Trump blasts ‘Christianity Today’

WASHINGTON (AP):

President Donald Trump is blasting a prominent Christian magazine that published an editorial arguing that he should be removed from office.

Trump tweeted on Friday morning that Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine founded by the late Rev Billy Graham, “would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President.” The magazine’s editor-in-chief published an argument for Trump’s removal on Thursday, citing his “blackened moral record”.

While Trump wrote that the magazine “has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years,” some of his strongest evangelical supporters – including Graham’s son – were rallying to his side and against the magazine. Their pushback underscored the political value of Trump’s hold on the evangelical Christian voting bloc that helped propel him into office and suggested the editorial would likely do little to shake that group’s loyalty.

‘Disappointed’

Rev Franklin Graham, who now leads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and prayed at Trump’s inauguration, tweeted on Friday morning that his late father would be “disappointed” in the magazine. Graham added that he “felt it necessary” following the editorial to share that his father, who died last year after counselling several past presidents, had voted for Trump.

Christianity Today “represents what I would call the leftist elite within the evangelical community. They certainly don’t represent the Bible-believing segment of the evangelical community,” Graham told The Associated Press in an interview. He wrote on Facebook: “Is President Trump guilty of sin? Of course he is, as were all past presidents and as each one of us are, including myself.”

The magazine’s circulation is estimated at 130,000. In its editorial, titled ‘Trump Should Be Removed from Office’, Editor-in-Chief Mark Galli wrote that, “Democrats have had it out for” the president since the start of his term.

But Galli asserted that “the facts ... are unambiguous” when it comes to the acts that led to the president’s impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives this week.

Trump “attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents,” Galli wrote, referring to Democratic rival and former Vice President Joe Biden. “That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”

The schism among Christians about whether and how strongly to support Trump dates back to before his election. Prominent Southern Baptist Russell Moore warned that Trump “incites division” in a 2015 op-ed that cited the Bible in asking fellow Christians to “count the cost of following” him, later earning a tweeted lashing from then-candidate Trump.

After Trump defended the organisers of a 2017 white nationalist rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, Va, one member of his evangelical advisory board stepped down, citing “a deepening conflict in values between myself and the administration.”

But no such break has occurred between the president and the core of his evangelical base during his impeachment. Trump is deeply popular among self-described evangelical Christians, Trump is deeply popular among evangelicals, with roughly eight in 10 white evangelical Protestants saying they approve of the way he is handling his job as president, according to a December poll from The AP-NORC Center.