In his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, essentially all that the President did was remind the group gathered for prayer that not only Islam but Christianity as well has been used to justify horrible violence and war.
Calling for a degree of religious humility and self-examination strikes me as a reasonable thing to do. Clearly there are many people who don’t agree. Franklin Graham is among them. Or at least he and others don’t agree when it is done by President Obama.
Many on the right want to justify or minimize the violence that has been done by Christians in the name of their faith. Or they suggest that even if Christians once did horrible things, those things were done long ago. Apparently the statute of limitations has passed. Ignore the fact that currently tens of thousands of Muslims are fleeing Christian militias in the Central African Republic or the terrorist attacks done by right wing Christians in recent years.
You might think Graham is a pacifist as he distances himself from the violent people who distort Christianity.
But if you think Franklin Graham is an advocate of nonviolence who opposes Christians engaging in violence and deadly conflict you would be mistaken.
When Jerry Falwell, the founder of the old Moral Majority and Liberty University, boldly proclaimed, “God is pro-war,” Franklin Graham didn’t object. To the contrary, at the time he was in full agreement.
Graham is not one prone to quote Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the peacemakers; they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). That line doesn’t easily tumble from the lips of someone who can say, “There’s no excitement and thrill like the complexities of war. It heightens perceptions. The smell of gunpowder. The sound of shrapnel hitting a building. Everything in you slows down, except your reflexes. They become quicker, because all of life’s emotions are played out on a razor’s edge. Your instincts take over…. War satisfies my need for danger. I love to go places where bombs blow up.”
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