Rev. Franklin Graham isn’t the only high-profile Christian incensed over Christianity Today’s unexpected hit job on President Donald Trump.
A day after the 63-year-old magazine’s editor-in-chief, Mark Galli, published an editorial calling for the president’s impeachment, Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed appeared on Fox News to offer his acerbic take on the piece.
“I think they may want to change the name of the magazine to ‘Christian Yesterday,” because you can’t imagine a publication more out of step with the faith community that it once represented,” he bluntly said to FNC host Laura Ingraham.
Listen:
“President Trump received 81 percent of the votes of evangelicals four years ago — the highest ever recorded,” Reed continued. “His job approval — according to a recent poll by my organization, Faith and Freedom Coalition — among U.S. evangelicals stands at 83 percent. That’s a historic high. And 99 percent of conservative evangelicals, according to the Public Religion Research Institute, oppose impeachment.”
Christianity Today tried to debunk the 81 percent statistic last year by claiming that the raw number “fail[ed] to differentiate the motivations behind voting” and that “many evangelicals [were] willing to overlook personal character when voting.”
But even if true, these theories wouldn’t change the raw numbers themselves …
Continuing his critique, Reed then turned his attention to Galli, who has a history of publishing anti-Trump screeds.
“He’s got one foot out the door. He’s leaving on Jan. 3rd, so this is sort of a parting shot by him,” he maintained.
Fact-check: TRUE.
Galli’s reportedly indeed slated to retire on the 3rd, roughly three years after he published his first anti-Trump screed:
Parting shot. The author is retiring on 1/3/20. Seems like he was a Never Trump all along.
Never heard of CT either.https://t.co/b9QfQFkNcM pic.twitter.com/WYlGJoUWtY— Oddity (@timemindfulness) December 20, 2019
Reed then addressed the soon-to-be-retired editor’s reasons for supporting Trump’s impeachment.
In his editorial published Thursday, Galli echoed the Democrats’ impeachment talking points to a T, writing, “The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”
That’s an unproven narrative that isn’t backed by the facts.
He also took shots at Trump’s alleged lack of character and morals.
“He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud,” he kvetched. “His Twitter feed alone — with its habitual string of mischaracterizations, lies, and slanders — is a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.”
Reed was confused by this narrative.
“I don’t know what impeachment hearings he’s been watching,” he said to Ingraham. “The one fact witness — the only fact witness, Ambassador Gordon Sondland, admitted that nobody told him that the aid was being withheld in exchange for investigations, admitted that it was all based on his presumption.”
Also true.
FYI, the president himself responded to the magazine’s piece in blistering tweets posted Friday morning:
A far left magazine, or very “progressive,” as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather…..
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019
….have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President. No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close. You’ll not get anything from those Dems on stage. I won’t be reading ET again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019
Ingraham then jumped into the discussion to slam Galli’s focus on politics versus saving souls, and to also draw attention to the media’s reaction to his piece.
“I mean, this is supposed to be a publication about saving souls, I would imagine, right?” she said. “But he decided to make it all about politics, which, okay, if you’re going to do that, you ought to get it right — and he got it wrong. But the media are laughing this up for obvious reasons.”
Members of the left-wing echo chamber media view the editorial as surefire proof that, ah-HA, Trump is indeed an imperfect sinner, and therefore the evangelical community’s refusal to abandon him is an indictment of their own moral failures.
As well as proof that all they care about is earning themselves more conservative, pro-life judges — that their support in Trump is “transactional” in nature.
Except that Reed, a lifelong religious activist (versus a “journalist“), disagreed, saying, “My reading of scripture is that we’re supposed to render honor to whom is due honor, custom to whom custom.”
“And when you have a leader like Donald Trump who is the most pro-life president in our lifetime, who is the most pro-religious freedom president in our lifetime,” he continued, “suspending enforcement of the Johnson Amendments so our churches are no longer persecuted and harassed, ending the conscience mandates under which the Obama Administration dragged the Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby into courts, the most pro-Israel president in American history … It’s not even close!”
“And then for them to say that it’s transactional for us to support that moral good, it’s insulting to our faith and our good judgment.”
Fair enough.
In posts to Twitter and Facebook published earlier Friday, Rev. Graham came at the issue from a different angle.
First, he noted that his father, deceased Rev. Billy Graham, would have disagreed with the magazine. And that’s quite relevant given that his father, R.I.P., started the magazine!
.@CTMagazine released an editorial saying @POTUS Trump should be removed from office & they invoked my father’s name, so I felt I should respond. Yes, @BillyGraham founded Christianity Today; but no, he would not agree w/ their piece. He’d be disappointed. https://t.co/XO5Fj0hxnc
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) December 20, 2019
I hadn’t shared who my father @BillyGraham voted for in 2016, but because of @CTMagazine’s article, I felt it necessary to share now. My father knew @realDonaldTrump, believed in him & voted for him. He believed Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.
— Franklin Graham (@Franklin_Graham) December 20, 2019
And then he slammed Christianity Today for selling out to the radical “progressive” left.
“Christianity Today said it’s time to call a spade a spade. The spade is this—Christianity Today has been used by the left for their political agenda. It’s obvious that Christianity Today has moved to the left and is representing the elitist liberal wing of evangelicalism,” he wrote.
Look:
My Response to Christianity Today:
Christianity Today released an editorial stating that President Trump should be…
Posted by Franklin Graham on Thursday, December 19, 2019
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V. Saxena is a staff writer for BizPac Review with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University.
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