President goes after Christian magazine
Evangelicals rally for Trump after editorial calls for his removal
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump blasted a prominent Christian magazine Friday, a day after it published an editorial arguing that he should be removed from office because of his “blackened moral record.”
Trump tweeted 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 “has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years,” Trump wrote. He later questioned whether the magazine would prefer a Democratic president “to guard their religion.”
Some of his strongest evangelical supporters, including Graham’s son, rallied to his side and against the publication. Their pushback underscored Trump’s hold on the evangelical voting bloc
that helped propel him into office and suggested the editorial would likely do little to shake that group’s loyalty.
Rev. Franklin Graham, who now leads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and prayed at Trump’s inauguration, tweeted Friday that his 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 counseling several past presidents, voted for Trump. The president thanked Graham for the disclosure.
The magazine’s circulation is estimated at 130,000. In the editorial titled “Trump Should Be Removed from Office,” Editorin-Chief Mark Galli wrote that Democrats “have had it out for” the president since he took office.
But Galli asserted that the facts “are unambiguous” when it comes to the acts that led to the president’s impeachment Wednesday night by the Democraticcontrolled House of Representatives, and described the president as “a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.”
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 former Vice President Joe Biden. “That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”
But the editorial didn’t just call out Trump. It also called out his devout Christian supporters.
“To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve,” Galli wrote. “Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.”
Galli told The Washington Post on Friday that Trump had mischaracterized the magazine, which considers itself centrist or possibly center-right. “Nobody considers us as farleft,” Galli said. “We don’t comment on larger national issues except when they rise to a level of moral influence ... that’s not who we are.”
The schism among Christians about Trump dates to before his election. Prominent Southern Baptist Russell Moore warned that Trump “incites division” in a 2015 op-ed. The essay cited the Bible in asking fellow Christians to “count the cost of following” him. It later earned a tweeted lashing from thencandidate Trump.
But Trump is deeply popular among white evangelical Protestants, with roughly 8 in 10 saying they approve of the way he is handling his job, according to a poll from The APNORC Center. At the heart of that backing is what pro-Trump evangelicals view as the president’s significant record of achievement on their highest priorities, such as his successful installation of more than 150 conservative federal judges and his support for anti-abortion policies.
“No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close,” Trump said in his tweets. He declared that he “won’t be reading ET again!” using the wrong initials to describe the Christian publication.
Johnnie Moore, a member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board, tweeted that during the “hyperventilating” over the “inconsequential” editorial, he was at Vice President Mike Pence’s residence, “where dozens of evangelicals who actually lead MILLIONS were celebrating Christmas undistracted by impeachment & grateful” for the administration’s policies.
Adding that Christianity Today “only represents a certain segment of evangelicals,” Moore tweeted that “this is not a game changing moment or hardly a surprise.”
The editorial did not take a position on whether Trump should be removed by the Senate or by popular vote in the 2020 election, calling it “a matter of prudential judgment.”
But Galli wrote that the need for Trump’s removal “is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”
In an interview with CNN, Galli, who is set to retire from his post next month, also said he is realistic about the effect of his words.
“I don’t have any imagination that my editorial is going to shift their views on this matter,“he said of Trump’s supporters.