"Reverend" "Graham" speaks. Again.

There’s been a lot of talk in the media lately about sports figures taking a knee in protest. I’m encouraged to see people taking a knee, not in protest, but in prayer. These NC State Troopers are kneeling in prayer before going in to do their jobs in the riots and demonstrations in Charlotte. Prayer does make a difference. God’s Word tells us, “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth” (Psalm 145:18). I’m thankful for the men and women trying to bring order and an end to the violence and unrest.

NC State Trooopers Take a Knee Before Protecting Charlotte -- But They Aren't Protesting 'Oppression'

Here's Franklin Graham's weekly meditation on Scripture as revealed to him by his Bible, the Gospels of Republican Jesus of Conservative Media (complete with the original, God-inspired typo. Inerrancy knows no limits).

In 2003, Andrew Sullivan coined the term "Christianism" to describe people like Franklin Graham:

"One of the core messages of Christianity is a rejection of worldly power. The core message of Christianism is, in stark contrast, the desperate need to control all the levers of political power to control or guide the lives of others. 

"...Christianism is all about power over others, and it has been fueled in the last decade by its mirror image, Islamism, and motivated to fury by hatred of what it sees as is true enemy, liberalism. Both Islamism and Christianism, to my mind, do not spring from real religious faith; they spring from neurosis caused by lack of faith. They are the choices of those who are panicked by the complexity and choices of modernity into a fanatical embrace of a simplistic parody of religion in order to attack what they see as their cultural and social enemies. They are not about genuine faith; they are about the instrumentality of faith as a political bludgeon."

In today's miniscreed, Franklin Graham carries on the Christianist process of turning faith and logic inside out. To his ilk, the First Amendment only protects speech that praises the government for control of which they so lust. Once they get that power, they promise, they will help us all practice the One Way of Thinking with new laws that will liberate all from the burdens of treating fellow citizens fairly, and the even greater load of forming, and being able to defend, one's own belief- religious and civil.

Toward that end, Franklin Graham cites a source whose author believes the weekly killing of unarmed Americans by police forces terrified of being outgunned by the NRA's demand that we will only be truly safe when America a billion guns and anyone can shoot anyone else, any time, for any reason of which white Christianists approve, is vacuous. So they put "Oppression" in quotes to marginalize with words what they cannot-yet- stop by law.

The use of air quotes by conservatives to diss what they despise made me think of a great skit that never was for Mike Myer's SNL character, TV host and New York Jewess Linda Richman: "Tawk among yourselves. I will give you a topic: 'The Reverend Franklin Graham is a Franklin, but is neither a "Reverend not a "Graham". Discuss.'

I suggest it's time to start putting "evangelist" in quotes whenever the term is used in conjunction with the name Franklin Graham. It will draw a useful, respectful distinction between his sort and real evangelists.