Je$u$ and the Honey Pot - Franklin Graham

I don’t think Franklin Graham is anything like the Coe Family religious cult that rules Washington DC with a near demonic stranglehold on the annual National Prayer Breakfast.

Graham operates quietly out of North Carolina and running the family preaching business started by his father Billy Graham.

For some reason in these hard, hard economic times, Franklin Graham is being criticized for his combined salaries, benefits and perks amounting last year to something like $1.2 million dollars. He salaries came from two organizations, The Samaritan’s Purse, a charity for the poor, and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association – BGEA, which continues to put on Festivals around the world in the style of his daddy’s big tent crusades. Ten festivals are scheduled in 2010.

Considering that both businesses rake in close to $400 million dollars a year, I would have to say that $1.2 million sounds like less than professional charity CEOs get in private secular charities.

The Jesus business is good.

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy (Oct. 28, 2009):

Samaritan’s Purse, the larger of the two, ranked No. 59, and raised about $291-million in 2008, an increase of about 11 percent over 2007. Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, No. 258, raised about $83-million in 2008, which was down about 5 percent from 2007.

BGEA was down last year and laid off 55 employees. This is the business that Franklin Graham is now refusing a salary from. How noble and Christian.

Considering some quotes from F. Graham from Wikipedia:

"The god of Islam is not the same God of the Christian or the Judeo-Christian faith. It is a different god, and I believe Islam is a very evil and a very wicked religion."

"I believe that God created one man and one woman. He gave sex to us, and sex is to be enjoyed and is to be used within the bounds that God created . . . In sexual behavior outside the parameters that God created, we're at high risk, and we're seeing the evidence of this with HIV/AIDS. We're outside of these parameters, and we have a huge global problem now."

"And I think we're going to have to use every—and I hate to say it, hellish weapon in our inventory, if need be, to defeat these [terrorists]. But let's use the weapons we have, the weapons of mass destruction if need be and destroy the enemy."(CNN, September 14, 2001)

Graham was hobnobbing with then Governor Palin delivering $65,000 worth of food from the Samaritan Purse Charity to Russian Mission, Alaska back in February 2009. Franklin may have gotten a rush or a hard on doing charity work in a photo op with Sarah Palin. Sarah kept insisting to some interviewer in some indirect way that all this charity would not be necessary if the leaders of these rural native population villages could let their young people come to urban Alaska, take jobs and destroy the native culture. Sounds like economic genocide to me. It would be a lot cheaper than Alaska wasting money on winterizing roads into these rural Native villages.

Palin thinks youth need to consider leaving the villages

"Another purpose of the trip today, is not just delivering food for a short-term solution, but to remind those, especially young people, in rural Alaska of the job opportunities that are available, albeit it requires in some cases leaving the village for a short time."

This one is what really infuriated me. The Native people of Alaska have been fighting and fighting for generations to ensure rural communities thrive, thinking up solutions to get especially the young people to stay and contribute to the community. The boarding school times in which young people left "for a short time" were some of the most devastating to these communities. Did we learn nothing about what this kind of thinking leads to? Is there no thought to a real future? Palin shows a lack of the study of Alaskan and American history. So much time and energy trying to salvage these towns and villages from social and economic collapse, and the governor of our state can sweep them aside with one ignorant comment.

The Philadelphia Inquirer (Oct.28,2009) reported that along with other financial disclosures like a $1.25 million dollar advance for Sarah Palin's ghostwritten book:

She reported receiving $1,664 from evangelist Franklin Graham's Samaritan's Purse for airfare to Russian Mission, Alaska, and Marshall, Alaska, as part of an effort to deliver food aid to the western Alaska villages last spring.

Sounds like you could have left her home and bought more rice for the starving natives if in fact the whole thing wasn't just a photo op.

Don't worry Frank. We won't judge you by the trashy company you sometimes keep.

For the record Frank(lin):-)

The RC Archbishop of New York’s salary is $23,500 a year plus room and board.

The Archbishop of Canterbury makes approximately $92,000 a year plus room and board.

Keep up the good work.