billyg2
918 capt<div>
</div><div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">promoted to 2nd on ayn rand and son trump, primary on cheerleader for VN</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-6-2023/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-april-6-2023/</a></font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">04.06.23 - 10:00AM</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Century Long PR Campaign to Connect Capitalism to Democracy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guest: Naomi Oreskes is professor of the history of science at Harvard University. Her books include, The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, and her latest with historian of science and technology <b>Erik Conway, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market.</b></font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">child labor pew sunoco NAM dupont paid for von mises and hayek to come to US u chic; the free mkt pjt blueprint (rewrite road to serfdom, milton does it; lect series wm volker fdn)</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">little hse on prarie</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">xian econ, norm v peale; <b>billy g</b>; $ sign of god favor (recycled the gospel? of wealth); commies are godless, thus god likes capitalism</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">hollywood no more grapes of wrath motion pix assoc w ayn rand; wrote censorship codes not crit bank rich ppl; [sinclair EPIC? ]; CoC</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">RR: ike ltr to bro sec secure ~ sm# and stupid; GE NY (convicted rig elec mkt) , horatio alger, very pop pgm; RR sends the speech to nixon; libtard bk list ; RR unites social and fiscal conservatives? xian?</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">1929 ~ libtard</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" /></font></p><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></font></div><div><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-under-god-by-kevin-m-kruse.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/books/review/one-nation-under-god-by-kevin-m-kruse.html</a></div><div>
</div><div>kazin</div><div>
</div><div>Did you ever wonder how “In God We Trust” came to be quoted on every American coin and dollar bill? Or why the Pledge of Allegiance to the most revered symbol of the nation includes an explicit declaration of confidence in the Almighty? Or why the president and members of Congress host a National Prayer Breakfast the first Thursday of each February?</div><div>
</div><div>These now utterly commonplace markers of public piety were almost all created during the same decade — the 1950s. Their initial enthusiasts, as described by the Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse, were conservative Protestant ministers and businessmen who hoped Americans would not take their handiwork for granted. They believed the nation badly needed a religious awakening to reverse the depredations of a godless federal state.</div><div>
</div><div><b>“Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal,” asserted James W. Fifield Jr.,</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> an eloquent Congregationalist pastor from Los Angeles who, during the 1930s, created Spiritual Mobilization, a publicity offensive that joined megachurches like his with vocal, anti-liberal magnates like the Hollywood producer Cecil B. De Mille and J. Howard Pew Jr., the president of Sun Oil. </span>They all believed religiosity, if widely and officially deployed, would be a mighty weapon in the battle against collectivist liberals at home and Communists abroad. As their ally, Billy Graham, preached in 1951 at one of his ever popular crusades, Americans urgently needed to rededicate themselves to “the rugged individualism that Christ brought” to the world.</div><div>
</div><div>But a funny thing happened on the road to spiritual and political redemption. By the mid-1950s, officeholders and social activists from every point on the ideological spectrum had signed on to the same righteous platform. In 1952, just before moving into the White House, Dwight Eisenhower (who was named after Dwight Moody, the renowned Gilded Age evangelist) told a gathering at the Waldorf Astoria: “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” Only a hardened atheist could object to such an ecumenical bromide. Under Eisenhower, Kruse writes, “the state no longer seemed ‘pagan,’ .?.?. and liberals could present themselves as acting in accord with God’s will too.”<b> Two years later, when Congress agreed to add “one nation under God” to the Pledge, not even the American Civil Liberties Union objected</b>. One lone Jewish representative from Brooklyn, Abraham Multer, did argue that putting God’s name on the currency would not stimulate “one single person to be more religious.” But even he didn’t dare vote against the bill.</div><div>
</div><div>Faith-based conflict did not disappear from American politics, of course. During the 1960s and early 1970s, battles over religion in public life were fought with no less vigor and nastiness than those waged over civil rights, feminism and war. Kruse provides a deft narrative about the movement to overturn the Supreme Court’s ban on prayer and Bible readings in public schools,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> President Richard Nixon’s attempt to make approval of his Vietnam policy seem a sacred duty and the Republican Party’s wooing of white evangelicals. Only the last of those endeavors was successful.</span></div><div>
</div><div>In 1966, Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois spearheaded an aggressive campaign to add a Constitutional amendment permitting school prayer. “They teach the little children sex in the schools,” the Republican leader growled. “They teach them about Communism. They even teach them ballet! Why not God Almighty?” Opinion polls strongly favored his stand. But clergymen from a variety of faiths contended that encouraging children to pray violated the First Amendment and might confuse a faith in God with obedience to their teachers. The Dirksen amendment failed to receive the necessary two-thirds margin in the Senate.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The main event in Nixon’s pro-war religious revival took place on Independence Day in 1970. Billy Graham led a joint rally and prayer service at the Lincoln Memorial to “Honor America.” Graham assured the crowd of 15,000 — and a national television audience — that the Republic’s founding was “rooted in a book called the Bible”; Kate Smith belted out “God Bless America.” But several hundred chanting, mocking, underclad demonstrators managed to distract and anger the crowd, and the occasion did nothing to firm up support for the debacle in Indochina.</span></div><div>
</div><div>Despite the argument Kruse makes beginning with his subtitle, “corporate America” played no significant role in conceiving any of these initiatives — although the hotelier J. Willard Marriott did persuade fellow businessmen to finance Honor America Day. Devout lawmakers like Dirksen and preachers like Graham were quite capable of mustering a God-fearing constituency by themselves. And Graham was not the stalwart right-winger that Kruse, echoing many of his contemporary critics, describes. As Grant Wacker reveals in his excellent new biography of the man, “America’s pastor” admired and was as close to President Lyndon Johnson, an archliberal, as he was to the wily Republican who succeeded him.</div><div>
</div><div>Kruse tells a big and important story about the mingling of religiosity and politics since the 1930s. Still, he oversells his basic premise. Americans easily accepted placing God’s name on their currency and in the oath children recite every school day because similar invocations were already routine in public discourse — from the Declaration’s reference to the “unalienable Rights” endowed by the “Creator” to the official chaplains who have opened sessions of the House and Senate with a prayer since 1789. Following the attacks of 9/11, we’ve added the ubiquitous “God Bless America” to bumper stickers, to the ends of political speeches and to many a seventh-inning stretch. As features of what the sociologist Robert Bellah called “civil religion” (a term he borrowed from Rousseau), the familiarity of these practices comforts some without making particular demands on anyone else. Even back in the age of Eisenhower, the A.C.L.U. understood that. </div><div>
</div><div>In recent years, those who claim to have inside knowledge of what the Creator wants us to think and do have been more common on the right than on the left. Conservatives blasted President Obama for comparing, at this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, the people who “committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ” with those contemporary Muslims who slaughter in the name of Allah. No serious competitor for the 2016 Republican nomination would quarrel with Ronald Reagan’s 1984 statement that “as morality’s foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. .?.?. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we’ll be a nation gone under.”</div><div>
</div><div>But which leading progressive in American history would have disagreed with those sentiments? Surely not William Lloyd Garrison or Jane Addams or the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. As Kruse points out, Franklin Roosevelt, that alleged collectivist foe of God, sprinkled biblical references into many of his speeches. In his Second Inaugural Address, Roosevelt even “portrayed himself, rather unsubtly, as a modern-day Moses leading his people out of the wilderness.” In the United States, spiritual mobilization has long been anyone’s game.</div><div>
</div><div>For that very reason, the presence of four little words of reverence on the currency is quite unremarkable. I doubt any of the long-dead white men whose portraits appear along with the words would have found them objectionable. They may, however, have wondered why they were necessary.</div><div>
</div><div>ONE NATION UNDER GOD</div><div>
</div><div>How Corporate America Invented Christian America</div><div>
</div><div>By Kevin M. Kruse</div><div>
</div><div>Illustrated. 352 pp. Basic Books. $29.99.</div><div>
</div><div>Michael Kazin teaches history at Georgetown University and is a co-editor of Dissent. His most recent book is “American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.”</div><div>
</div><div>
</div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/1501238213">https://www.amazon.com/One-Nation-Under-God-Corporate/dp/1501238213</a></div><div>
</div><div>k kruse</div><div>One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America</div><div></div><div><a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162368">https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162368</a></div><div> briley</div><div>
</div><div> 2016 annual meeting for the Organization of American Historians (OAH) will feature a session focusing upon the provocative book One Nation Under God by Princeton history professor Keven M. Kruse. In One Nation Under God, Kruse argues that the idea of the United States as a Christian nation does not find its origins with the founding of the United States or the writing of the Constitution. Rather, the notion of America as specifically consecrated by God to be a beacon for liberty was the work of corporate and religious figures opposed to New Deal statism and interference with free enterprise. The political conflict found in this concept of Christian libertarianism was modified by President Dwight Eisenhower who advocated a more civic religion of “one nation under God” to which both liberals and conservatives might subscribe. </div><div>
</div><div>Kruse concludes that with the polarization of America in the 1960s over such issues such as school prayer and the war in Vietnam, politicians such as Richard Nixon abandoned the more inclusive civic religion of the Eisenhower era. Kruse writes that by the 1970s “the rhetoric of ‘one nation under God’ no longer brought Americans together; it only reminded them how divided they had become” (274). Arguing that public religion is a modern invention that has little to do with America’s origins, Kruse maintains that contemporary political discourse needs to better recognize the political ideology being perpetuated by the advocates of America as a Christian nation. Needless to say, Kruse’s arguments will antagonize many on the Christian right, as well as many on the left who have employed Christianity as the means through which to implement principles of equality and opportunity as extolled by Jesus of Nazareth, the working-class carpenter.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Drawing upon extensive archival research, the first part of Kruse’s book documents the alliance between religious leaders such as Congregationalist minister James W. Fifield Jr. and businessman J. Howard Pew Jr., president of Sun Oil and a major figure with the National Association of Manufacturers. Working out of his affluent Los Angeles community and congregation, Fifield formed a national organization called Spiritual Mobilization that attracted the support of big business while embracing unfettered capitalist traditions threatened by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. </span>The fertile ground plowed by Spiritual Mobilization and Fifield prepared the way for the influential prayer breakfasts of Methodist minister Abraham Vereide and the crusades of evangelist Billy Graham. While the insecurities of the Cold War contributed to the growth of postwar religious fervor,<b> Kruse insists that the prayer movement and Graham “effectively harnessed Cold War anxieties for an already established campaign against the New Deal” (36).</b></div><div>
</div><div>The prayers of the Christian libertarians were answered with the ascendancy of Dwight Eisenhower to the Presidency. While Graham was given a cold shoulder by Harry Truman, the evangelist was welcomed to the White House by Eisenhower, who also supported the prayer breakfast movement bringing together Congressional leaders and members of the business community. While he lacked allegiance to any specific denomination, Eisenhower was a devout Christian who opened cabinet meetings with prayer. Kruse argues that the President endorsed a rather general sense of Christian principles that would unite the nation under a common understanding of its religious heritage. Thus, Eisenhower supported Congressional legislation that added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance while also embracing “In God We Trust” as the nation’s official motto that was included on the nation’s money supply. The Eisenhower administration also endorsed the National Association of Evangelicals call for a July 4, 1953 March of Freedom declaring that the American government was based upon Biblical principles. The concept of “One Nation Under God” was also championed in the popular culture by the creation of Disneyland and Cecil B. DeMille’s film epic The Ten Commandments (1956), while the National Council for Advertising championed Madison Avenue techniques that would bring the concept of God and free enterprise to all Americans on the local level.</div><div>
</div><div>Eisenhower’s rather vague notion of a Christian America, however, did not quite coincide with the ideology of Christian libertarianism. Instead, Kruse suggests that actions such as adding “under God” to the pledge were examples of ceremonial Deism; establishing the idea that the First Amendment mandated the separation of church and state but not the separation of religion and politics. Thus, general support for the sacred was acceptable, but not active government intervention that might advance a particular sect. In addition, Eisenhower did not move to dismantle the New Deal; accepting programs such as Social Security and expanding government activity with legislation such as the Interstate Highway Act. Kruse, writes, “Unlike Christian libertarians, who had long presented God and government as rivals, Eisenhower had managed to merge the two into a wholesome ‘government under God.’ In doing so, he ironically undercut the key segment of many of his earlier backers, making their old claims about the ‘pagan’ origins of statism seems suddenly obsolete” (87). Here, Kruse seems to imply Eisenhower had inadvertently sanctified the state and government. Therefore, to criticize the government was both anti-patriotic and anti-religious. This is a fascinating argument, with considerable implications for contemporary politics, but Kruse fails to tease out this idea before moving on to other issues.</div><div>
</div><div>Kruse maintains that the religious unity sought by Eisenhower was challenged in the late 1950s and the 1960s as various faiths worried that state advocacy of religion might trample on traditional beliefs and practices. One of the most contentious issues was school-mandated prayer which was deemed unconstitutional in the Engel v. Vitale (1962) decision. Nevertheless, in his majority opinion, Justice Hugo Black insisted that ceremonial Deism, such as prayer before Congressional sessions, chaplains in the military, and “under God” in the pledge, was protected. To the surprise of many church members, a number of religious leaders and the National Council of Churches came to support the prayer decision as a means through which to protect religious traditions from state interference. This approach, however, led to considerable division between leadership and laity; undermining the concept of “one nation under God.”</div><div>
</div><div>Seeking to mount a conservative movement against the religious establishment, evangelists such as Billy Graham joined forces with the administration of Richard Nixon to promote a religious perspective that would divide rather than unify Americans. Holding White House religious services officiated by leading evangelical ministers and sponsoring events such as the 1970 Fourth of July “Honor America Day,” featuring a religious service at the Lincoln Memorial led by Graham, Nixon attempted to employ religious nationalism as a means through which to brand those opposing his administration or the war in Vietnam as attacks upon American Christian values. Although Kruse includes an epilogue offering an overview of religion and American politics from the 1980s to the Obama Presidency, he assigns Nixon, rather than Ronald Reagan, primary responsibility for using religion to divide rather than bring Americans together.</div><div>
</div><div>One Nation under God is a provocative piece of historical scholarship that will be sure to engender considerable debate at the OAH. It is a work that will antagonize those on the political right who perceive American exceptionalism as a gift from God bestowed upon the framers of the Constitution, while those who embrace the opposing tradition of the social gospel and Christian socialism may also take offense. Religion has played an important role in American history, and some critics will make the case that Kruse downplays the role of the sacred in American life. However, Kruse makes a major scholarly contribution in his examination of how ministers cooperated with big business to formulate an ideology that the New Deal was a threat to traditional American Christian values of free enterprise and individualism while promoting the false pagan deity of statism. As Kruse moves into a discussions of ceremonial Deism with the Eisenhower administration and consideration of how Nixon employed religion to divide rather than unify, Kruse’s thesis regarding the role assigned to corporate America in creating a Christian America becomes somewhat lost, and this ambitious study may take on too much by attempting to survey the relationship between American politics and religion from the New Deal to the modern age. </div><div>
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</div><div>=</div></div></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;">he close relationship between American evangelicals and Russia has lately been <a href="https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/unexpected-relationship-between-us-evangelicals-and-russian-orthodox" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">discussed widely</a> <a href="https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2018/02/23/why-billy-graham-went-to-russia" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">in the news media</a>. In particular, the Justice Department <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/18/opinion/maria-butina-putin-infiltration.html" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">unsealed a criminal complaint</a> in July against a Russian woman, Maria Butina, for trying to use the National Prayer Breakfast, a star-studded affair, as a “back channel of communication” with prominent <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/how-russia-became-a-leader-of-the-worldwide-christian-right-214755" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">American religious and political leaders</a>.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;">Among them is Franklin Graham, son of the well-known evangelist, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-billy-grahams-legacy-lives-on-in-american-life-92229" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">Billy Graham</a>, and head of the influential <a href="https://billygraham.org/" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">Billy Graham Evangelistic Association</a>.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; line-height: 32px !important;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2015, Graham famously visited Russia, where he had a warm meeting with President Vladimir Putin. On that trip, Putin <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-republican-right-found-allies-in-russia/2017/04/30/e2d83ff6-29d3-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.bb42f0bd95a3" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">reportedly explained</a> that his mother had kept her Christian faith even under communist rule. Graham in turn <a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/franklin-graham-praises-gay-propaganda-law-critizes-us-secularism-in-russia-visit/" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">praised Putin</a> for his support of Orthodox Christianity, contrasting Russia’s “positive changes” with the rise of atheistic secularism in the U.S.</span></p><div style="font-family: Lato, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 20px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">But it was not always so. Once upon a time, American evangelicals saw the Soviet Union and other communist countries as the world’s greatest threat to their faith.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">They carried out dramatic and illegal activities, smuggling Bibles and other Christian literature across borders. And yet, today, Russia is their crucial ally.</p><h2 style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px;">Bible smuggling</h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">Starting in the 1950s, but intensifying in the 1970s and 1980s, U.S. and European evangelicals presented themselves as intimately linked to the Christians who were suffering at the hands of communist governments.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">One evangelical group that emerged at this time was <a href="https://www.opendoorsusa.org/" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">“Open Doors,”</a> whose main aim was to work for “persecuted Christians,” around the world. It was founded by <a href="https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1995/december11/5te045.html" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">“Brother Andrew” Vanderbijl</a>, a Dutch pastor who smuggled Bibles into the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">Brother Andrew and other evangelicals argued that what Christians in communist countries really needed was Bibles – an <a href="https://www.nae.net/evangelical-beliefs-research-definition/" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">evangelical view</a> of the centrality of personal Bible reading for the sustenance of the faithful. And Bibles were hard to come by. In 1978, Time magazine <a href="https://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947040,00.html" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">reported</a>,</p><blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">“A Christian’s chances of buying a Bible openly are currently good in Poland, erratic in East Germany, difficult in Czechoslovakia and Hungary…, extremely difficult in Rumania, virtually impossible in the Soviet Union and Bulgaria. Buying a Bible is an out-and-out crime in Albania.”</p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">He turned the smuggling into anti-communist political theater. As he headed toward the border in a specially outfitted vehicle with a hidden compartment that might hold as many as 3,000 Bibles, he prayed. According <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">to one ad</a> that ran in Christian magazines, he said:</p><blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">“Lord, in my luggage I have forbidden Scriptures that I want to take to your children across the border. When you were on earth, you made blind eyes see. Now I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see these things you do not want them to see.”</p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">Vanderbijl’s memoir, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Ssj2txmMyqgC&dq=God%27s+Smuggler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjEkK-K74jdAhVHhuAKHQDdALIQ6AEIOTAC" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">“God’s Smuggler,”</a> became a bestseller when it was published in 1967.</p><h2 style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; margin-top: 0px;">Taking Jesus to communist world</h2><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">By the early 1970s, there were more than 30 Protestant organizations engaged in some sort of literature smuggling, and there was an intense, sometimes quite nasty, competition between groups.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">Their work <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-kingdom-of-god-has-no-borders-9780190213428?cc=us&lang=en&" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">depended on their charismatic leaders</a>, who often used sensationalist approaches for fundraising.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">For example, in 1966, a Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Internal Security subcommittee, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1966/05/07/archives/cleric-tells-of-communist-torture.html" style="color: rgb(241, 96, 44); text-decoration-line: none;">stripped to the waist</a> and turned to display his deeply scarred back.</p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;">...</p></div></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">post helsinki</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/franklin-graham-tells-evangelicals-lay-president-trump-or-god-wont-be-happy">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/franklin-graham-tells-evangelicals-lay-president-trump-or-god-wont-be-happy</a></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">RS</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">In these same days, Putin himself was pursuing other angles of influence with the American right. The <b>Russian president met with right-wing pastor Franklin Graham</b> for </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-the-republican-right-found-allies-in-russia/2017/04/30/e2d83ff6-29d3-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.82f049227009" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing" antialiased="antialiased" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" cubic-bezier="cubic-bezier" position="position" relative="relative" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: 600; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">a 45-minute exchange</a><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">. And on December 10th, Putin infamously sat next to Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s future national security adviser, at an RT gala in Moscow.</span></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/stemming-tide-evangelicalism-and-preventing-next-billy-graham">https://www.alternet.org/stemming-tide-evangelicalism-and-preventing-next-billy-graham</a></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/franklin-grahams-astonishing-ungodly-hypocrisy">https://www.alternet.org/franklin-grahams-astonishing-ungodly-hypocrisy</a></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast Thursday, at which he vowed to <b>"destroy" the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 provision that prohibits tax-exempt religious or charitable organizations from "directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office</b>." <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The provision does not prohibit political activity by churches or religious organizations overall, but it does place some limits on the role of religious institutions in U.S. elections. White evangelical Protestants have long pushed for the amendment to be repealed. </span>This is President Trump.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div>President Donald Trump: "Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that, remember."</div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-invited-notorious-anti-muslim-anti-gay-rev-pray-inauguration">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/trump-invited-notorious-anti-muslim-anti-gay-rev-pray-inauguration</a></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Franklin Graham</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Franklin Graham, son of the iconic evangelist Billy Graham, is a more intensely anti-gay right-wing version of his father, and reflects the continuing spiral of America’s right wing into anti-Muslim conspiracy-theory paranoia [13].</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Like Trump, Graham is a fan of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, praising </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Putin’s</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> anti-gay policies</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> [14]</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> and defending his support for the Assad regime in Syria. Graham went to Russia [15] in 2015, where he praised Putin while criticizing secularism in America. While in Russia, Graham told a reporter that President Obama was “leading America down the wrong road” and “taking a stand against God.” [15] Graham also planned to host a conference in Moscow [16] with the Russian Orthodox Church to address <b>anti-Christian persecution</b>, but had to cancel after Putin outlawed evangelism from Christians who aren’t members of the Orthodox church.</span></font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Although Graham maintained that he was not formally endorsing a presidential candidate in 2016, he held rallies [17] around the country during which he made it clear what he thought Christians’ duty was at the ballot box. Graham, who has said the <b>advance of legal equality for LGBT people is a sign of the coming End Times</b> [18] and invites the judgment of God, repeatedly said [19] that<b> 2016 was the last chance [20] for Christians to save America from godless secularists </b>[19] and the “very wicked” LGBT agenda being promoted by the Obama administration.</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Graham was among the Religious Right leaders who spoke up for Trump when the tape of him bragging about sexually assaulting women was released, decrying “the godless progressive agenda of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton” and saying the Supreme Court was the most important issue for Christians when voting. </span>When Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” Graham defended him [21] and said he’d been making the same argument “for some time.”</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Following the election, Graham addressed a Trump victory rally and claimed that Trump had been elected thanks to God’s intervention.</font></b></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In April Graham called the separation of church and state “a lie [22] that the enemy uses to try to keep your mouth shut” and declared, “There’s no difference between secularism and communism. They’re both godless. Both are godless. And godless secularism is now taking control of our governments.” In response [23] to the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012, Graham said, “We’ve taken God out of our school, we’ve taken him out of our government and now we seem shocked at all of these things. Why are we shocked? We shouldn’t be shocked. This is what happens when a society turns its back on God.”</font></span></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In a podcast with Fox News’ Todd Starnes [24] in March, Graham said, <b>“I want the school boards of America in the hands of evangelical Christians within the next four to six years.” </b>He also called for conservative Christians to run for <b>other local offices,</b> saying “We need Christian men and women running for mayors across this country [25]. Just think of America if the majority of mayors of America were born-again evangelical Christians.”</font></div></div><div class="byline story"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
<span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><div>
</div><div>kpfa<b> boost rev billy g for libertarianism</b> kpfa 9/21/16 10 am</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-september-21-2016/">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-september-21-2016/</a></div><div>
</div><div><div><b>With Kevin M. Kruse, professor of History at Princeton University in New Jersey. He is the author or co-editor of several books, his latest is One Nation Under God: <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">How Corporate America Invented Christian America.</span></b></div><div>
</div><div>About the book:</div><div>
</div><div>One Nation Under God tells the story of how in the middle of the 20th century, corporate titans and evangelical activists created the pervasive myth that America was, is, and always will be a fundamentally Christian nation.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Kruse argues, the<b> belief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated from corporate opposition to FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s.</b>Corporations from General Motors to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the New Deal as a program of “pagan statism” that perverted the central principle of Christianity: the sanctity and salvation of the individual. Their campaign for “freedom under God” culminated in the election of their close ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952.</span></div><div>
</div><div>In Eisenhower’s hands, a religious movement born in opposition to the government was transformed into one that fused faith and the federal government as never before. During the 1950s, Eisenhower revolutionized the role of religion in American political culture,<b> inventing new traditions from inaugural prayers to the National Prayer Breakfast</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. Meanwhile, Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country’s first official motto. </span>With private groups joining in,<b> church membership soared to an all-time high of 69%. </b>During this moment, Americans began to think of their country as an officially Christian nation.</div><div>
</div><div>But as Americans moved from broad generalities to the details of issues such as school prayer, cracks began to appear. Religious leaders began to reject this “lowest common denomination” public religion, leaving conservative political activists to champion it alone.<b> In Richard Nixon’s hands, a politics that conflated piety and patriotism became sole property of the right.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the unholy alliance of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day.</div></div></span></span></font></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></span></span></div><div class="byline story"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span class="field field-name-field-sources field-type-node-reference field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><a href="http://alternet.org/" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">AlterNet</a> <span class="print-footnote">[1]</span></span></span></span> / <em>By</em> <em><a href="http://www.alternet.org/authors/cj-werleman" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">CJ Werleman</a> <span class="print-footnote">[2]</span></em></font></div><div class="headline"><h1 property="dc:title" datatype="" class="node-title"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">How Rev. Billy Graham Taught the Republican Party to Sacrifice the Poor on the Altar of Big-Business</font></h1></div><div class="the_body body_story clearfix"><div class="big_story_tools_bottom_container"><div class="authors_signup"><div class="story_tools_bottom"><div class="text-size"><div class="story_tools_email"><div class="story_tools_print"><div class="clear"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div class="story-date"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><em><span class="field field-name-field-date field-type-date field-label-hidden"><span class="field-items"><span class="field-item even"><span class="date-display-single" property="dc:date" datatype="xsd:dateTime" content="2013-12-17T13:19:00-08:00">December 17, 2013</span></span></span></span> </em> | </font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since turning 95 last month, Reverend Billy Graham’s health has deteriorated, and judging by his family’s call for prayers, his life is nearing its end. Many things will be written about Graham's life by both disciples and his detractors, but if you want to know where the base of today’s Republican Party—the Christian Right—gets its mojo, look no further than this Southern Baptist preacher.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The genetic makeup of the GOP is one chromosome away from Graham’s DNA. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Today’s Republican Party is a neo-Confederate pro-corporation movement, thanks to the<b>supposed life-long Democrat </b>(when he wasn’t endorsing Mitt Romney)—the Reverend Billy Graham.</span> A close friend of Richard Nixon's, it was Graham who helped the disgraced president articulate the “Southern Strategy,” which won Nixon the White House in 1968.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steven P. Miller, author of <em>Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South,</em>writes that it was <b>Graham’s public relationship with Southern Baptist ministers</b>, and quips like, “Prejudice is not just a sectional problem” and “Criticism of the South is one of the most popular indoor sports of some Northerners these days,” that made him an much-loved figure among his fellow Southerners. Miller also says tha<b>t Graham’s evangelical understanding of the sins of racism allowed many white Southerners to declare themselves absolved from past guilt.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Millennials can be forgiven for mistakenly thinking the Christian Right has been the main strain of the GOP since ad infinitum. It hasn’t. The Christian Right is still a relatively new dynamic on the American political landscape. Prior to the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, no serious presidential candidate ever claimed to have been “born again,” and the emphasis of faith for a politician seeking high office was as rare then as a candidate declaring his atheism is today.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But something weird happened on the way to the forum.<b> Religious fundamentalists banded together to oppose Jimmy Carter’s 1980 reelection campaign (Carter was a Southern Baptist), and in turn, put their support behind Ronald Reagan, who was a divorced Hollywood actor. </b>This strange coalition on the right became a movement better known as the Moral Majority, and Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell were the tip of the sword.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The Moral Majority surprised nearly everyone by helping sweep Reagan into the White House.</b> The Sarasota Journal wrote as much on Feb 9, 1981: “The merging of the political right with the religious right has taken the country by surprise.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until then, not even your most casual political observer believed that conservative Christians could or would play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome of elections. Screenplay writer Norman Lear said at the time, “The Moral Majority is neither the moral point of view, nor the majority.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>With help from the likes of Pat Robertson and a coalition of anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-feminist, and anti-ACLU networks, the Moral Majority became the Christian Right. While Graham publicly distanced himself from the Moral Majority, this was done purely for political optics</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The media’s gullibility in falling for the “genteel, bipartisan, apolitical preacher” narrative gave Graham’s voice even more political clout.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Graham was a skillful orator, and he adeptly infused the teachings o<b>f Ayn Rand with those of Jesus Chris</b>t</span>.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In the Bible, Jesus says, “The meek shall inherit the earth,” and urges his followers, <b>“To sell what you have and give to the poor.” But Graham, with the biggest Christian following in America during the '80s, helped turn the biblical Jesus into a supply side economist who wants us to be anti-government, anti-regulation, anti-healthcare, and anti-assistance for the poor Christians</b>.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Where Bible Jesus feeds the masses with two loaves of bread, Ayn Randian Jesus says, “Bugger off, this bread is mine, you lazy moochers.” While Graham removed Southern Christians’ guilt over segregation, Ayn Rand removed the Christian Right’s guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves.</span> Bruce E. Levine, author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Get-Stand-Populists-Energizing-Corporate/dp/1603582983" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><em>Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite</em></a> <span class="print-footnote">[3]</span>, wrote on AlterNet, “Not only did Rand make it 'moral' for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she 'liberated' millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>With the explosion of cable television, Graham turned his church into a mega money-making empire for himself.</b> The self-proclaimed political non-partisan also turned his massive flock into a loyal legion of storm troopers for the Republican Party. Today, Graham’s son, Franklin, is the CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. He has continued his father’s legacy of being a shill and supporter of far-right pro-corporate causes while pulling down a $600,000 salary.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the eve of the 2012 election, the<b> younger Graham bragged that it was his father’s appearance with George W. Bush at a rally in Florida which won the Texas governor the presidency in 2000.</b></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In endorsing Mitt Romney, Billy Graham said, "I believe it is vitally important that we cast our ballots for candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel. I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God."</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Today, evangelism is synonymous with sacrificing the poor on the altar of big-business’ interests, and in becoming the most reliable and agitated voting bloc of the Republican Party<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> since the election of Reagan, <b>we can rightfully accuse the Christian Right in ushering in three decades of failed trickle down economics</b>. The price we've paid for this approach is that America is now one of the most wealth-disparate of the developed countries. It’s the political descendants of Graham who shut down the government with their radical <em>Jesus said replace every government-funded service with a for-profit corporation</em> ideology.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Graham’s coalition of hate also put social issues front and square in the GOP primary process, and no one was more hateful than Graham. White House tapes recorded him openly telling President Nixon he believed that the Jews had a “stranglehold on the American media” and that “this Jewish stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> The National Archive tapes reveal the nation’s best-known preacher in agreement with a stream of bigoted Nixon comments about Jews and their perceived influence on American life. “If you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something. There also the ones putting out the pornographic stuff,” said Graham. To which Nixon replied, “the Jews are an irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Repeatedly, Graham’s judgment was found wanting, yet politicians on both sides seek his and/or his family’s approval and photo-ops, which shows how far the Christian Right has pulled this country to the right since 1980.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Graham blames today’s economic doldrums on God punishing the nation for its growing secularization and what he perceives to be an increase in immorality. “I don’t see our country turning to God…Maybe he will have to bring this country down economically before we turn our hearts back to God. We need to repent.”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Come the 2016 campaign season, when the likes of Rand Paul, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum talk about how “Christianity is under attack” and how the “takers” are destroying America, it will be Billy Graham’s shadow you have to blame for that.</font></p></div><div class="tags"><em><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">See more stories tagged with:</font></em><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="http://www.alternet.org/tags/billy-graham" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Billy Graham</a> <span class="print-footnote">[4]</span></font></div></div></div></div><div class="comment_button"><div class="print-footer" style="text-align: center;"><hr class="print-hr" style="text-align: left; border: 0px; height: 1px; width: 1238px; color: rgb(158, 158, 158); background-color: rgb(158, 158, 158);" /><div class="print-source_url" style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Source URL:</strong> <a href="http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/how-rev-billy-graham-taught-republican-party-it-could-sacrifice-poor-altar-big" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/how-rev-billy-graham-taught-republican-party-it-could-sacrifice-poor-altar-big</a></font></div><div class="print-links"><p /><div style="text-align: left;"><strong times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Links:</strong></div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div style="text-align: left;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[1] http://alternet.org</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div style="text-align: left;">[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/cj-werleman</div><div style="text-align: left;">[3] http://www.amazon.com/Get-Stand-Populists-Energizing-Corporate/dp/1603582983</div><div style="text-align: left;">[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/billy-graham</div><div style="text-align: left;">[5] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B</div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>