“I love Donald Trump.
We’ll never get another president like Donald Trump.
That is why it’s important we do everything we can to try to get him re-elected.”
A Republican Congressperson didn’t say this a few days ago.
A Fox News anchor didn’t say it.
A Nazi content creator didn’t say it.
Your racist neighbor didn’t say it. (Well, maybe…)
Franklin Graham said this.
One of the Evangelical world’s most influential preachers did.
Son of the esteemed and certainly wildly spinning in his grave, Reverend Billy Graham did.
Leading into Holy Week, Christianity’s marking of the last few days of Jesus’ life, this supposed man of God, stood behind a podium to address American Conservatives.
He did not use the moment of consequence to condemn the unprovoked bombing of Iranian citizens or the illegal and immoral war visited on their nation.
He delivered no fiery sermon against the genocide in Gaza, the intentional starving of the Cuban people, or the brutal attacks on Lebanon.
He didn’t unleash righteous fury at a presidential regime protecting a network of wealthy rapists and pedophiles.
He called down no divine judgment upon a masked army of violent thugs terrorizing brown and black-skinned human beings in the places they live, study, work, and worship.
He did not castigate the soulless cadre of oligarchs swallowing up the financial and natural resources of this nation.
He made no impassioned appeal to the self-identified Christians listening, to replicate the heart of Jesus by rallying around the vulnerable, the oppressed, the poor, and the foreigner; to flip the tables of the powerful who prey upon the least of these.
He did not decry America’s renaissance of open racism, its persecution of immigrants, or its sinful lack of affordable healthcare.
No, this cosplaying, snake oil peddling religious huckster, used this moment and the microphone and the spotlight his privilege affords him, to pledge undying allegiance to a court-adjudicated rapist, to a serial predator, to a war criminal, to a convicted felon, to a murderous, wanna be dictator.
It was this vile, repugnant, profane career criminal whose fervent defense he came to: not exhausted Mexican refugees or terrorized trans people or war-ravaged Ukrainians or battered peaceful protestors.
Just a few days before Easter Sunday, Franklin Graham proudly preached the dehumanizing, racist, violent, perverse Gospel of Donald Trump.
I was a pastor for nearly three decades, and during that time, I largely abandoned the concept of Hell. I simply could not reconcile a place of eternal torment for human beings, constructed by a God who is supposedly love. However, some days I confess that I want to be wrong.
Look, I’m not a theological expert by any means, but I feel fairly confident in saying that if the Hell Conservative Evangelicals promise does exist, Franklin Graham is a slam dunk.
If there’s a hell, it will be filled with people who claimed faith in Jesus, while trying to strip the sick of care, the terrified of refuge, and the vulnerable of protection, and reveled in it as if it were a righteous victory.
If eternal damnation exists, it should be the wages of men and women who coordinated, participated in, and applauded the vilifications of immigrants and refugees, whose only crime was their nation of birth or the color of their skin.
If there’s a place of endless agony saved for people with cancerous hearts, it will surely house those who crucified strangers for their sexuality, who persecuted them over pronouns, who willfully trafficked in a dehumanization that was deadly.
If there’s a hell, it’s going to be packed to the brimstone-scorched rafters with professed Christians who chose to celebrate, turn the other way, or be silent as they watched it all happen.
So, for at least this moment, I am praying for the existence of Evangelicals’ angry, vengeful, and punitive Maker to materialize.
Because, if by some chance God has indeed crafted a furnace of forever suffering for heretics, blasphemers, and those who willfully brought suffering upon God’s people in His* name, then Franklin Graham will finally be made accountable for the mockery he has made of Jesus and the damage he has done to those Jesus fiercely loves.
* Evangelicals’ gendering for God
