EVANGELISTÂ Franklin Graham’s invitation to speak at a Pentagon prayer service has been rescinded because his “inappropriate” past comments about the Religion of Peace.
Graham, the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham, in 2001 has described Islam as “evil”. More recently, he has said he finds Islam offensive and wants Muslims to know that Jesus Christ died for their sins.
According to this report, army spokesman Col Tom Collins said Graham’s remarks were:
Not appropriate. We’re an all-inclusive military. We honor all faiths. … Our message to our service and civilian work force is about the need for diversity and appreciation of all faiths.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation had raised the objection to Graham’s appearance, citing his past remarks about Islam.
Franklin Graham
Collins said earlier this week that the invitation to attend the National Day of Prayer event at the Pentagon wasn’t from the military but from the Colorado-based National Day of Prayer Task Force, which works with the Pentagon chaplain’s office on the prayer event.
As co-honorary chair of the task force, Graham was expected to be the lead speaker at the May 6 Pentagon service. Country singer Ricky Skaggs was expected to perform.
Since Graham’s invitation was rescinded, the task force has decided not to participate in the military prayer service, Collins said.
The decision suggests a growing sensitivity in recent years among senior Pentagon officials to the divide between the US military and Muslims. Graham attended a Pentagon prayer service in 2003, despite objections by Muslim groups.
Graham said he regrets that the Army felt its decision was necessary. In a statement, he said he would continue to pray for the troops to:
Give them guidance, wisdom and protection as they serve this great country.
Nihad Awad, national executive director of Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Graham’s invitation would have sent “entirely the wrong message” at a time when troops are stationed in Muslim nations.
Promoting one’s own religious beliefs is something to be defended and encouraged, but other faiths should not be attacked or misrepresented in the process.
Shirley Dobson, chairwoman of the prayer task force and wife of conservative Christian leader James Dobson, pointed out that US leaders have called for a day of prayer during times of crisis since 1775 but claimed that the tradition was now under attack. She wailed:
Enough is enough. We at the National Day of Prayer Task Force ask the American people to defend the right to pray in the Pentagon.
She also called on President Barack Obama to appeal a ruling by a federal judge in Wisconsin last week that the National Day of Prayer was unconstitutional because it amounts to a call for religious action. The judge did not bar any observances until all appeals are exhausted.
The Obama administration said Thursday it would appeal against the judge’s decision.
Mikey Weinstein, of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said Graham shouldn’t have been invited in the first place.
I want to say this is a victory, but in a way it’s a Pyrrhic victory because it shows how far this got. We’re not exactly doing cartwheels.
Weinstein said he hopes someone more “inclusive” will be invited to replace Graham.
Collins said there was no word yet on who would attend the barmy event.
Vote: Agree or disagree with the Pentagon’s decision?
Hat tip: BarrieJohn
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
April 23rd, 2010 at 1:29 pm
Perhaps they should invite the Pope! He might have a lot more time on his hands now.
I have pointed out on the site just how ridiculous their poll is.
Yes. His comments were inappropriate and offensive.
No. He is entitled to his opinion.
What? Surely that second statement should read “No: his comments were NOT inappropriate and offensive”? It is perfectly possible to vote “Yes” to both statements – but then I suspect that that was their intention!
April 23rd, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Coke representative banned from speaking at national soft drinks festival because he said he dislikes Pepsi…
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:30 pm
Father Billy gets slapped down
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM-6ANpuo8Y
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:50 pm
I suggest Richard Dawkins as a completely inclusive speaker. Dawkins’ view is that we are all atheists except for our own particular faith. Dawkins goes one step further and is an atheist to them all.
Perfect solution. Not only that they get an excellent speaker with interesting comments.
How do we pass this to the Pentagon and Col Tom Collins who says they are an all inclusive military? This would confirm that he means what he says.
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:52 pm
Billy Graham’s son? Looks just like him, according to my sleaze-o-meter. Once more, the religions of peace and love fighting with each other over who is more peaceful and loving. I’m going to grab my popcorn for this one.
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:56 pm
No, Serai: Coke representative banned from speaking at national soft drinks festival because he said Pepsi will kill you!
Billy Graham has been in deep trouble for some time now because, after spending his whole life preaching that Jesus is “The Way, The Truth and The Life”, he has now declared that, in his humble opinion, sincere believers in God from ALL religious backgrounds will find a welcome in heaven. You can just imagine the reaction from those who have supported him for decades because he said something entirely different! I do, however, think that he is sincere, but misguided, so I have to take issue with Christopher Hitchens there, though he is spot on about him being obsessed with the rich and powerful. People were absolutely stunned when he allowed Richard Nixon to actually address one of his Crusades, as most people knew what sort of a man he really was, besides which he was deeply unpopular over his failure to end the Vietnam conflict, and was actually booed when he spoke. I was a great admirer of Graham as a young man, but he never came over as being that “bright” to me, and spouted verbatim a lot of things that he had either read or been told. He is clearly no intellectual, and I don’t think that any of his theological views were ever thought out in any detail.
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:15 pm
The offending remarks are included in this video, but there is plenty more about it on YouTube and elsewhere!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRjsd6fZRto
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:37 pm
@Barriejohn I think we basically agree it’s the same shit different label though don’t we? That was my point really, perhaps I am being overly simplistic but I don’t honestly see much difference between the xtians and the magick carpet people.
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:08 pm
There’s little difference, Serai, but he can’t use a semi-official platform to make claims about Islam being “of the Devil”!
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:51 pm
As intrinsically antihuman as Billy Graham’s preaching was, he (like Karol Wojtyla) did have the legally recognized excuse of “diminished responsibility”. Franklin Graham and Fuhrer Ratzinazi are as evil as Hitler and as truthful as Nixon.
April 23rd, 2010 at 6:23 pm
The ‘We’re an all-inclusive military. We honor all faiths. … ‘ is an out right LIE!!!!!
The silly religious state that ‘gay’ is chosen!!!
That makes it a belief. Belief is faith that you are right.
gays are rejected by our brave xtian knights.
So they don’t honor all faiths (beliefs).
xtians say atheism is a faith (belief).
The military don’t like them either….again the LIE is told.
Our military is very xtian and they really do not like islam,
but islam scares the schite out of them so they don’t want their feelings hurt….hypocrisy.
April 23rd, 2010 at 6:49 pm
@Janstince
We are only told that is Billy Graham’s son.
Maybe it’s a clone. I hope there aren’t any more of them.
April 23rd, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I agree, Dr Harwood. Billy Graham was a fairly simple-minded, gullible, but sincere young man, with an engaging personality and undoubted gift for oratory, who was used by others to promote Christianity in America. He had been a Youth For Christ evangelist, when William Randolph Hearst famously ordered his newspapers to “puff Graham” during the Los Angeles Crusade (The Canvas Cathedral) in 1949, and the rest, as they say, is history!
Graham’s “big break” came in the 1940s, when publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst got wind of Graham’s then-recurring theme that the Cold War was a showdown between good and evil, and that communists were Satan-worshippers. “Either communism must die or Christianity must die,” Graham famously preached, and Hearst sent a memo to all of his papers’ editors, ordering them to “puff Graham”. Prior to that, Graham had been just another traveling evangelist, holding meetings in half-empty tents. After that and for the rest of his life, he has been America’s most prominent Christian leader.
At the height of the blacklists and American red scare of the 1950s, Graham said of his friend, Senator Joseph McCarthy, “While nobody likes a watchdog, and for that reason many investigation committees are unpopular, I thank God for men who, in the face of public denouncement and ridicule, go loyally on in their work of exposing the pinks, the lavenders, and the reds who have sought refuge beneath the wings of the American eagle and from that vantage point try in every subtle, undercover way to bring comfort, aid and help to the greatest enemy we have ever known — communism.”
Graham was buddy-buddy with every American President from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush, who said it was a conversation with Graham that led him to become a Christian. It was a tape recorded conversation with Richard M. Nixon that led to Graham’s most embarrassing moment, when the tapes were played publicly in 2002.
The writer is referring to his anti-Jewish remarks, which Christopher Hitchens refers to in the video.
More here: http://www.nndb.com/people/561/000022495/
April 23rd, 2010 at 7:14 pm
Here is an excellent comment from the Newsvine website:
The American Nation does not need to be holding quasi-government events that give the false impression to the rest of the world that we as a nation or as a people are involved in religious warfare or conflict. Having Graham speak would give the world the very false and damaging impression that (1) Americans are all Christian, (2) Americans are all of the part of Christianity that believes in such stupidity as religious competitions and wars, and (3) that we are in a conflict that pits all Christians against all Muslims.
The Pentagon shouldn’t be in the business of holding prayer services at all.
This “National Prayer Day” thing has been misrepresented from the gitgo. It sounds as if it is universal, but apparently is run by Focus on the Family: a highly sectarian Protestant organization that does not in any way represent the thoughts or interests of all persons of the Christian faith. Who in the heck is Shirley Dobson to be doing the inviting for any event at the Pentagon, a federal government venue?
There is no right under the First Amendment to make a speech at the Pentagon.
Graham is not a spokesperson for the entire Christian faith. He represents only himself and the members of his band of Protestants. His words are not representative of all Christians no matter what he and the Dobsons, who also do not represent the Christian faith, have to say about it. All three are an embarassment to many millions of Christians.
The federal government should not be in the business of religion at all. The First Amendment prohibits an establishment of religion. Why did the past Republican administrations get the government all caught up in this nonsense in the first place?
Any “national” anything needs to include ALL Americans, not just one sect, and anything “national” should be inclusive.
No government agency should provide a platform for some Americans to badmouth other Americans and spread prejudice. There’s enough of that going around.
Graham and the Dobsons and all those other fools have a perfect right to pursue their foolishness, but not on government property.
April 23rd, 2010 at 8:26 pm
barriejohn, And that is how we got the unconstitutional National Day of Prayer in the first place, at the height of the red scare in 1952. Courtesy of Billy Graham.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N....._of_prayer
Obama should be ashamed of himself for appealing last week’s court ruling. For an intelligent man and a constitutional law expert, he is really thumbing his nose at the document, trying to conserve and expand upon legislation and policy started by more reactionary presidencies.
April 23rd, 2010 at 8:59 pm
You can learn a lot about America from Billy Graham! He was very close to Nixon (they were the same generation and shared the same ideology), and felt that he had really “arrived” when asked to sit in on Nixon’e deliberations just after his election. For a farmer’s son from North Carolina this was a great honour! There was even talk of offering Graham an ambassadorship – perhaps to London – and the fool even gave the matter serious consideration before deciding that his religious “calling” superseded any political vocation. Is it any wonder then that the USA gets itself embroiled in such fiascos as Vietnam and Afghanistan, when inexperienced and politically naive people can be promoted at the whim of a president. I know that there are checks on many appointments nowadays, but it was Nixon who promoted both Spiro Agnew and Gerald Ford (of whom Johnson said that “he couldn’t fart and chew gum at the same time”) – need I say more?
April 23rd, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Holy shit, Bjohn,
Billy Graham was a mass hypnotist. When I was a kid, with three channels on the TV, they used to televise that snake oil salesman. He would tell the people to open their arms, look to the sky (I guess that’s where god is), and feel the holy spirit carry the everlasting love from god into their hearts. Bullshit!!! He was preying upon the insecurity and loneliness of average people to pry open their wallets. (Neo just barfed)
As for his son, he just took over the family con game. And as is typical of religions to say, in effect, “we possess the truth about god, and all other religions are deceived by the devil”. It’s HATE PROPAGANDA, no matter how you slice it. The stuff that wars are made of.
While I admire Billy Graham for making it through his career without getting caught butt rodgering a street hustler, I remember the Nixon tapes, subpoenaed by Congress, where he was heard using profanity that would make a sailor blush. He was a FRAUD!!!!
NeoWolfe
April 23rd, 2010 at 11:53 pm
“Promoting one’s own religious beliefs is something to be defended and encouraged”
I love how religiots believe this, but also believe that people promoting their non-religious beliefs are to be attacked and discouraged.
And demonised, harrangued, criticised, and shouted down.
April 24th, 2010 at 1:25 am
I love Bill Maher. Sensible and funny, too. The “gospel of “I don’t know.”" My hero. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHH2JItePlc
April 24th, 2010 at 1:45 am
I wonder if they’re his Dad’s teeth.
April 24th, 2010 at 6:35 am
NeoWolfe: I know that Nixon’s private conversations were often peppered with profanities, but I have never heard that accusation made about Graham before. I believe he was sincere but deluded.
http://www.rense.com/general20/billy.htm
April 24th, 2010 at 6:43 am
Nixon wrote to Graham after that election [1960]: “I have often told friends that when you went into the ministry, politics lost one of its potentially greatest practitioners.” Graham spent the last night of Johnson’s presidency in the White House, and he stayed for the first night of Nixon’s.
After Nixon’s victorious 1968 presidential campaign, Graham was an adviser, visiting the White House and leading some of the private church services that the President organized there. Nixon offered Graham the ambassadorship to Israel in a meeting they had with Golda Meir, but Graham turned down Nixon’s offer. Nixon appeared at one of Graham’s revivals in East Tennessee [Knoxville] in 1970; the event drew one of the largest crowds to ever gather in Tennessee. Nixon became the first President to give a speech from an evangelist’s platform. However, their friendship became strained when Graham rebuked Nixon for his post-Watergate behavior and the profanity heard on the Watergate tapes; they eventually reconciled after Nixon’s resignation. Graham announced at that time, “I’m out of politics”.
The above is taken from Wikipedia, which gives references.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham
April 24th, 2010 at 7:17 am
Many of the greatest political and religious orators have employed techniques of hypnosis, and Graham is no exception, as I have pointed out here before. However, many of them have not even been aware that this was what they were doing! People are gathered in large numbers in a warm and welcoming – even loving – atmosphere, where music and pageant may be used to “soften them up” before the speaker addresses them like some latter-day prophet, or even deity. The address commences with maxims that the listeners can readily agree with: “We all desire peace”, “Everyone wants to be happy”, “We all want to find fulfillment in life”, or perhaps something shocking tht will grab their attention: “Crime and immorality in our society are now out of control”, “This country is surrounded by nations which do not have our best interests at heart“; with facts, figures and assertions following in a veritable torrent, giving listeners little or no time for rational deliberation, until finally reaching a sort of crescendo, where people are assured that a decision needs to be made here and now (and they are left in no doubt as to what that decision should be), otherwise the repercussions will be disastrous. In the American revival meetings – and Graham was only doing what his predecessors had always done – this involved “coming forward” to the platform and “yielding to Christ”. Of course, having made such a public demonstration of one’s change of heart, it then becomes very difficult to go back on the “decision” later, in the cold light of day!
April 24th, 2010 at 9:06 am
BTW: This idea of believers “going to heaven” when they die isn’t nearly as ancient as the religiots would have us believe. A lot of current evangelical Christian theology is based on Victorian hymnology, I’m afraid! Just read this excellent article by Johann Hari:
http://www.independent.co.uk/o.....49399.html
“He’s making it up as he goes along!”
April 24th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
OK so now I’m confused. Is Islam evil? Is Franklin Graham evil? Or,maybe……..?
April 24th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
Bjohn, this should get you started: http://www.usatoday.com/news/r.....htm?csp=34
I found a website that has transcripts of the Nixon tapes, and they have conversations regarding Graham, but none of the actual conversations between Nixon and Graham. Being that it was thirty plus years ago there could be some fault with my memory, so I can neither confirm nor deny. But, the link above provides all the information needed to confirm every syllable of what Hitchens said about him.
Additionally, the idea of a christian calling islam “evil” has either achieved the epitomy of hypocrisy, or has never opened a history book.
NeoWolfe
April 25th, 2010 at 8:40 am
I don’t know what you mean, NeoWolfe. Those comments are actually quite tame compared to the ones in the link that I gave above – which were made public much earlier. And if you can’t be sure of your facts you shouldn’t make such dogmatic assertions!
April 25th, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I find this report nauseating!
http://www.swamppolitics.com/n.....g_tod.html
“Rev. Graham has obviously been an important spiritual leader for past presidents and for the American people for decades,” said Bill Burton, a White House spokesman. “He’s a real treasure for our country. The president apprecites the opportunity to visit him at his home… ounds like (Graham’s health is) pretty good. Sounds like he’s got some of the creaks that come with advancing age bu the’s still as sharp as he ever was…
“If’s a fair guess that they’ll pray together,” Burton said before the meeting. And pray, they did, Burton said after the meeting, reporting that Obama was extraordinarily gratified to have had the chance for their meeting. It lasted about a half-hour.