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Cause they can’t make opinions meet about God

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I am generally polite to people on a mission.

In my neighborhood, they’re mostly Christian, from the Jamaican ladies outside of the train station with their copies of Watchtower to the, well, Jamaican ladies knocking on my door asking if they could have a Word with me.

I am very occasionally asked if I’m Jewish by some polite young man in a wide-brimmed hat, which, no, but thank you for asking.

I admire people who want to share their Gods: if you have an inside track on what you think is the best thing in the universe, it’s generous to to say Hey, look everyone!

Even the train evangelists, who can be quite loud, well, they’re out there walking their walk.

But this? No.

Now, certainly my response is due in part to the fact that I have zero respect for Franklin Graham. He may be sincere in his beliefs, but, unlike those Jamaican ladies, he seems to be more interested in people becoming Christian so as to boost himself than in offering a kindness to those others.

In the midst of an Oregon mission rally (during which he not so coincidentally urged his followers to get political), he said this about the (non-Christian) Democratic governor:

“Let’s pray for your governor, Gov. Brown. Wouldn’t it be something if she got saved? Amen.…We pray for Kate Brown. And Lord, I pray that she would come to know your son Jesus Christ as her lord and savior one day.”

I get it. It’s a part of a prophetic tradition to call out political leaders, and preachers left, right, and center have so called.

But that’s not what Graham’s doing. If he wanted to play the prophet he wouldn’t have aligned himself so closely with America’s Nero, and if he were sincerely interested in Kate Brown’s spiritual health he wouldn’t have engaged in an evangelistic version of cat-calling.

No, Graham is stunting. He doesn’t give a shit about Brown’s beliefs, only that her politics are not his.

Now Terri, you might ask, how do you know what’s in Franklin’s heart? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because he’s questioned the Christianity of Barack Obama?* Said that you can tell that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were Christians based on their policy positions?

Graham is a Trump-humper, a GOP tankie, and a political actor through-and-through. That’s fine: he can be as political as he wants to be.

Let’s  just not pretend that his call-out to Gov Brown is anything other than political.

*(Tho’ I should note here that he also doesn’t think Mitt Romney is a Christian. Mormons! Whattya gonna do?)

h/t HuffPo, Willamette Week


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