FLASHBACK: Graham's inaugural role opposed

Graham's inaugural role opposed

Christian Century, Jan 20, 1993

A group of antiabortion activists has called on Billy Graham not to participate in the inauguration of Bill Clinton as president. Leaders of the group, many of them associated with Operation Rescue and the Christian Action Council--an organization that Graham helped form in 1975--said they would flood the evangelist's Minneapolis headquarters with letters and phone calls demanding that he refuse to pray for Clinton. They also planned a prayer vigil in front of Graham's headquarters.

Sometimes known as the "pastor to presidents," Graham is a virtual fixture at many celebrations of the American civil religion, including the swearing-in of a new president. But the antiabortion leaders are outraged by Clinton's support for legal abortion and, according to Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, consider the teaching that abortion is permissible a "heresy." In a letter to Graham, Mahoney and Bill Devlin, executive director of the Christian Action Council of Philadelphia, said that the evangelist's praying at the inauguration "will be far worse than indifference and compromise; it will be taken as a positive endorsement of Mr. Clinton's anti-Christian agenda."

"Bill Clinton ran for office as an outspoken advocate of abortion on demand and legitimized homosexuality," the letter maintained. "Of course, we realize that other presidents have been endorsed by church leaders who might not have held biblical positions on all issues," the letter continued. "But never in recent history has a presidential candidate with such an explicitly unbiblical platform been elected to our nation's highest office." the letter was signed by some 25 antiabortion activists, most of them involved in grass-roots "rescue"--clinic blockade and sit-in--activities. Missing from the letter, however, were the names of many of the major leaders in the movement, including officials from the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Association of Evangelicals and the national office of the Christian Action Council.

Mahoney and Devlin told a news conference they were "saddened and bewildered" by Graham's acceptance of the invitation to pray at the inauguration. Devlin called Graham's decision a "great embarrassment for all who call themselves evangelical Protestants." Noting that the evangelist had helped form the Christian Action Coalition in 1975 as a Protestant response to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing most abortions, Devlin said, "We call upon him to follow the gospel of Christ which means to speak for the |least of these,' our unborn children."


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1058/is_/ai_13375025

:sarcasm

felt that by Graham giving the invocation (twice) at Clinton's inauguration, it was an endorsement by Graham of Clinton's "pro-choice, pro-homosexual agenda." I wonder if the religious-Reich will take the same stand on Warren?