https://washingtonmonthly.com/2012/05/09/billy-graham-and-amendment-one/
The point is not whether Billy Graham was “imperfect”–of course he was, we all are–the point is whether he was in fact such a wonderful influence on other people as is being claimed by those who were and still are eager to elevate him as “America’s Pastor.”
As far as I am concerned, he was never MY pastor, although I am an American, and I saw no evidence that he was a positive influence on any President, although he liked to be seen with them. I would suggest that he could have learned rather more from Jimmy Carter than the reverse about how to be a good man.
It’s okay – @Nrdsb4. I won’t continue to participate. You may have missed my comment about Billy Graham saying he was an abject sinner. In fact, I’d submit that he probably, as any Christian would, tell you he’s transgressed, fallen short, really, really sinned, done very very very very very very bad bad bad things (choose any or all.) Imperfection, faith, Jesus, grace (upon grace) – all theological stuff that I won’t go into. Timothy Keller said “The church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints.” I contend that Billy Graham would have agreed with that statement, as do I.
I’ll digress for a moment – I find it extremely troubling that rather than feeling any sense of empathy/compassion for whatever, people cannot wait to post a critique. Call it psychic numbing, empathetic deficit/dissonance, blah blah blah, whatever. Sadness isn’t considered before a race for personal judgment and anger are shared on line. Do people even feel compassion for others they don’t agree with anymore? Hence, my comment regarding Billy Graham’s tainted legacy and interment.
I’ll never understand how Christians can be anti-Semitic. Jesus was a Jew.
Graham actively campaigned to keep people like me second class citizens. His son runs a virulently anti-lgbt organization. Parents around the world abused, tortured, and cut off their lgbt kids because of Graham’s preaching.
So you’ll excuse me if I don’t want him to be “my” pastor as an American.
@pilot2012, I really don’t know enough about the man to post a “critique.” However, I do reassert that I can’t feel “sad” that a man who had a rich and full life, lost his wife, suffered debilitating disease and decreased quality of life, died at the age of 99. If anything, it is a liberation more than any kind of sad event. And as said before, understanding that loved ones might feel a tad differently, as even though they know his suffering is over,they will feel his absence acutely.
I couldn’t agree with you more pilot2023 in your post 22. I love the Timothy Keller quote…I had not encountered it before. I also think you can support same sex marriages and multitudinous gender iterations legally as a nation and still allow people their religious beliefs. If we cannot, we have corrupted our nation and become the very same as nations who allow no belief but state sanctioned beliefs.
The last paragraph of the NYT opinion piece back in post #11
“The memory of Mr. Graham is rightly honored by those who shared his values and the goals for which he mobilized evangelical Christianity. But the rest of us can surely be forgiven if we remember him differently.”
Yes. Agree. Since I came of age there has always been a divide of sorts between the evangelicals and the more liberal branches of main stream religions. My particular church took a very liberal approach while my H’s was quite narrow in their interpretations. I can be saddened by the death of a religious leader who lead a particular flock nationally for decades yet not agree point for point on their interpretations. I remember sitting on the chapel steps many Fridays in college with a PK friend discussing these very things.
Serious question - who is preventing people in this country from having their religious beliefs, and how are they doing so?
The most immediate memory is the Colorado bakers who declined to make a cake for a gay couple. I don’t know whether they won their lawsuit or not but it definitely lifted my eyebrows in terms of the line between individual beliefs and religious freedom and state rights to enforce people to do something that does not align with their beliefs and does not harm society. I cannot condemn someone if their religious beliefs do not harm someone. Embarass or inconvenience just isn’t compelling enough for me. Not aligning with my beliefs is not compelling enough for me, hence I can be sad that Billy Graham is deceased yet not have my beliefs align with his. I can respect his beliefs. Should laws be enforced against offending a differing belief concerning religious beliefs we are on a very slippery slope in my opinion.
That did not answer the question. The case in question is not about the baker’s (not bakers’) right to hold a religious belief; nobody is contesting that. The case is whether his beliefs supersede anti-discrimination laws.
Currently before SCOTUS.
Holding a belief is not the same as acting on a belief. And we’ve never had unfettered right to act on our religious beliefs. “Harm” may be subjective, but I think that the people who were subject to Jim Crow laws would argue that their consequences went beyond embarrassment or inconvenience.
I thought the heart of the lawsuit was that the baker did not refuse to bake them a cake he refused to decorate it with something related to the rainbow, a well known expression of gay solidarity, so in essence refused the cake they desired. I could be wrong, though as I haven’t heard much about this at all recently. But I think it’s an important distinction…in that one relates to discrimination and the other a refusal to participate fully by decorating the cake with a view they did not agree with on religious grounds. But there are been a few of these cases, ironically around “cakes” so I might have the cases mixed up - regardless the principle is the same and these are very weak cases albeit complex where deep seated religious beliefs collide with “current” legal interpretations surrounding discrimination. Anyway, back to Billy Graham and his beliefs…
He refused to make a wedding cake for them. Any wedding cake.
The slippery slope has more than one side to slide down, momofthreeboys.
momofthreeboys wrote:
The most immediate memory is the Colorado bakers who declined to make a cake for a gay couple. I don’t know whether they won their lawsuit or not but it definitely lifted my eyebrows in terms of the line between individual beliefs and religious freedom and state rights to enforce people to do something that does not align with their beliefs and does not harm society.
People are faced with the choice to do or not do something that does not align with their beliefs all the time. And the truly faithful make the choice that aligns with their beliefs without regard to the consequences. It is not the government that forces these bakers into a choice, it is their faith. The law says that if you are going to run a business in this county, you must do it without discriminating against anyone. You cannot choose to serve some people and not others, as was made clear at a Greensboro, NC Woolworth Lunch Counter almost sixty years ago. Freedom of Religion does not mean that the government will make religious faith easy for you. The Colorado bakers’ faith forced them to choose between making money in the way they preferred, and giving up the business to avoid sin. It is a test of faith, and one that they failed. They chose money over conviction. It is not that they couldn’t make a living NOT selling wedding cakes. They have choices, but they demand that the government keep them from facing the rigors of their faith. They want to be faith to be easy. Faith is hard and faith requires sacrifice. There lots and lots of people make the choice to be faithful everyday: the Amish don’t join the police force, Muslims don’t work in pork packing plants, conservative Christians don’t work as bartenders. All lucrative employment, but careers that are closed to true believers.
Not according to the baker. He said, “What I didn’t say was that I wouldn’t sell them a cake.
I’m happy to sell a cake to anyone, whatever his or her sexual identity. People should be free to make their own moral choices. I don’t have to agree with them.”
The baker, Jack Phillips wrote his own op-ed published in USA Today 12/4/17 so I believe those are his own words.
He continued, “But I am responsible for my own choices. And it was that responsibility that led me to decline when two gentlemen came into my shop and invited me to create a wedding cake for their same-sex ceremony.”
I would find it hard to admire a guy like this.
Moderator’s Note: I edited out some sniping among posters. Please be civil
@momofthreeboys , personally, I would say that I completely support a person’s right to HAVE a set of beliefs without necessarily respecting the actual beliefs themselves. There is no requirement that I respect their beliefs if I find them repugnant.
I am a bit bemused by pilot2012’s willingness to speak for all Christians and confidently state what “a Christian” would understand and think.
I admire fine oratory, whether I agree with the content or not. MLK, Obama, Kennedy, Lincoln all had that splendid ability to move people through a mix of reason and emotion.
I must admit I listened to Billy Graham expecting something along the same lines, and found him to be surprisingly dull. If you already believed in what he was preaching I imagine he would connect with you, but as an impartial listener he was an extraordinarily weak orator.