Taxing Churches? The GOP Did It... By Accident

Why did Donald J Trump sign a bill to tax churches 21%

Academic, seminarian and monk, Mike Hertsenstein, shook up the evangelical world this week with a lost passage from an infamous Nixon tape. "Bill Graham can be heard," he wrote, "defending anti-Jewish conspiracies and admitting Hitler was right about some things to President Richard Nixon on a newly-released portion of an infamous Oval Office tape. The long-censored passage of the 1972 conversation confirms certain comments reported hitherto only second-hand, and adds to the historical record shocking new words and beliefs of the evangelist, whose legacy had already been damaged by the earlier, redacted releases of the tape.

During “the Latter Days,” Graham is heard to say, Jews will be divided into the “Remnant of God’s People” and “the Synagogue of Satan.” The second group consists of those Jews in league with the devil, Graham says, who “have a strange brilliance about them” and are behind “all your religious deceptions.”

Nixon’s ranting against Jewish “domination” of media is by now old news, so also Graham’s fervent assent, and the evangelist’s already-disturbing contributions to this discussion. Graham has been long known to have warned Nixon to break the “stranglehold” of Jewish influence. But that comment takes on even darker tones in context with the new material, a bizarre speech that climaxes with references to Nazi Germany. “You see,” the evangelist explains to Nixon, summing up their exchange about Jewish influence, "Hitler of course… they had a stranglehold on Germany. On the banking of Germany, on everything in Germany. And the media. They have the whole thing, you see. But he went about it wrong…"

...Hearing America’s one-time beloved “pastor,” a regular atop “most-admired” lists, speak from beyond the grave of evil Jewish conspiracies also comes at a particularly fraught moment for such a revelation. The late evangelist’s traditional constituency has become associated with movements that threaten to mainstream once-repudiated prejudices against out-groups, including Jews. Even more critically, leadership for such radical views feature the current President of the United States and Billy Graham’s own evangelist son.

...Graham confessed "[the Jews] swarm around me and are friendly to me because they know that I’m friendly with Israel. But they don’t know how I really feel about what they are doing to this country. And I have no power, no way to handle them, but I would stand up if under proper circumstances."

This may be an inconvenient time for this to have come out in light of Congress accidentally having embroiled itself in a debate about taxing churches by having rushed through the Republican tax scam through both houses of Congress without anyone having had time to read it thoroughly. (And, of course, Trump can't read and just looks at pictures, but signed it anyway... with a clauses that taxes churches.)

First off, it's worth mention-- because the McClatchey report certainly doesn't-- that there are people who believe churches, especially churches that operate as businesses, should be taxed, just like any other business. But that isn't want the GOP stumbled into. Emma Dumain reported that the GOP tax scam "accidentally" included a 21% tax on the value of certain employee benefits and that Jim Clyburn (D-SC) is rallying Democrats around new legislation to repeal the provision.

e can’t do it without help from Republicans, and calling their tax bill the “GOP tax scam” isn’t going to win over lawmakers who are fiercely protective of this congressional session’s biggest legislative achievement.

“(Democrats and Republicans) are describing the problem in very different ways,” said Galen Carey, vice president of government relations for the National Association of Evangelicals. “One side is saying ‘this is an oversight,’ the other is calling it Republicans’ war on religion … overheated rhetoric probably won’t help us get a solution.”

Short of legislative action, a public relations nightmare could be awaiting lawmakers who voted for the tax bill back home.

“This is an issue that will not go away,” said Dan Busby, president of the Evangelical Council for Fiscal Accountability. “When you stir up 100,000 houses of worship, and then hundreds of thousands of nonprofits on top of that, you have a pretty mighty force that is going to get attention on this issue.”

Tucked away in the new tax law congressional Republicans passed late last year with no Democratic support is a provision slapping certain nonprofits and charities, including houses of worship, with a 21 percent tax on the value of some employee benefits.

The expectation is the tax would relate to parking spaces and public transit passes. But those affected by the provision are genuinely unsure what exactly would qualify as a taxable expense because they still haven’t received official guidance from the Treasury Department.

“Treasury is aware of the change... and we have been talking to the impacted constituencies about the concern,” said a Treasury spokesperson in a statement to McClatchy. “We are working to address the issue and provide clarity for taxpayers.”

The new tax on the value of employee benefits means that many institutions are going to have to prepare tax forms for the very first time-- a convoluted and potentially costly exercise.

“Most churches do not have the sophistication that’s necessary to deal with the tax code,” Clyburn told McClatchy. “Small churches that exist in communities I represent... don’t operate as businesses. They’ve never operated as businesses.” Churches also help pay for transportation expenses for employees who would might otherwise have a tough time paying for it themselves. If institutions had to pay a tax on providing these perks, they might rescind them, Clyburn suggested.

The new requirement was not discussed in the lead-up to passage of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” and has since caught virtually everyone off guard, even members of Congress.

“Had we had hearings, I can assure you I would have been testifying or screaming,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) a United Methodist pastor.

Clyburn said he had only just learned about the provision from faith leaders in his district when he received a phone call from Rep. Mark Veasey( D-TX) who described being “accosted” by ministers at an event in his district.

Clyburn’s bill currently has 31 co-sponsors, including Cleaver and Veasey. All are Democrats and predominantly fellow members of the Congressional Black Caucus who tend to have strong ties to churches.

Referring to the Republican tax bill as the “GOP tax scam” in a press release announcing the introduction of his bill, Clyburn said he’d be glad to work with GOP lawmakers to repeal the 21 percent tax, but had not talked to any yet.

When asked how he might reconcile calling the tax bill a scam with his desire to work across the aisle, Clyburn chuckled.

“They know it’s a scam,” he said.

Republicans’ appetite to act seems tepid. As Republicans looked for ways to cut costs in their bill late last year, they decided to eliminate tax breaks for employers of for-profits who hand out perks to their employees. They decided to apply the same standard for nonprofits, too.

Legislative tax-writers were reluctant this week to pan the provision or suggest there could be adverse effects.

“People call it a tax on churches and charities. There is no tax on churches and charities,” said Rep. Tom Rice (R-SC). “What we’ve said is, ‘We’re trying to make things fair across the board. So organizations-- all organizations, for-profit, nonprofit, everybody that gives their employees free stuff, we’re trying to make it equal.’”

Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) was noncommittal, saying, “I do think it’s something that at the very least requires the committee’s consideration.”


...Though the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation did not provide a revenue estimate for this provision, it calculated the cost of the policy as part of a larger estimate for the “repeal deduction for qualified transportation fringes, including commuting.” That came out to $17.7 billion over 10 years.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in April the entire tax bill would cost $1.9 trillion over the time same frame.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Well, I waited and I waited but I didn't see any mention in the TV coverage of the recent death of the Rev. Billy Graham about his nasty streak of anti-Semitism. Print media, yes, but not on TV. In his life, Graham talked a good game about support for Israel just as many in the far right do, but that was just his contrived public persona. His real feelings came out in the Nixon tapes. I even thought (tongue in cheek) that maybe some of the more notorious rightwing media might have pointed to Graham's anti-Semitsm as a positive or endearing aspect of who the man was. Anyway, put in this context, it didn't surprise me at all that when I turned on my TV Wednesday morning, there was our neo-Nazi president extolling the "virtues" of the great charlatan on way too many channels. Man, they sure do have some sort of mutual admiration club for these assclowns, don't they?

I do give Graham some credit. Unlike his idiot son, Franklin, he built himself out of nothing. He was a throwback, 19th century patent medicine salesman who started in the streets. He worked his con in the 20th century and made it into the 21st. He built a business based on thin air and got so much respect that he could worm his way into the oval offices of several presidents. His patent medicine was the elixir of eternal life delivered in the usual wrappings of "If you let us screw you in this life, you'll be rewarded in the next with an all expenses paid stay in God's own glorious pearly-gated community." It's been done before and it will, for sure, be done again. Graham was a P.T. Barnum of Jesus and he mastered the nexus of money, power, and a misplaced need to believe in something. Graham was so successful and popular with the American public that politicians of all stripes wanted to suck up to him for some of his vote magic. It's all pretty perverse if you think about it.

It seems that only President Truman, naturally, was inclined to look at Billy Graham and call BS when, in 1950, Graham held a prayer meeting on the White House lawn that Truman saw as nothing more than a publicity stunt to promote Bill Graham, not Christianity. Truman's word for Graham was "counterfeit." More tellingly about Graham's character, he spoke at the inauguration of Richard Nixon, saying:

We recognize, O Lord, that in thy sovereignty thou has permitted Richard Nixon to lead us at this momentous moment of our history.

Yeah. Right. God chose Tricky Dick Nixon to be our leader. He even urged Nixon to pursue a strategy of bombing dykes in Vietnam, a strategy that would have drowned and starved up to 1,000,000 Vietnamese. Swell guy. I suppose Graham's god loves genocide.

To Graham and his followers, of course, God chose a virulent anti-Semite and racist crazy man to lead us. This is not unlike the same crap his son and others say about the current goon in the oval office. Burn In Hell, Bill Graham. There'll be no R.I.P. coming form me, but at least I can thank you, Billy, for dying on my birthday. That was an extra special present. B.I.H.

We're Still Not A Theocracy

Earlier today, Frank Schaeffer, whose dad, Francis Schaeffer, was one of the founders of the Religious Right, reminded his readers that this country was never meant to be a theocracy and still isn't. Odd that he had to say so-- but today was the day it needed to be done. "For seven hours today," he wrote, "the remains of the evangelist Billy Graham will lie in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. Why? Billy was a family friend but this is not appropriate. We aren’t Iran. We aren’t a theocracy. Watch Franklin Graham and Mike Pence strike a blow for further establishing of a homophobic white nationalist American theocracy this week by abusing the Billy Graham funeral/lying in state hoopla. And Trump will try to get in on the afterglow too."

The Religious Right is set to hijack Billy’s remains as his own son Franklin has long since planned to do.

I first met Billy Graham when I was nine. He visited my parents’ home and spent the day with us. I sat next to him and his then nine-year-old son Franklin, as they listened to my father preach in our living room that doubled as our chapel at my parents’ evangelical mission of L’Abri” (the shelter) in Switzerland.

I last saw Billy in the early 1980s when I was with my evangelist father Francis Schaeffer (“credited” as one of the founders of the religious right) who was undergoing treatment at Mayo Clinic. Billy, Dad and I met several times there when Billy was visiting for his checkups.

It seems to me that Billy died in the very year that the subculture of white evangelicalism he helped create has committed suicide by continuing to support Trump. And the double irony is Billy’s son Franklin has led what might now be called the Trump Crusade, not for Christ, but for power.

Trump’s most vocal evangelical supporter is Franklin Graham. Admired among far right white evangelicals, Franklin has defended Trump on television and social media through the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, the crackdowns on immigrants and refugees, the Stormy Daniels scandal, and the slur against Haiti and Africa.

When Barack Obama was president, Franklin Graham was part of the “birther” conspiracy that claimed the president was not an American citizen. He lied suggesting that Obama was not a Christian and might secretly be a Muslim.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Franklin held rallies in 50 states to pump up evangelical turnout on what he called a “Decision America Tour.”

There’s a bizarre symmetry here: To get elected Trump held Graham-like mass “evangelistic” rallies and led white Christians to deny the faith Billy Graham had once preached. They denied Graham’s Jesus for the sake of accepting earthly and utterly corrupting power as their new “personal savior.”

Trump becoming president may turn out to be the lasting Billy Graham legacy. Graham’s funeral in North Carolina on Friday, which Trump will attend, will serve as a reminder of nothing so much as how the evangelical movement has mutated and splintered from one generation to the next. And sadly Billy fused his faith message with 1950s American anti-communism in ways that are still playing out today. As Anthea Butler writes in Religion dispatches (February 22, 2018 Billy Graham and the Gospel of American Nationalistic Christianity):

With Graham’s death, it’s time to reconsider how his promotion of a nationalistic version of Americanized Christianity has influenced evangelicals today. Graham’s proximity to the office of the presidency and government since the Eisenhower administration is part of why we see scenes of eager evangelicals embracing President Trump. It’s also responsible for a large cohort of evangelicals who are actively supporting Islamophobia, isolationism, and America first policies.

Billy Graham may have been “puffed” by William Randolph Hearst newspaper reporters in his first crusade in Los Angeles, but the more important event in Graham’s ministry was his Washington, D.C. crusade in 1952. It was there that he would begin what was part of his lifelong work: fusing Christianity and Americanism together to create a potent cocktail of Evangelical Christian Nationalism.

...Franklin Graham is cashing in on his parents’ deaths by making a shrine of their final resting place, and this was against his mother’s wishes. White evangelical Trump supporters don’t care about such niceties these days. They are into Franklin’s magical thinking-- that Trump is president because of God’s will, notwithstanding details like being a scum woman-abuser-- and no doubt think that Franklin is even more in touch with God’s will-- even in matters of where his mom wanted to be buried-- than the rest of us, let alone his mother.

Billy made magical thinking mainstream. He shaped a movement that then became as political as he was in his Nixon-supporting years and unlike Billy, never turned back. Full circle: Billy Graham sought to forge a movement that was distinct from the Southern racist fundamentalism of his day, yet that is precisely what today’s evangelicalism has become again.

Magical thinking isn’t a very good basis for policy or politics. “I believe Donald Trump is a good man,” Franklin Graham said on CNN, last month. “He did everything wrong as a candidate and he won, and I don’t understand it. Other than I think God put him there.”

Graham’s converts from the 1950s to 1990s (my generation, old, white, and tired) lined up to support not only Trump but Roy Moore. One of their very own, Sarah Huckabee, stands up every day and knowingly lies for Trump, covering for his multitude of sins on everything from racism to his lies about paying off porn stars, to abusing scores of women and denying that the Russians attacked our democracy to help get him elected.

Graham and the neo-evangelicals, as they called themselves, tried to create religious revival in the United States. Fifty years on what they got instead was Trump and Roy Moore, climate change deniers, white nationalism and the NRA’s lock on the party evangelicals uniquely empower.

Franklin Graham actually went to bat for the NRA. He blasted President Obama for his stand against military weapons being legal. Graham parroted the NRA/Gun-Lobby line in a Facebook post (January 6, 2016): “Your executive actions will do nothing to change this horrific problem. You can take all the guns in America and put them in a pile on the Mall in Washington DC, and those guns will stay there and will eventually rust and decay. Not one gun will crawl out of that pile and shoot or harm anyone. It takes a human being, and a human heart bent on evil, to pick up a gun, load it, and pull the trigger.”

Do evangelicalisms’ leaders remain interested in the spiritual at all these days as Billy Graham sincerely was? Or has their agenda become merely political? Trump is the answer to those questions.

The fatal arc of decline is clear. To use the biblical analogy of Saul, before he converted and took the name of Paul, holding the coats of the killers stoning St. Stephen to death, Graham’s son’s Franklin, is “holding Trump’s coat” while he stones American decency to death. Franklin even says this is God’s will.

Billy Graham’s veneer of pious civility is long gone from the white evangelical movement. It’s been replaced by Billy Graham’s own worst inner demons that he repented of after he’d become Nixon’s confidant. As he sat by Dad’s bedside Billy told Dad and me how he lamented supporting Nixon and never would “be political” again. The context of this conversation was when Billy was explaining to my father why he would not support Dad’s anti-abortion efforts.

Franklin never got the memo. The image of the white evangelicals these days is not of sinners repenting as they surge forward to the altar call while the hymn “Just as I Am” wafts over them, but rather of Nixon-type online trolls supporting gun rights by spreading vile lies about grieving high school students.

If Trump remains the defining bookend bracketing the Billy Graham era of white evangelical empowerment historians may judge Graham’s stated purpose to reach “the lost” for Christ as failed. His lasting significance may rather be understood as having contributed to the creation of a power-crazed movement that enabled an American tragedy.

Billy Graham Died

Ever watch the Last Kingdom? There's a dramatic scene towards the end of the second episode of the second season where Alexander Dreymon's character, Uhtred, the dashing heathen protagonist, dares the evil Abbot Eadred to "say it one more time and go meet the devil." She he does... and he does. Big deal that he killed a man of God, with big consequences, despite it being the arch-villain of the first couple of episodes of Season Two. I'm guessing that thou shalt not kill abbots was a big megillah back in the 9th Century.

Yesterday Billy Graham, who's been hectoring America for as long as I can recall-- not in the 9th Century, but definitely throughout the 20th-- died. No one killed Graham. Like Eadred, Graham was on the wrong side of history. His legacy is that evangelicals stand by while racial tensions and our planet get hot. "The world’s most famous evangelist let his apocalyptic anticipation of the coming kingdom of God blind him to the realities of living in this world." But my old friend in Asheville, Cecil Bothwell, wrote the obit for us:



Billy Graham And The Gospel Of Fear
by Cecil Bothwell

“We are selling the greatest product on earth. Why shouldn’t we promote it as effectively as we promote a bar of soap?”
- Billy Graham, Saturday Evening Post, 1963

Billy Graham was a preacher man equally intent on saving souls and soliciting financial support for his ministry. His success at the former is not subject to proof and his success at the latter is unrivaled. He preached to millions on every ice-free continent and led many to his chosen messiah.

When Graham succumbed to various ailments this week at the age of 99 he left behind an organization that is said to have touched more people than any other Christian ministry in history, with property, assets and a name-brand worth hundreds of millions. The address lists of contributors alone comprise a mother lode for the Billy Graham Evangelical Association, now headed by his son and namesake, William Franklin Graham, III.

Graham also left behind a United States government in which religion plays a far greater role than before he intruded into politics in the 1950s. The shift from secular governance to “In God We Trust” can be laid squarely at this minister’s feet.

Graham’s message was principally one of fear: fear of a wrathful god; fear of temptation; fear of communists and socialists; fear of unions; fear of Catholics; fear of homosexuals; fear of racial integration and above all, fear of death. But as a balm for such fears, he promised listeners eternal life, which he said was readily claimed through acceptance of Jesus Christ as one’s savior.

Furthermore, he assured listeners that God loved us so much that He created governments, the most blessed form being Western capitalist democracy. To make this point, he frequently quoted Romans 13, particularly the first two verses. In the New American Standard Version of the Bible, they read, “Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.”

The question of whether this was actually the recorded word of God or a rider inserted into the bill by Roman senators with rather more worldly aims never dimmed Graham’s insistence that all governments are the work of the Almighty. Almost perversely, he even endorsed the arrest of a woman who lofted a Christian banner during his Reagan-era visit to Moscow, opting for the crack-down of “divine” authority over the civil disobedience of a believer.

Governments, he reminded his Moscow listeners, do God’s work.

Based on that Biblical mandate for all governments, Graham stood in solid opposition to the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In his Letter from Birmingham Jail, all but addressed to Graham, King noted, “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal.’ … If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.”

Fear is the stock in trade of most evangelists, of course, comprising the necessary setup before the pitch. As historian William Martin explained in his 1991 account of Graham’s early sermons, “… even those whose personal lives seemed rich and fulfilling must live in a world filled with terror and threat. As a direct result of sinful humanity’s rebellion against God, our streets have become jungles of terror, mugging, rape, and death. Confusion reigns on campuses as never before. Political leaders live in constant fear of the assassin’s bullet. Racial tension seems certain to unleash titanic forces of hatred and violence. Communism threatens to eradicate freedom from the face of the earth. Small nations are getting the bomb, so that global war seems inevitable. High-speed objects, apparently guided by an unknown intelligence, are coming into our atmosphere for reasons no one understands. Clearly, all signs point to the end of the present world order.

“… Graham’s basic mode of preaching in these early years was assault. … Then, when he had his listeners mentally crouching in terror, aware that all the attractively labeled escape routes-- alcohol, sexual indulgence, riches, psychiatry, education, social-welfare programs, increased military might, the United Nations-- led ultimately to dead ends, he held out the only compass that pointed reliably to the straight and narrow path that leads to personal happiness and lasting peace.”

Columnist and former priest James Carroll had much the same take, noting that “Graham had his finger on the pulse of American fear, and in subsequent years, anti communism occupied the nation’s soul as an avowedly religious obsession. The Red scare at home, unabashed moves toward empire abroad, the phrase ‘under God’ inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance, the scapegoating of homosexuals as ‘security risks,’ an insane accumulation of nuclear weapons, suicidal wars against postcolonial insurgencies in Asia—a set of desperate choices indeed. Through it all, Billy Graham was the high priest of the American crusade, which is why U.S. presidents uniformly sought his blessing.”

While Carroll had most of that right, the record suggests that, over and over again, it was Graham who sought presidential blessing, rather than the other way around. Letters enshrined in the presidential and Graham libraries reveal a preacher endlessly seeking official audience. As Truman said, years after his presidency, “Well, I hadn’t ought to say this, but he’s one of those counterfeits I was telling you about. He claims he’s a friend of all the presidents, but he was never a friend of mine when I was president.”



Of course, politicians have often brandished fear as well, and the twin streams of fear-based politics and fear-based religion couldn’t have been more confluent. Communist infiltrators, missile gaps and the domino effect each took their turn, as did the Evil Empire and, more recently, Saddam, Osama bin Laden and an amorphous threat of global terrorism.

In light of the Biblical endorsement of rulers, Graham supported police repression of Vietnam war protesters and civil rights marchers, opposed Martin Luther King’s tactic of civil disobedience, supported South American despots, and publicly supported every war or intervention waged by the United States from Korea forward.

Born on a prosperous dairy farm and educated at Wheaton College, Graham first gained national attention in 1949 when the publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, searching for a spiritual icon to spread his anti-communist sentiments, discovered the young preacher holding forth at a Los Angeles tent meeting. Hearst wired his editors across the nation, “puff Graham,” and he was an instant sensation.

Hearst next contacted his friend and fellow publisher Henry Luce. Their Wall Street ally, Bernard Baruch, arranged a meeting between Luce and Graham while the preacher was staying with the segregationist Governor Strom Thurmond in the official mansion in Columbia, S.Car. Luce concurred with Hearst about Graham’s marketability and Time and Life were enlisted in the job of selling the soap of salvation to the world. Time, alone, has run more than 600 stories about Graham.

The man who would become known as “the minister to presidents” offered his first military advice in 1950. On June 25, North Korean troops invaded South Korea and Graham sent Truman a telegram. “MILLIONS OF CHRISTIANS PRAYING GOD GIVE YOU WISDOM IN THIS CRISIS. STRONGLY URGE SHOWDOWN WITH COMMUNISM NOW. MORE CHRISTIANS IN SOUTHERN KOREA PER CAPITA THAN ANY PART OF WORLD. WE CANNOT LET THEM DOWN.”

It was the first time Graham encouraged a president to go to war, and with characteristic hyperbole: Korea has never topped the list of Christian-leaning nations. Subsequently, Graham gave his blessing to every conflict under every president from Truman to the second Bush, and most of the presidents, pleased to enjoy public assurance of God’s approval, made him welcome in the White House. Graham excoriated Truman for firing General Douglas MacArthur and supported the general’s plan to invade China. He went so far as to urge Nixon to bomb dikes in Vietnam-- knowing that it would kill upward of a million civilians-- and he claimed to have sat on the sofa next to G.H.W. Bush as the bombs began falling in the first Gulf War (though Bush’s diary version of the evening somehow excludes Graham, as does a White House video of Bush during the attack).

According to Bush’s account, in a phone call the preceding week, Graham quoted poetry that compared the President to a messiah destined to save the world, and in the next breath called Saddam the Antichrist. Bush wrote that Graham suggested it was his historical mission to destroy Saddam.

Through the years, Graham’s politics earned him some strange bedfellows. He praised Senator Joseph McCarthy and supported his assault on Constitutional rights, then scolded the Senate for censuring McCarthy for his excesses. He befriended oil men and arms manufacturers. He defended Nixon after Watergate, right up to the disgraced president’s resignation, and faced public scorn when tapes were aired that exposed the foul-mouthed President as a schemer and plotter. Nixon’s chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, reported on Graham’s denigration of Jews in his posthumously published diary-- a claim Graham vehemently denied until released tapes undid him in 2002. Caught with his prejudicial pants down, Graham claimed ignorance of the hour-and-a-half long conversation in which he led the antisemite attack.

As reported by the Associated Press on March 2, 2002:

“Although I have no memory of the occasion, I deeply regret comments I apparently made in an Oval Office conversation with President Nixon . . . some 30 years ago,” Graham said in a statement released by his Texas public relations firm. “They do not reflect my views, and I sincerely apologize for any offense caused by the remarks.”“Although I have no memory of the occasion, I deeply regret comments I apparently made in an Oval Office conversation with President Nixon . . . some 30 years ago,” Graham said in a statement released by his Texas public relations firm. “They do not reflect my views, and I sincerely apologize for any offense caused by the remarks.”

Whether or not the comments reflect Graham’s views at the time or thirty years later, it is his defense that bears much closer scrutiny. What were we to make of a preacher who insisted that his words didn’t reflect his beliefs? Were we to believe him then or later, on other matters?

Graham was a political operative, reporting to Kennedy on purported communist insurgencies in Latin America, turning over lists of activist Christians to the Republican party, conferring regularly with J. Edgar Hoover and networking with the CIA in South America and Vietnam. He was even assigned by Nixon’s operatives to talk George Wallace out of a second run for the White House.

To accomplish the latter, he phoned Wallace as he was coming out of an anesthetic stupor after one of his numerous post-assassination-attempt surgeries. While the long suffering gunshot victim asked the minister to pray for him, the minister asked him not to make a third-party bid for the presidency. “I won’t do anything to help McGovern,” Wallace replied.

There are many who would argue that the good that Graham did outweighs whatever political intrigue he embraced, and even the several wars he enthusiastically endorsed. To the extent that bringing people to Christ is of benefit to them, an untestable hypothesis, he was successful with his calls to come forward. He accrued hundreds of millions of dollars which were used to extend his ministry and thereby bring more people to “be saved,” which is self-justifying but fails as evidence of goodness.

If Christian beliefs about the hereafter prove correct, we will all presumably discover what good he accomplished, or what chance for salvation we missed, in the sweet by and by.

In talking to one of his biographers, Graham recalled his mood during his fire and brimstone declamations, “I would feel as though I had a sword, a rapier, in my hand, and I would be slashing deeper and deeper into the consciences of the people before me, cutting away straight to their very souls.”

In that regard, Graham’s largest and most lasting monument is a highway cut through Beaucatcher Mountain, blasted through a majestic land form that once bisected Asheville, N.Car. He helped convince recalcitrant landowners to permit the excavation and construction through the cut of the short stretch of Interstate highway subsequently named the Billy Graham Freeway.

Downwind residents report that the weather has permanently shifted due to the gaping mountain maw and the future of the highway that transects the city continues to be one of the most divisive issues in that southern metropolis.

“Straight to their very souls,” indeed.

In every way, Graham was the spiritual father of today’s right-wing religious leaders who so inhabit the national conversation. If he cloaked his suasion in public neutrality it was the hallmark of an era in which such intrusion was deemed unseemly. If today’s practitioners are less abashed, it is in many ways reflective of the secure foundation Graham built within Republican and conservative circles.

Graham endorsed and courted Eisenhower and compared a militaristic State of the Union speech to the Sermon on the Mount, fanned anti-Catholic flames in the Nixon-Kennedy contest, backed Johnson and then Nixon in Vietnam, lobbied for arms sales to Saudi Arabia during the Reagan years, conveyed foreign threats and entreaties for Clinton and lent his imprimateur to G.W. Bush as he declared war on terrorism from the pulpit of the National Cathedral.

Billy Graham approved of warriors and war, weapons of mass destruction (in white, Christian hands) and covert operations. He publicly declaimed the righteousness of battle with enemies of American capitalism, abetted genocide in oil-rich Ecuador and surrounds and endorsed castration as punishment for rapists. A terrible swift sword for certain, and effective no doubt, but not much there in the way of turning the other cheek.

Graham will be cordially remembered by those who found solace in his golden promises and happy homilies, but the worldly blowback from his ministry is playing out in Iraq and Afghanistan, Chechnya and Korea, the Phillipines and Colombia-- everywhere governments threaten human rights and pie in the sky is offered in lieu of daily bread.

In the words of  Graham’s ministerial and secular adversary, Dr. King, “I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

Farewell Reverend Graham. Let justice roll.