Franklin Graham still does not get It

I never was a fan of Billy Graham. I thought him too political. I saw him in Nixon’s White House when the nation needed a peace in Vietnam and a truce at home between generations. Graham was successful financially in his using stadiums and tours not unlike the come to town revivals of America’s rural past.

Graham too was a Protestant. When I was young and Catholic, I thought him a strange creature indeed.

These days when I am now a Cultural Christian or a minimalist in the Christian faith, I see Billy’s son Franklin as too much in the same mold as his father and a son who never had to make it on his own. He inherited the family’s business. While there is nothing wrong in inheriting a family’s business – Franklin will never be Billy – and Billy was never that great a preacher outside of his own created and self generated PR bubble.

Some stats from an article in USA today and commenting on another article from the Huffington Post. Sometimes comment on comment on news articles is all that the blogosphere is about. Sometimes I would rather have a subject kicked around from many different angles before I come to rest on my own private comfortable position on any given subject.

Franklin Graham got disinvited from a Pentagon sponsored national prayer day May 6 event because of his harsh tone on Islam.

Does National Day of Prayer include or condemn you?

Does National Day of Prayer include or condemn you? A survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors, conducted in March by LifeWay Research, the Nashville-based evangelical polling firm, found most hold strong and consistent negative views of the religion of Islam. When asked which is closer to their beliefs:

• 47% agreed with Graham's comments that Islam is "a very evil and a very wicked religion."

• 24% agreed with former President George W. Bush's remark that "the Muslim faith is based upon peace and love and compassion."

• 17% were undecided

• 12% agreed with both statements

Although 69% don't think Christians and Muslims pray to the same God and only 19% would call Islam "spiritually good," …

I think that Islam in its present form as a state religion under penalty of death is an evil thing. I do not believe that Islam in its writings or beliefs is any more evil than Christianity or Judaism.

I think that the ancient archaic National Prayer Day that goes back to the dawn of the Cold War with the Soviets and was started by the likes of a Graham family business or a Coe family business need some rethinking and retooling to fit into this modern age.

The American Town Square of fifty, sixty, seventy years ago was a town square full of while males on their lunch hour. That the present day American Town Square is 24/7, multi-racial, multi-cultural and multi-sexual.

I find it a great shame that the views of Franklin Graham do not recognize or dissect the difference between geographic political Islam from the philosophy and religion of same. It was not too many centuries ago that Christianity was the official state religion of most of the countries of Europe. Today those countries are secular – thank God for that.

Franklin Graham and other Protestant ministers who want to look at the world through the prism of the old American Town Square of seventy years ago are woefully out of sync with reality and the true message of Jesus oft times hidden in the gospels.

Entrenched and vested self interests of religious fat cats like the Grahams and the Coes are a great burden on the beliefs of modern people seeking a modern understanding of God and a modern understanding of our relationship to our universe.

Franklin Graham still Hates Muslims

Big Government parasite Franklin Graham is in the News. He was been asked to pray at the National Prayer Day at the Pentagon. With a question of constitutionality of the national mandated prayers by citizens, there is a question if Graham will speak at the Pentagon.

Of course, Graham anti-Islam beliefs and rhetoric are just the thing we need to continue this new eternal cold war against Islam (good for business and pentagon pensions etc.) .

The National Prayer Day was campaigned for heavily by Billy Graham and signed into law by Harry S Truman in 1952. Nothing like the government to created a privileged meal ticket niche for Bill Graham and his cronies, not to mention his Muslim hating son Franklin.

A Christian must love all his neighbors including Muslims. Franklin Graham is some sort of tax free business man posing as a Christian. He is not a Christian by my standards or definition of such.

Group wants evangelist's Pentagon event canceled

Big Government Mandate – National Prayer Day

The Tea Party complains about Big Government. They did not complain when Bush and Cheney started an optional oil war in Iraq with its final costs in the trillions. But big government is somehow here and now and under an African American President.

I never heard of the National Prayer Day before the recent court ruling making it unconstitutional. Apparently this big government mandate to make us all pray when the Government tells us to pray is the kind of thing the Tea Party should be complaining about.

I would have thought that the national prayer thing would have been some sort of executive proclamation for the sake of politics. But this National Prayer thing had been a government law since 1952.

What next from Big Government? Tell us when to fast and for how long. Ramadan?

National Prayer Observed - Everyday

Of course everyday is a good day to pray.

Yesterday the White House endorsed a National Day of Prayer with less fanfare and less political pomp as in recent years.

No one group can own nor can any one philosophical approach to the concept of God be monopolized especially in this diverse nation.


Prayer Day receives ecumenical treatment

…Obama opted yesterday for a private observance and a decidedly ecumenical proclamation. The proclamation cites the "one law that binds all great religions together: the Golden Rule and its call to love one another, to understand one another, and to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth."

Praising the armed forces, he says "it is because of them that we continue to live in a nation where people of all faiths can worship or not worship according to the dictates of their conscience."

Shirley Dobson, chairwoman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, said it was "disappointed in the lack of participation by the Obama administration" in the 58th annual observance. "At this time in our country's history, we would hope our president would recognize more fully the importance of prayer," she said in a statement.

But other religious groups praised Obama for dialing back the observance and accused the task force of trying to exclude non-Christians. Dobson is the wife of James Dobson of Focus on the Family, a politically active Christian conservative group…