Franklin Graham followed in his father Billy’s footsteps, but took a right-leaning path
The Rev. Billy Graham became known as "America’s pastor" by refusing to pick a political side while reaching out to other religious leaders and invoking “the Lord” rather than Jesus.
But his son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, isn’t practicing what his father preached
While the elder Graham, who died Wednesday at age 99, prayed with both Democratic and Republican presidents, Franklin Graham has aligned himself with archconservative Republicans and is squarely in President Donald Trump’s corner.
Franklin Graham even took a page from Trump and coyly questioned whether President Barack Obama was a Christian, although he later apologized for doing so.
Billy Graham largely left the culture wars to combative conservative evangelicals like James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, his son has not hesitated to level hell fire against gay people, tarring them as sinners and followers of Satan.
Both Grahams opposed homosexuality, but while Billy Graham was apologetic after he suggested in 1993 that AIDS was "a judgment of God" and afterward largely steered clear of the subject, Franklin has not held his tongue.
Billy Graham was, for the most part, respectful of other religions — although he did face criticism after a Nixon Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman's posthumously published diaries in 1994 quoted Graham from 1972 as saying that "satanic Jews" dominated the news media. After first denying the quotes, Graham apologized in 2002 when audio surfaced, and said his remarks did "not reflect my love for the Jewish people."
His son meanwhile has flat out called Islam “evil and very wicked."
“He was a remarkable reassuring pastoral presence,” Jon Meacham, a presidential historian and MSNBC contributor, said. “He was an evangelical but not a fundamentalist.”
To other experts, what Franklin Graham represents is a return to the harsher old time religion that his father did not push, one that excludes non-Christians and insisted that salvation was only for those who accepted Jesus as their savior.
“Billy Graham made a conscious decision early in his career to forsake the narrow and constrictive fundamentalism of his childhood,” said Randall Balmer, who chairs the Department of Religion at Dartmouth University, in New Hampshire. “I think Franklin Graham has done the opposite. He has chosen to be a fundamentalist and with a militancy that his father never displayed.”
Franklin Graham, as a young man, rebelled against his father before returning to the fold, Balmer noted.
“I think people who do that kind of thing tend to be more conservative and more willing to impose strictures on both themselves and on others,” Balmer said.
Also, Franklin Graham’s ascent coincided with the rise of the so-called "Moral Majority" and the migration of evangelicals from the Democratic party to the GOP.
“His father actually warned against the politicization of evangelicals,” Balmer said. “But Franklin has jumped in feet first.”
