Not long after his death last week at the age of 99, it was announced that evangelist Billy Graham would lie in state in the U.S. capitol rotunda, an honor that's never been accorded a religious figure, not even the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One could easily argue that Dr. King was a more worthy, impactful figure to have that honor bestowed upon, but why bestow it on any religious figure in a nation that is supposed to enforce the separation of church and state?
The "why" can best be understood by looking at the governing Rethuglican / New Confederate / Shooter's Party and seeing the way they've harnessed the evangelical right over the last 40 years. Rethuglican social policies are dictated by the most extreme fundamentalists in the evangelical movement (consider Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and son, and Graham's own extremist son Franklin). Billy Graham was in some ways a founding father of the alliance of the Rethuglican Party and evangelical conservatism, starting with his close identification with Richard Nixon, although he at times voiced opposition to his movement aligning with a President or party.
His extremist son Franklin "Graham Crackers" Graham has no such hesitation, and has vigorously identified with the most right-wing political elements of Trumpism:
"But almost two decades ago, Graham handed over the keys of the empire to his son, Franklin. And if you want to chart the troubled recent course of American evangelicalism—its powerful rise after World War II and its surprisingly quick demise in recent years—you need look no further than this father-and-son duo of Billy and Franklin Graham. The father was a powerful evangelist who turned evangelicalism into the dominant spiritual impulse in modern America. His son is—not to put too fine a point on it—a political hack, one who is rapidly rebranding evangelicalism as a belief system marked not by faith, hope, and love but by fear of Muslims and homophobia....Franklin Graham is a very different sort of man, better known today for his right-wing political pronouncements than for his evangelism. Shortly after 9/11, Franklin Graham provided the sound bite of today’s culture wars when he denounced Islam as 'a very wicked and evil religion.' He later became the standard bearer for the view that Islam is, in his words 'a religion of hatred . . . a religion of war.'So when we see Billy Graham's coffin under the U.S. Capitol rotunda, we see the hand of his son Franklin, his fellow theocrats, and the Rethuglican politicos that are beholden to him and the corrupted pseudo-Christian political movement that they represent.
In addition to purveying the birther nonsense that helped to propel Donald Trump to political prominence, Franklin Graham suggested that President Barack Obama was not a Christian and might in fact be a secret Muslim. Along with Jerry Falwell’s son, Jerry Falwell Jr., he helped to elect Trump president by swinging 80 percent of white evangelical voters to his side. And then when Trump was elected he attributed his victory not to a surge of White Christian support or to swing states in the Midwest but to divine providence." (emphasis added)
(hat tip to friend and reader P.E.C.)
