Trump blasts Christianity Today, evangelical magazine founded by evangelist Billy Graham, for saying that he should be removed from presidency. Trump said that Graham voted for him and that the magazine, which drifted away from Graham long ago, became far left and morally lost and confused.
By Julio Severo
Donald Trump lashed out at a prominent
evangelical Christian magazine on December 20, 2019 and praised the son of its
founder, the legendary evangelist Billy Graham, for saying his father voted for
the president before his death.
“Thank you to Franklin Graham for stating
that his father, the late great Billy Graham, voted for me in the 2016
Election. I know how pleased you are with the work we have all done together!”
said Trump.
Billy Graham, the famed evangelical
preacher, died in 2018. Franklin Graham disclosed his father’s pro-Trump vote
in a Facebook post.
Trump noted that Christianity Today is no
longer affiliated with the Graham ministries. He suggested the magazine is “looking
for those of the socialist/communist bent, to guard their religion.” He also
said that they “would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to
take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President.”
“The fact is, no President has ever done
what I have done for Evangelicals, or religion itself!” he claimed.
Rev. Billy Graham was noted for counseling
past presidents. He counseled both right-wing and left-wing presidents. His son
wrote on Facebook that his father “knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald
Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump. He believed that Donald J. Trump was the
man for this hour in history for our nation.”
“For Christianity Today to side with the
Democrat Party in a totally partisan attack on the President of the United
States is unfathomable,” the younger Graham added, cataloging some of Trump’s
policy achievements.
“The list of accomplishments is long, but
for me as a Christian, the fact that he is the most pro-life president in modern
history is extremely important — and Christianity Today wants us to ignore
that, to say it doesn’t count?” he asked.
The attack from Christianity Today came
one day after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed two
articles of impeachment against Trump. Democrats want to impeach Trump
because he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate the corruption and money
laundering of Democrats in Ukraine since the 2014 coup orchestrated by Barack Obama,
George Soros and neocons that overthrew the pro-Russian president in Ukraine
and replaced him with a president favorable to the corruption of Democrats.
The attack from Christianity Today is
among the most public Trump condemnations from Christian media since the 2016
campaign.
The Pew Research Center reports that 77
percent of white evangelical Protestants approve of Trump’s presidency. Yet some
actions of his administration have caused confusion among evangelicals. Even
though he has been a pro-life champion — except
in cases of babies conceived in rape —, Trump has not only appointed
pro-homosexuality judges, but, just as Obama did, his
administration has also meddled in foreign affairs and rebuked Christian
nations that ban homosexuality.
However, Trump’s progressive stance on
homosexuality is hardly a problem for Christianity Today, which has the same
progressive stance.
Christianity Today mentioned many “problematic”
issues of Trump, but strangely it mentioned
nothing about homosexuality — probably because it saw no problem in this
issue. It was the only issue where Christianity Today exempted Trump.
I was not so lucky. In 2009, Christianity
Today, in its Brazilian edition called “Cristianismo Hoje,” published a long
interview with me, and they saw a lot of problems in my Christian stance against
the gay ideology.
My interview with the Brazilian version of
Christianity Today was published in its printed magazine and on its website.
You can, if you read Portuguese, see it here
in Cristianismo Hoje. Because Christianity Today edited important points of
my interview, you
can also read it, in Portuguese, in full here in my Brazilian blog.
In one of the points of the interview, the
Brazilian Christianity Today said,
Severo is one of those quixotic evangelicals,
willing to fight mills that maybe only he can see. In his words, even the
Brazilian government would be interested in asking for his deportation because
of the criticism of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “The president makes an
uncompromising defense of homosexuality and abortion. How much is left for us to
consider Lula and his administration as possessed? It is destroying morality
and honesty of society,” he says. The histrionic tone gives Julio Severo’s
profile an incendiary outline that he makes a point of feeding, not just when
he speaks of homosexuality. He defends, for example, the right of evangelical
parents to homeschool their children (a practice prohibited by Brazilian law)
as a way of keeping them safe from the school’s allegedly harmful influences.
Lula was the Brazilian counterpart of
Obama and a friend of Obama. Even though Christianity Today portrayed me as a “quixotic”
evangelical — a reference to Don Quixote, who saw imaginary threats —, the
homosexualist threat is far away from being imaginary.
Fortunately, U.S. conservative evangelicals
have shown more respect for my work. WND has published several interviews with
me for over one decade and The Religion and Society Report, of the late theologian
Harold Brown, published a long essay by me in 2006 titled “Behind The Homosexual Tsunami in Brazil,”
detailing the non-imaginary threats of the Lula administration in Brazil.
Like the U.S. Christianity Today, the Brazilian
Christianity Today sees only left-wing Protestants and non-Protestants as realistic,
down-to-earth, practical and serious.
Originally, Billy Graham founded
Christianity Today in the 1950s to counter left-wing Protestant magazines. But
the progressive virus is so powerful that Christianity Today was infected. This
infection has spread, through the U.S. Christianity Today, to other nations,
including Brazil, which has its Christianity Today as spiritually rotten as the
original.
I am glad that at last Christianity Today
has been exposed by what it is now: Far left. And it was exposed by Franklin
Graham, a man who has all authority to say what he said about the far-left
magazine. I am glad also that Christianity Today, which aligns itself with
left-wing politicians, has attacked Trump. This shows that Trump is in the
right way.
Yet, I am sad that the same far-left Christianity
Today that saw a lot of problems in my Christian stance against the homosexual
ideology saw no problem with Trump’s stance on homosexuality.
Different from Christianity Today that
criticized everything about Trump, except his stance on homosexuality, I praise
his pro-life record, but
I decry the insistence of his administration to keep pressing Christian nations
in Africa to embrace sodomy.
Trump has been cowardly attacked by
Christianity Today. As an evangelical who has also been cowardly treated by
Christianity Today, I would like to offer my humble evangelical advice for
Trump to change course on the gay ideology.
I would never offer advices to Obama and Lula,
because in their socialism they would reject them. But, if given an
opportunity, I would offer them to Trump, because he is not closed to
evangelicals.
Or Trump could listen to Franklin Graham.
In a cover
story of Decision, the official magazine published by the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association, Franklin praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for
passing a law protecting children and teens against homosexual propaganda. He
also decried the efforts of Obama to attack Russian for its protective law.
If I could offer an advice to Trump, it
would be exactly what Franklin said in defense of the Russian law protecting
children and teens.
As to Christianity Today, I have no advice,
but just a question: is it too late for it to get rid of the progressive virus?
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