Christianity Today Magazine Changes Name to "Pharisees Today"

Franklin Graham, son of the late Billy Graham, posted this on Facebook: "Christianity Today released an editorial stating that President Trump should be removed from office - and they invoked my father's name (I suppose to try to bring legitimacy to their statements), so I feel it is important for me to respond. Yes, my father Billy Graham founded Christianity Today; but no, he would not agree with their opinion piece. In fact, he would be very disappointed. I have not previously shared who my father voted for in the past election, but because of this article, I feel it is necessary to share it now. My father knew Donald Trump, he believed in Donald Trump, and he voted for Donald Trump. He believed that Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation."

In case you're wondering what "Pharisees" they were an ancient Jewish sect that had pretensions of superior sanctity. They followed all the rules strictly, but not from their hearts. They believed they were better than all other Jews (and everyone else on earth, for that matter). Today the word is commonly used to define a person who is a self-righteous hypocrite.

Franklin Graham thought it was dishonest and hypocritical for an obscure writer of a failing magazine to use his father's name to endorse a viewpoint he knew his father would have greatly opposed. Billy Graham met and prayed with President Trump several times. He believed that God had put him in the Whitehouse specifically for this time in America’s history. And, as his son revealed, he voted for Trump.
 
Mark Galli, the ex-editor of Christianity today showed a remarkable ignorance of current events when he wrote his diatribe condemning President Trump. While displaying his ignorance for all to see, he made a point of accusing evangelicals who support Trump as naïve and ignorant.
 
Galli, a non-evangelical left-wing liberal, worked for Christianity Today for 20 years, the last part of that as an Editor. Under his leadership the magazine has lost so much of its prestige (along with most of its readers) that many evangelicals refer to it as “Christianity Yesterday.”
 
Galli describes himself as an “elite evangelical” (just what we need). He is a member of the Anglican Church in North America. Today he lies when he says he is non-partisan and non-political, because he has actually been a “Never-Trumper” since Trump’s inauguration. Just like Obama, Hillary and other radical leftists, he was shocked when Trump was elected.
 

“I know hardly anyone, let alone any evangelical Christian who voted for Trump. I describe evangelicals like me as ‘elite’ evangelicals…and this class of evangelicals has discovered that we have family members so different they seem like aliens in our midst. These other evangelicals often haven’t finished college, and if they have jobs (and apparently a lot of them don’t), they are blue-collar jobs or entry-level work. They don’t write books or give speeches; they don’t attend conferences of evangelicals for social justice or evangelicals for immigration reform. They are deeply suspicious of mainstream media. A lot of them voted for Donald Trump.”

 
His words are frighteningly reminiscent of Obama’s description of Trump voters as ignorant white country bumpkins. Speaking at a San Francisco fundraiser he said, "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or God or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."    
 
Hillary Clinton, Obama’s secretary of State and a twice-failed presidential candidate, called Trump voters a "Basket of deplorables." She said the people who supported Trump were “motivated by animosity toward women and people of color.” She suggested that Trump subsisted on voters who were simply less sophisticated or advanced. On the other hand, her supporters were the elite of America. “I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward.”
 
The magazine was actually founded by Billy Graham, but neither he nor the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has had any connection to it for years. It’s a shame, because had it remained under the leadership of the Grahams, it would not have lost its way and become a mouthpiece for the liberal wing of the church. Many of its remaining supporters are from Liberal denominations who do not even believe in the cardinal doctrines of the Bible: Jesus is the Son of God, who was born of a virgin, was crucified, and rose again on the third day after His death (according to confidential polls of their ministers). These are usually the same denominations that allow the ordination of homosexual preachers, and many support the abortion movement.
 
Wikipedia says, “Christianity Today magazine is an evangelical Christian periodical that was founded in 1956 by ... the evangelical flag in the middle of the road, taking the conservative theological position but a definite liberal approach to social problems." Excuse me, Wikipedia. You often revise posts when they are found to be flawed. The sentence above should read, “Christianity Today magazine is a formerly evangelical Christian periodical…” But the part about their liberal social views is correct. Satan would approve of those.
 
“Facts are unambiguous. The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents. This is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.” Galli, who announced his retirement after penning the attack on our president, continued, “Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election - that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”
 
If the facts for impeachment were clear, there wouldn’t have been weeks of repetitious testimony in the House from hearsay witnesses who gave their best guesses into the president’s motivations and thoughts - speculation and guesses that were then twisted by Democrats and their friends in the media to imply guilt and finally, convict of guilt.
 
Here is the truth about the “facts” that Mr. Galli twisted in his un-Christian attack. He states as fact the accusation, never proved, that Trump used “his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents.” The two principles on that call were the President of the United States and the President of Ukraine. Although it set a terrible precedent, Trump released the text of the call to Congress. (It was a bad precedent because world leaders need to know they can talk privately and confidentially to our president.) He did it to show that nothing in the least bit wrong transpired on that call. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky stated clearly and repeatedly that he felt no coercion or pressure from Trump.
 
The second lie that Galli states as fact is that Trump supposedly pressured Ukraine for personal gain. What gain? To get dirt on his “political opponent.” Trump has no political opponent until the Democrats name their nominee. Biden has made many mistakes that will almost certainly deny him that nomination. One of those mistakes was to allow his son Hunter to use his father’s connections to get a position for which he had zero experience or qualifications with a corrupt Ukrainian energy company. The Bidens made between $50,000 and $100,000 per month in what amounted to bribes. All this occurred while Joe Biden was in charge of all Ukrainian affairs for the U.S. and had ultimate control of the future of that nation.
 
The irony is that Joe Biden bragged to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on January 23, 2018 that he had ordered the Ukrainian government to fire the State Prosecutor who was investigating the energy company and its Board – including his son. If they refused, he said he would withhold $1 Billion in military aid. Here is a transcript of the statement. (The VIDEO is below under Internet Resources.)
 
“And so I got Ukraine. And I remember going over, convincing our team, our leaders to—convincing that we should be providing for loan guarantees. And I went over, I guess, the 12th, 13th time to Kiev. And I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee. And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor. And they didn’t.

So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) 

“I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a b***h. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
 
This is a perfect example of a quid pro quo (which the Democrats accused Trump of). But this was real. Biden threatened the leaders of a sovereign nation by withholding $1 Billion unless they fired someone who was about to take his son (and probably Joe Biden himself) down for public corruption. This was corruption that made their family millions of dollars in bribes.
 
The mainstream, Democrat-controlled leftist media has refused to report on all this. You have to either dig deep on the Internet or watch FOX News or you wouldn’t know anything about it. But if by some fluke Biden does get the nomination, he will immediately be under such scrutiny that even the media won’t be able to protect him. His lies and brides will become public. The reason Trump asked the Ukrainian president to look into this matter had nothing to do with the 2020 election – he has that locked up no matter what sacrificial lamb the Democrats nominate. This had everything to do with the corrupt activity of the Democrats in collusion with foreign governments to throw the 2016 election.
 
Surprisingly, just three days after Mark Galli’s hysterical article, the President of Christianity Today, Timothy Dalrymple, published an article defending him and further attacking our president. Surprising because things don’t move that quickly in a national publication; this was a serious attempt at damage control that just made things worse. Surprising also, because the magazine seemed to have learned nothing from their mistake, considering the huge backlash from real evangelical Christians.
 
One thing we should note is the timing of this editorial by the liberal Mr. Galli. Some reports claim he was forced to retire over the controversial piece. I tend to believe him when he says he had already planned to retire. But, in a cowardly fashion, he published this just days before he left, so he couldn’t be fired. After reading what he said several times I noticed that everything on the net was labeled “web only.” That’s interesting, because, as editor, he could post anything he wanted quickly on the Internet version of the magazine.
 
I’m quite sure that if he had submitted it for publication in the print version (which takes at least a month to lay out and print), someone wiser than he in the company would have realized that this could put the last nail in the coffin of a magazine that has been fast losing subscribers already. By taking the coward’s way, he left his bosses in the unenviable position of defending his false accusations.
 
My conclusion is that Galli, whose name most Americans wanted to leave with a bang. He got his wish. The magazine’s servers crashed with all the people trying to see if this foolish man had actually written the foolish things being attributed to him. In other words, the article went viral. Now Galli will make lots of money from liberal publications that love to publish hit pieces on conservatives by someone who claims to have been a conservative in the past. Galli will have a very comfortable retirement.
 
John Grano and Richard Land wrote a great Editorial on this topic at ChristianPost.com. I will quote them here as I close…
 
“Christianity Today’s disdainful, dismissive, elitist posture toward their fellow Christians may well do far more long-term damage to American Christianity and its witness than any current prudential support for President Trump will ever cause.”
 

INTERNET RESEARCH:

Franklin Graham Slams Christianity Today for Invoking His Father's Name in Call for Trump's Removal
https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-graham-christianity-today-remove-billy-franklin-impeach
 
Christianity Today and the Problem with Christian Elitism
https://www.christianpost.com/news/christianity-today-and-the-problem-with-christian-elitism.html

Christianity Today all Wrong on Trump
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/20/christianity-todays-editor-mark-galli-all-wrong-do/
 
Christianity Today Editor Laments ‘Ethical Naïveté’ of Trump Backers
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/us/christianity-today-mark-galli-evangelicals.html 

VIDEO: Joe Biden Threatens Ukraine to Protect his Son from Investigation
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/09/27/flashback_2018_joe_biden_brags_at_cfr_meeting_about_withholding_aid_to_ukraine_to_force_firing_of_prosecutor.html

Mark Galli in Christianity Today Editorial Demands that Trump be Removed
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/december-web-only/trump-should-be-removed-from-office.html
 
The Founding Principles of Christianity Today
https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1956/october-15/why-christianity-today.html
 
Obama Insults “Flyover Country Citizens”
http://www.chipbennett.net/2008/04/12/obama-insults-flyover-country/
 
Hillary Takes her “Deplorables” Insult for another Spin
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/12/hillary-clinton-takes-her-deplorables-argument-for-another-spin/

In Response to Mark Galli’s Christianity Today Article in Support of Schiff’s Impeachment of Trump
https://growrag.wordpress.com/2019/12/19/in-response-to-mark-gallis-christianity-today-article-in-support-of-schiffs-impeachment-of-trump/