A week ago, Mitt Romney paid a visit to Billy Graham at his home in Montreat, just outside Asheville, NC. Also present at that meeting was Graham's son, Franklin, who now heads up Billy Graham's ministry. During that meeting, Romney and the Grahams prayed together and then Billy Graham told Mitt Romney that he would do whatever was needed to help Mitt Romney win the Presidency. As result of that meeting and Dr. Graham's endorsement of Mitt Romney, we witnessed a great example of the type of hypocrisy that seems to go hand in hand with evangelicals. Follow me over the fold for more.
In February of this year before the Republican Party had chosen Mitt Romney to run under their banner, Franklin Graham appeared on Morning Joe and assessed the religiosity of the various candidates. In that conversation, Franklin Graham said that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were definitely Christian, but that Mormons such as Mitt Romney were not.
He also would not say whether he believed Romney is a Christian. "Most Christians would not recognize Mormonism as part of the Christian faith," he said.
Franklin Graham took it even further when he questioned President Obama's faith.
Graham has come under fire for controversial statements about Obama's faith before. On Monday, he was responding to a recent comment by Rick Santorum that initially appeared to criticize the President's religious beliefs. Graham refused to definitively say that President Obama is a Christian.
So Franklin Graham is on record that he does not believe that Mormons like Mitt Romney are Christians and that President Obama is not a "true" Christian.
This was not the first or only time that Franklin Graham has said that he believes that the President is not Christian, but is a Muslim even though there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that the President is a Muslim. Back in 2010, Franklin Graham made this statement which fuels the delusions of the birthers and the doubters about the President's loyalty to this country. Graham's statement served no purpose other than inject his personal religious test to undermine respect for the President.
"I think the president's problem is that he was born a Muslim, his father was a Muslim. The seed of Islam is passed through the father like the seed of Judaism is passed through the mother. He was born a Muslim, his father gave him an Islamic name," Graham told CNN's John King.
When Billy and Franklin Graham met and prayed with Mitt Romney on October 11, during which Billy Graham gave his endorsement of Mitt Romney for President, the Grahams had painted themselves into a theological corner. It seems as though Billy Graham's own website, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, has long grouped Mormonism in with other religious groups that they call cults. Those include Jehovah's Witnesses, Unitarians, Unification Church, and Scientologists, among others.
Shortly after Billy and Franklin Graham met with Mitt Romney and endorsed him for President, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association scrubbed the website of all mentions of Mormonism being a cult. Troutfishing diaried this two days ago, but it got very few views. I urge everyone to follow the link above to his diary too.
The Asheville Citizen Times made this cleansing of the BGEA website the subject of a front page article on October 15. On November 17, the Asheville Citizen Times reported this statement from chief of staff for the BGEA, Ken Barun, about the scrubbing of the website.
"We removed the information from the website because we do not wish to participate in a theological debate about something that has become politicized during this campaign."
For at least two years, Franklin Graham has used his own personal theological test to evaluate the religious fitness of the President and various Republican candidates for President. When the Grahams' choice of endorsing Mitt Romney did not hold up to their personal religious test, they changed their criteria. Hypocrisy much? Franklin Graham is the one who first injected his personal religious test into politics.
HT to Troutfishing for covering this first. But I thought I would also give a shot at writing a diary on this because the blatant hypocrisy of one of this nation's top religious leaders should not be overlooked.