I do RAmen. There are many different types of followers in the Church.

That's a great article.   Thanks for the link!

The fact that Grahams son Franklin is such a nut case religious extremist unfortunately does not speak well of the influence of the father. 

As the article says, I do think Billy Graham started out with good intentions and he probably did do a lot of good in his early years. 

The command from Jesus is to proclaim the Gospel including the need to repent and then to create disciples of Christ.  We are not called to reform the world.  In fact Jesus said just the opposite. Billy Graham was the epitome of the calling of Christ.  I feel blessed to have spent time serving as a ministry counselor in his ministry.

John 17:14-15 “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one.”

Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to risefn from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 And you are witnesses of these things. Luke 24:46-48

Jesus declared “And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
Matthew 24:12-14 

“Since everything around us is going to be destroyed like this, what holy and godly lives you should live, looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. On that day, he will set the heavens on fire, and the elements will melt away in the flames. But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness.”
And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight.”
2Peter 3:11-14

We are not called to reform the world.

.....contrary to your vote for Prop h8 and Graham's full-page ad supporting North Carolina's anti-gay Amendment 1.

Apparently both of you have tried to use the secular state to enforce your Christian extremist sharia laws against gays.

Ultimately, many of the Jess Willard supporters are about …

The "Jess Willard" thing.

Looking the other way is what they do as long as The Great White Dope …

… is just that.

I CHOSE TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY

I could have saved a life that day
But I chose to look the other way.
It wasn't that I didn't care,
I had the time and i was there

But I didn't want to seem a fool,
or argue over a safety rule.
I knew he'd done the job before
If I spoke up he might get sore.

The chances didn't seem that bad
I'd done the same, he knew I had,
So I shook my head and walked on by,
He knew the risks as well as I.

He took the chance, I closed an eye,
And with that act, I let him die.
I could have saved a life that day,
But I chose to look the other way.

Now every time I see his wife,
I'll know I should have saved his life.
That guilt is something I must bear,
But it isn't something you need share.

If you see a risk that others take,
That puts their health or life at stake,
The question asked or thing you say
Could help them live another day.

If you see a risk and walk away
Then hope you never have to say,
I could have saved a life that day
But I CHOSE to look the other way

Author: DON MERRILL

Well done Mac

I agree. Well said. It fits perfectly.

Graham's legacy?  Fake.  Cloaked in The Shadow.

Lying in State in The Rotunda?  Why? 

Because he represents the best of not just the US but humanity.  I had the privilege of working as a counselor in the Billy Graham Crusade in the 80s and it was a tremendous experience.  I learned a great deal from him.

I learned a great deal from him.

Like how to be anti-LGBT and pro-Christian sharia law?

You have an obsession with lying about others.

proclaiming EXACTLY as Jesus did that all sexual behavior outside of the marriage of a man and a woman is NOT being against any person.

secondly as I have repeatedly said to you over the years, there is NO such thing as Christian Sharia law.

Take your hate of Christianity elsewhere

secondly as I have repeatedly said to you over the years, there is NO such thing as Christian Sharia law.

And yet you've freely admitted that you voted for Prop h8 in order to deny gays the same civil rights you enjoy.   So you're either an opponent of other people's liberty or you're a wannabe theocrat who thinks the state should enforce his version of Christian sharia law, much like some countries in the mideast enforce their version of Islamic sharia law.   Here's what you said:

.... just because a tiny minority of the population is engaged in perverse behaviors and has support from others with immoral minds, does not mean that we have to stop opposing the legal recognition of perversion as equal to normal behavior.

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By the way Billy Graham did much the same thing as you did by publicly lending his support for the denial of equal civil rights for gays when he took out a full-page ad endorsing NC's ballot referendum on marriage equality.    That's some seriously effed-up shit and reveals a deep hatred of LGBT folks, very much like his fellow Southern Baptists who vehemently opposed mixed-race marriage 50 years ago.

I politely disagree.  I think Graham walked in The Shadow of The Deceiver. 

You are correct that there is not christian sharia law.  Yet.  But there are those who are fostering it.

Hating christianity?  No.  It is hating the hate that many of the christians will onto others.  Christianity has been infiltrated by the agents of Lucifer.

Sexual behavior?  Lying?  Avarice?  And the political figures supported by the evangelicals?  Dazed and confused.  I can not understand. 

You are correct that there is not christian sharia law.  Yet.  But there are those who are fostering it.

I'd phrase it the opposite way, that there's much less Christian sharia law in US statutes than there used to be despite the best efforts of people like Larry.   But there's still lots of it remaining like various blue laws and the anti-LGBT laws recently passed in several red states.    We're also not that far removed from anti-miscegenation laws and coverture laws either, with some southern states only recently repealing the former.    And while Florida just passed a law mandating that "god" be mentioned in public schools, even a blue state like Massachusetts still has an anti-blasphemy law on the books.   All of that stuff comes straight from Christianity and has no legitimate secular state purpose.

Hating christianity?  No.  It is hating the hate that many of the christians will onto others.  Christianity has been infiltrated by the agents of Lucifer.

True and very nicely put.

And lest there be any doubt about the theocratic intent behind Graham's and your opposition to civil marriage equality, here's the full page ad Graham placed:

.

That kind of bigoted and theocratic crap belongs in Saudi Arabia not in America.    And note that while Graham eventually dropped his support for racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, it wasn't until 1995 that the SBC itself renounced its founding to support slavery and white supremacy.    That racist superstition is what polluted the mind of a secular judges who was a Southern Baptist and made this infamous ruling in 1965 (others have done so as recently as 2009):

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Livefreeordie, you are likely not going to respond to this at all or to any significant length, but okay, you have proclaimed the "Message" of the Gospel. Is the issue here the proclamation of heterosexual marriage or legislating against other types of marriage (that is, same-sex marriage)? We, believers, have been instructed: ¹⁸ If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. —Romans 12.

Torturing people - literally trapping them inside their bodies and minds - into accepting the Gospel, or Good News, is not right.  It's wrong! And, the Church, if it does not want to be called out as political, should get out of the mindset of training up culture 'warriors' who seek to win through Pharisaical tendencies and practices. Let people choose to come to God and Faith through the challenges, conditions, and character of their lives. Our Lord works through appointed times and spiritual attraction—much as he done in calling well, you and me.

"Christian Sharia Law"? Not so funnily, I can see it on the fringes of our society.  Even if the spotlight on rumors of Islamic Sharia Law, emphasizes what Christian "nationalism" taking hold of our nation awash in guns could become.

As to Dr. Billy Graham, I only know of the good things of the man. I am sadden to hear what may be many 'hard truths' about him. Alas! We all have our crosses to bear. If we're honest, don't we?

As to Dr. Billy Graham, I only know of the good things of the man. I am sadden to hear what may be many 'hard truths' about him.

My impression is that he tried to be better than he was and better than the SBC would allow him to be.    The fact that he retracted and apologized for a rather homophobic comment about HIV says something despite the other bigotries he clung to.

W hile Billy Graham was leading a revival in Los Angeles in 1949, William Randolph Hearst looked at the handsome thirtysomething evangelist with flowing blond hair and famously directed editors in his publishing empire to “puff Graham.” Some six decades later, the preacher had become a silver-haired retiree whose Parkinson’s disease kept him largely out of view, but the puffery never stopped. When Graham died this week, he was hailed by President George W. Bush as “America’s pastor,” and even more lavishly by Vice-President Mike Pence as “one of the greatest Americans of the past century.” President Bill Clinton praised him for integrating his revivals. Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called him “the most important evangelist since the Apostle Paul.”

Graham’s accomplishments are, without doubt, legion. The widely cited estimate that he preached to some 215 million people is likely in the ballpark. And while the nineteenth-century lawyer-turned-evangelist Charles Finney must be credited with inventing modern revivalism, Graham perfected and scaled it, turning evangelicalism into worldwide impulse that has transformed Christianity in recent decades in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

. . . .

As a staunch believer in sin, Billy Graham would have been the first to admit that he was a flawed man. His determination to be about his father’s business meant he left almost all the parenting of his five children to his wife Ruth. The rabid anti-communism that caught Hearst’s attention blinded Graham in his early years to the ways the United States had fallen far short of its ideals. Graham got into bed with the wrong man in Richard Nixon . And while he must be praised for integrating his revivals (which he called crusades) and for inviting the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to deliver an invocation at his massive New York City crusade in 1957, he was missing in action when it came to civil rights legislation. After King imagined in his 1963 “I Have a Dream Speech” a “beloved community” in which “little black boys and little black girls will join hands with little white boys and white girls,” Graham dismissed that dream as utopian. "Only when Christ comes again will the little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children," he said.

As a young boy growing up in an Episcopal household, I watched Billy Graham at least a dozen times as he preached his straightforward gospel of sin and salvation on national television. I was dazzled by what I later learned to describe as his charisma. He was tall and handsome. There was a sweet urgency in his voice. And he didn’t seem to be hiding anything behind his deep-set blue eyes. So I may be unduly forgiving of his faults. But I still view him as a good man who was ultimately chastened by his chumminess with Nixon, who worked hard to transcend the racism and anti-Semitism that swirled around him as a farm boy in North Carolina, and who understood (at his best) that the Christian message (at its best) is about love rather than fear, inclusion rather than exclusion.

When he spoke to the nation at the post-9/11 memorial service at Washington’s National Cathedral, he spoke of evil, but he did not denounce Islam. Throughout his career, Graham was criticized by fundamentalists for working with Catholics and liberal Protestants at his crusades. He prayed with Democratic and Republican presidents. And instead of castigating Christianity’s religious rivals, he focused on preaching Christ. When asked to join in common cause with Jerry Falwell after the foundation of the Moral Majority in 1979, Graham refused to yoke his organization to the cultural wars of the Religious Right and the Republican Party. And almost immediately after saying during a 1993 crusade in Columbus, Ohio, that AIDS might be “a judgment of God,” he retracted those words, telling the Cleveland Plain Dealer a few days later, “I don't believe that and I don't know why I said it. . . . To say God has judged people with AIDS would be very wrong and very cruel. I would like to say that I am very sorry for what I said.” . . .  .

politico

That's a very good article.   I especially agree with its observation about Niebuhr and his criticism of Graham.

I also think Graham was very much a product of his era and his choice to switch to the SBC.   In the 60s and 70s Graham also made a choice to stick with the ideological conservatives in the SBC (including the racists) rather than aligning with a growing liberalization of the SBC's ideology (ie Baptists like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton).   In that sense he might have been as responsible as any SBC leader for the conservative retrenchment of the SBC in the late 70s and the resulting departure of virtually everyone who supports equal rights.

I also think Graham was very much a product of his era. . . .

I think so too. And, as such a person you become a "chew" toy for many different forces: Some true, some false, and many more in-betweens. None of which bypasses or excuses Reverend Graham's own challenges with success (fame, influence, power, spiritual growth (or spiritual stagnation)).

Side note, Graham's daughter Anne is just as nutty, bigoted and extreme as his son Franklin.

huffingtonpost

And that is hard to do. Very hard to do. IMHO Franklin, along with being a horrible and disgusting bigot, is also batshit crazy.

You cannot force anyone to become a Christian and nowhere is there any Biblical teaching to do so

Someone becomes a Christian only if it is the desire of their heart and they do so purely from a free will choice

My continued argument with Skrekk is that she persists even when she cannot provide a single civil law commanded by Jesus or the Apostles.  Laws created by mankind in the name of Christianity are not from God and have no Christian authority.

Christianity does not even have a marriage ceremony requirement.  It is simply a oral agreement between a man, a woman,  and God.  

You continue to lie about me. I’ve repreatedly stated that those words were in the context that government has no right to redefine marriage

proclaiming EXACTLY as Jesus did that all sexual behavior outside of the marriage of a man and a woman is NOT being against any person.

What means the above then? Focus on the bolded words, please.

You continue to lie about me. I’ve repreatedly stated that those words were in the context that government has no right to redefine marriage

That's a rather absurd statement since marriage is just a legal contract defined by the government.    This is about secular law, not your superstitious and bigoted religious traditions.   

Moreover I've always quoted exactly what you said when you admitted why you voted to deny gays the civil rights you enjoy, and it plainly was to use the state to enforce your cult's anti-gay sharia laws.    Your vote was profoundly unethical, no different at all from those who voted for Jim Crow laws or bans on mixed-race marriage.

.

My continued argument with Skrekk is that she persists even when she cannot provide a single civil law commanded by Jesus or the Apostles.

Prop h8, DOMA and similar anti-gay laws had no legitimate secular purpose whatsoever, they were overwhelmingly the product of right-wing Christian superstitions against gays.     The part you fail to understand is that the government has no business enforcing your cult's anti-gay views on marriage or any other issue.    To do so would be a clear violation of the Establishment clause yet that's EXACTLY what you wanted the state to do when you voted for Prop h8, and you even admitted that you made that vote in order to impose your twisted morality on everyone else and to deny gays basic civil rights.

.

Laws created by mankind in the name of Christianity are not from God and have no Christian authority.

Quite an ironic statement given that you were the one trying to enact a secular law in the name of your twisted version of Christianity.

Self explanatory.  Sexual activity outside of the marriage of a man and a woman is a sin before God.  That means adultery, singles engaged in sex, and those of the same sex all are in condemnation by God

My position is same-sex marriage falls under the control of secular law, because the activity unquestionably involves a civil right and at best becomes a question of compassion in the Christian world.

For the sake of moving the discussion forward, for I do not want to digress to either of us having to wade through volleys of bible verses and meanings, let's say New Testament does not approve of homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Now then, Is the issue here the proclamation of heterosexual marriage or legislating against other types of marriage (that is, same-sex marriage)?

This is important, because I can not discern the lengths and depths of your perspective from what I read so far. You wrote:

proclaiming EXACTLY as Jesus did that all sexual behavior outside of the marriage of a man and a woman is NOT being against any person.

In general, you are correct. Talk won't hurt anyone. What, if any, action/s do you take?