“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. The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration. He has hired and fired a number of people who are now convicted criminals. He himself has admitted to immoral actions in business and his relationship with women, about which he remains proud. 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.”
And so on. It reads like boilerplate from one of Adam Schiff’s State Department drones, or Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment crew last Wednesday. It was actually Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today, in a December 19 editorial headlined “Trump Should be Removed from Office.”
Christianity Today was founded by Billy Graham, whom Galli duly invoked, and the establishment media promptly churned out headlines such as “Magazine Founded by Billy Graham wants Trump Removed from Office.” As Sean Connery told Luciana Paluzzi in Thunderball, it was almost as if it was intended.
President Trump pushed back, and so did Billy Graham’s son Franklin. Still, as Marlon Brando told Rod Steiger in On the Waterfront, there’s a lot more to this than people might think.
Billy Graham was born in 1918 in Charlotte, North Carolina, heart of the segregated south. Graham read the Bible to see if scripture justified such an arrangement, and found that it didn’t. So Billy Graham held integrated meetings, by some accounts the first major evangelist to do so. Graham’s gospel message never changed, and he was never involved in Jimmy Swaggart-style antics.
“Billy Graham was a humble servant who prayed for so many,” tweeted Barack Obama after Graham passed away at 99, “and who, with wisdom and grace, gave hope and guidance to generations of Americans.”
From study of scripture, Billy Graham learned that the line between good and evil does not divide races, nations, social classes or political parties. That line between runs straight down the middle of every human heart. As Graham believed, the power of the Christian gospel restrains evil within the individual. As Alexis de Tocqueville and others observed, that helps make for a civil society. So Graham preached the gospel, a keystone of classical Christianity, and also left this world a better place.
Christianity Today has come to represent a brand of religion that immanentizes the eschaton. In this creed, Jesus Christ comes across as the Green Party, Democrat, or Socialist candidate for Galilee South, always evangelizing for more government programs. This religion is Calvinist in the sense that progressives believe themselves predestined by history to rule. So if the progressive candidate loses, the winner must have stolen the election.
That’s what Democrats charge about Donald Trump, and Mr. Galli has little to say about bourgeois formalities such as the presumption of innocence. He invokes the Constitutional but cites no high crime the president committed that would justify his removal from office.
Readers can tell Mr. Galli doesn’t like Donald Trump, a trait he shares with the Democrats. For all his pious rhetoric, the Christianity Today editor is unwilling to extend forgiveness for what he perceives as Trump’s moral lapses. Mr. Galli also seems blind to anything President Trump has accomplished while facing a jihad of hatred and obstructionism.
“It’s time to call a spade a spade,” Galli writes, “to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.” Readers might wonder if this Christian editor is impartial in his judgments.
POTUS 44 told Americans they could keep their plan and their doctor, and claimed his administration bore “not a smidgeon” of corruption. In 2009 at Fort Hood, when self-proclaimed “soldier of Allah” Nidal Hasan murdered 13 Americans, including the pregnant Francheska Velez, the former Barry Soetoro called it “workplace violence.”
What Mark Galli and Christianity Today had to say about that atrocity could be worth attention. On the other hand, it’s hard to find any publication, religious or otherwise, that called for POTUS 44 to be removed from office.
Like Democrat politicians, Christianity Today editor Mark Galli wants President Trump removed from office on the cusp of an election year. He wants one party, the Democrats, to remove the president from office. He doesn’t trust the people to make the call at the ballot box.
Like the Democrats’ 2016 loser, Mr. Galli must think he’s somehow a cut above all those deplorable people. That wasn’t where Billy Graham was coming from, so Mr. Galli isn’t exactly one in the spirit.
Kumbaya brother, and as Barry McGuire said, don’t forget to say grace. And now abide hypocrisy, political bias and arrogance, but the greatest of these is arrogance.
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