Trump blasts Christianity Today magazine
Trump blasts Christianity Today magazine
By Julio Severo
Donald Trump lashed out at a prominent evangelical Christian magazine on December 20, 2019 and praised the son of its founder, the legendary evangelist Billy Graham, for saying his father voted for the president before his death.
Trump said Christianity Today, founded in 1956, has become a far-left magazine. The magazine’s top editor wrote in an editorial published on December 19, 2019 that Trump should be removed from office.
“Thank you to Franklin Graham for stating that his father, the late great Billy Graham, voted for me in the 2016 Election. I know how pleased you are with the work we have all done together!” said Trump.
Billy Graham, the famed evangelical preacher, died in 2018. Franklin Graham disclosed his father’s pro-Trump vote in a Facebook post.
Trump noted that Christianity Today is no longer affiliated with the Graham ministries. He suggested the magazine is “looking for those of the socialist/communist bent, to guard their religion.” He also said that they “would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President.”
“The fact is, no President has ever done what I have done for Evangelicals, or religion itself!” he claimed.
Rev. Billy Graham was noted for counseling past presidents. He counseled both right-wing and left-wing presidents. His son wrote on Facebook that his father “knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump. He believed that Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.”
“For Christianity Today to side with the Democrat Party in a totally partisan attack on the President of the United States is unfathomable,” the younger Graham added, cataloging some of Trump’s policy achievements.
“The list of accomplishments is long, but for me as a Christian, the fact that he is the most pro-life president in modern history is extremely important — and Christianity Today wants us to ignore that, to say it doesn’t count?” he asked.
The attack from Christianity Today came one day after the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed two articles of impeachment against Trump. Democrats want to impeach Trump because he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate the corruption and money laundering of Democrats in Ukraine since the 2014 coup orchestrated by Barack Obama, George Soros and neocons that overthrew the pro-Russian president in Ukraine and replaced him with a president favorable to the corruption of Democrats.
The attack from Christianity Today is among the most public Trump condemnations from Christian media since the 2016 campaign.
The Pew Research Center reports that 77 percent of white evangelical Protestants approve of Trump’s presidency. Yet some actions of his administration have caused confusion among evangelicals. Even though he has been a pro-life champion — except in cases of babies conceived in rape —, Trump has not only appointed pro-homosexuality judges, but, just as Obama did, his administration has also meddled in foreign affairs and rebuked Christian nations that ban homosexuality.
However, Trump’s progressive stance on homosexuality is hardly a problem for Christianity Today, which has the same progressive stance.
Christianity Today mentioned many “problematic” issues of Trump, but strangely it mentioned nothing about homosexuality — probably because it saw no problem in this issue. It was the only issue where Christianity Today exempted Trump.
I was not so lucky. In 2009, Christianity Today, in its Brazilian edition called “Cristianismo Hoje,” published a long interview with me, and they saw a lot of problems in my Christian stance against the gay ideology.
My interview with the Brazilian version of Christianity Today was published in its printed magazine and on its website. You can, if you read Portuguese, see it here in Cristianismo Hoje. Because Christianity Today edited important points of my interview, you can also read it, in Portuguese, in full here in my Brazilian blog.
In one of the points of the interview, the Brazilian Christianity Today said,
Severo is one of those quixotic evangelicals, willing to fight mills that maybe only he can see. In his words, even the Brazilian government would be interested in asking for his deportation because of the criticism of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “The president makes an uncompromising defense of homosexuality and abortion. How much is left for us to consider Lula and his administration as possessed? It is destroying morality and honesty of society,” he says. The histrionic tone gives Julio Severo’s profile an incendiary outline that he makes a point of feeding, not just when he speaks of homosexuality. He defends, for example, the right of evangelical parents to homeschool their children (a practice prohibited by Brazilian law) as a way of keeping them safe from the school’s allegedly harmful influences.
Lula was the Brazilian counterpart of Obama and a friend of Obama. Even though Christianity Today portrayed me as a “quixotic” evangelical — a reference to Don Quixote, who saw imaginary threats —, the homosexualist threat is far away from being imaginary.
Fortunately, U.S. conservative evangelicals have shown more respect for my work. WND has published several interviews with me for over one decade and The Religion and Society Report, of the late theologian Harold Brown, published a long essay by me in 2006 titled “Behind The Homosexual Tsunami in Brazil,” detailing the non-imaginary threats of the Lula administration in Brazil.
Like the U.S. Christianity Today, the Brazilian Christianity Today sees only left-wing Protestants and non-Protestants as realistic, down-to-earth, practical and serious.
Originally, Billy Graham founded Christianity Today in the 1950s to counter left-wing Protestant magazines. But the progressive virus is so powerful that Christianity Today was infected. This infection has spread, through the U.S. Christianity Today, to other nations, including Brazil, which has its Christianity Today as spiritually rotten as the original.
I am glad that at last Christianity Today has been exposed by what it is now: Far left. And it was exposed by Franklin Graham, a man who has all authority to say what he said about the far-left magazine. I am glad also that Christianity Today, which aligns itself with left-wing politicians, has attacked Trump. This shows that Trump is in the right way.
Yet, I am sad that the same far-left Christianity Today that saw a lot of problems in my Christian stance against the homosexual ideology saw no problem with Trump’s stance on homosexuality.
Different from Christianity Today that criticized everything about Trump, except his stance on homosexuality, I praise his pro-life record, but I decry the insistence of his administration to keep pressing Christian nations in Africa to embrace sodomy.
Trump has been cowardly attacked by Christianity Today. As an evangelical who has also been cowardly treated by Christianity Today, I would like to offer my humble evangelical advice for Trump to change course on the gay ideology.
I would never offer advice to Obama and Lula, because in their socialism they would reject them. But, if given an opportunity, I would offer them to Trump, because he is not closed to evangelicals.
Or Trump could listen to Franklin Graham. In a cover story of Decision, the official magazine published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Franklin praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for passing a law protecting children and teens against homosexual propaganda. He also decried the efforts of Obama to attack Russian for its protective law.
If I could offer an advice to Trump, it would be exactly what Franklin said in defense of the Russian law protecting children and teens.
As to Christianity Today, I have no advice, but just a question: is it too late for it to get rid of the progressive virus?