Graham Was Seduced By Power, Say Pundits

Graham’s Jewish comments: the commentaries are in It looked like evangelist (and Christianity Today founder) Billy Graham was going to get a pass on his 1972 Oval Office statements about the Jewish “stranglehold” on America. For the first few days after the statements were revealed on tape, the only commentaries were Graham’s apology, the Anti-Defamation League‘s calling the comments “chilling and frightening,” and a column on a liberal site Weblog hadn’t even heard of before.

Now mainstream outlets are weighing in. Thankfully, no one is calling Graham an anti-Semite; they’re simply saying that he forgot his spiritual calling for a while. “Graham, the preeminent Christian preacher of the day, could have set the president straight and told him that his crude conspiracy theorizing about Jews was part of a paranoid style that might lead to his downfall someday (as it did),” a Boston Globe editorial said Tuesday.

Graham might even have suggested that the president, instead of stereotyping his critics in the media, might have turned the other cheek. But Graham did no such thing. … [The tapes] help explain why Nixon so long persisted in his dark dividing of the world into enemies and friends. He was encouraged to do so by a religious leader he had been friends with since he served as vice president in the 1950s. Given a chance to speak truth to power, Graham spoke garbage.

Columnist Cal Thomas similarly laments Graham’s actions, then ties them into the case he made in his book Blinded by Might. “Graham is no bigot, although he sounds like one on the tape,” he says in yesterday’s column.

On the tapes, one hears Graham compromising his principles in order to please Nixon. … Graham gives in to the lower nature in us all, possibly fearful of offending the man whose company he enjoys keeping. … Had Graham spoken “truth to power” and said of Nixon’s derogatory remarks about Jews, “Mr. President, those were wicked and sinful things to say about Jewish people,” chances are excellent that Nixon would never again have granted the evangelist access. That’s the way the game is played between politicians and clergy. And the clergy always lose in the end because it is their principles that must be sacrificed if their proximity to supposed power is to continue and their illusion of influence to be maintained. … The top-down approach of many faiths today has ruined whatever compelling message they might have once conveyed.

Is ABC caving to watchdog group complaints? Religious groups like the American Family Association and Concerned Women for America have been targeting Disney-owned television network ABC for a while now, though their action intensified in January with the network’s airing of the “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.” Now it looks like ABC may be cleaning up its act as a result. The Smoking Gun, a Web site specializing in publishing court documents, noted that Saturday night’s airing of the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever had been digitally altered. “In scenes featuring Bond girl Plenty O’Toole, the ABC version magically added a black bra on the body of actress Lana Wood where one had not previously existed in the 1971 film,” the site says. “It’s unclear why the digital addition was done, since Wood’s character shows nothing that would have even jeopardized the flick’s original PG rating.” Clearly someone at ABC thought the bra would help stave off complaints. The site offers screen captures from both the original film and the ABC version.

David Brooks: Faith, not simple-mindedness, is key to Bush’s decisions In an article for The Weekly Standard‘s Web site, David Brooks attacks “the conventional explanation … that the president has been able to do so well precisely because he is simple-minded.” He quotes a recent Time magazine profile that declared, “War has turned what many saw as Bush’s liabilities—his distaste for detail, his cocky self-assurance, his sheer simplicity—into assets. Untroubled by doubt, uninterested in nuance, Bush has been relentlessly focused.”

Nonsense, says Brooks. Bush isn’t led by simplicity, he’s led by his faith. “In the secular world of the media, and the hyper-secular world of the university, we have a poor understanding of how faith informs judgment. But this seems to be the key.” Bush’s belief that God has placed him where he is, his humility before the Almighty, his moral compass, and his almost biblical straightforwardness that rebels against the State Department’s foggy diplomacy have guided his decisions for the better. Yes, for the better. “Bush has used the word “evil” repeatedly during this conflict, and many people have cited this as evidence of his simplistic view of the world,” writes Brooks. “But where on earth does anybody get the idea that to call something evil is to make a simple statement? Evil is a complex concept, containing notions of sin, temptation, the possibility of redemption, and much else.” To say otherwise is foolish—as are countless other idiotic things said by “a lot of intelligent and learned people” since September 11. “Meanwhile, George W. Bush, lacking both deep learning and wide experience, has made a series of smart decisions,” Brooks concludes. “Maybe it’s time we reconsidered what it means to be intelligent.”

Pat Robertson:

Faith in hate | Once again, the Rev. Pat Robertson is preaching hate (Editorial, The Boston Globe)
The recurring “they” and the truer “we” | Citing the Bible honestly makes it sound more like Robertson’s version of the Qur’an than the simple story of a peaceful God and “us,” God’s peaceful people (Martin E. Marty, Sightings)

Politics:

With God on their side | Don’t expect sweetness and light from the U.S. government’s latest religious phase (Duncan Campbell, The Guardian)
Church organizations call for peaceful poll | Zimbabwe Christian Initiative for Peace looks for calm elections and beyond (The Herald, Harare)
Christian group behind Harper run by lobbyist (Canadian Press)

Sex & marriage:

The gay divide | No issue is as divisive among Christians as homosexuality. (The Dallas Morning News)
As faiths open doors to gays, denomination divides deepen | Growing defiance of policies threatens to splinter denominations (The Dallas Morning News)
Sex and sensibility | It’s unlikely that celibacy will catch on in our sex-obsessed society, but plenty of people would like to see sex postponed until marriage (David Yount, Scripps Howard)
Sexuality is a treasured gift | Whether people agree with the Church or not, we all intuitively know that sex is extremely important (George Pell, The Australian Daily Telegraph)
Another church sex scandal in Spain | A priest’s flock is passing around the collection plate so he can fly in a woman he met online (Associated Press)
Vatican stance on gay clergy criticized | Scholars see a ban slashing priesthood (The Boston Globe)

Abuse:

Press hit over role in priest scandals | The controversy over Catholic priests and sexual abuse reported widely a decade ago has snowballed, some say, because of power struggles between the church and news media in Boston (The Washington Times)
Vatican weighs reaction to accusations of molesting by clergy | Vatican response has been so low-key that a surprising number of the Vatican rank and file are still only dimly aware of the crisis in the American Catholic Church (The New York Times)
Two paths, no easy solution on abusive priests | While one town made headlines by removing priests, another quietly moved them around (The New York Times)
Sex cases may cost church $100m | The estimated $30 million to $40 million already paid to victims over the last decade plus the $40 million for the pending cases will make Boston’s the costliest priest abuse scandal in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States. (The Boston Globe)
Priests’ victims need more than apologies | It’s not too late (Editorial, Boston Herald)
Child advocacy group calls for Law to step down | Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty unequivocal in calling for archbishop’s resignation (The Boston Globe)
Law looks to rebuild public trust | Investigative office will be tripled (The Boston Globe)
An accuser’s quest for recognition | The priest Steve Lynch accuses is dead, and Lynch appears to be the only person who has alleged abuse by him. (The Boston Globe)
Maine parish agonizes over a priest’s confession (The New York Times)
Los Angeles cardinal removes priests involved in pedophilia cases (The New York Times)
American church forced to sack paedophile priests (The Guardian)
Archdiocese told police of 6 abuse cases | Two of those six priests were arrested. Other cases were too old or involved people who refused to come forward (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Child abuse scandal forces US church to confront its demons | Catholic cardinal under fire amid claims that he hid the truth about pedophile priests for decades (The Observer, London)
Archdiocese to yield list of sex accusers (The New York Times)
Church to release data | Archdioceses agrees to waive confidentiality (The Boston Globe)

Church life:

Five-pointed star to stay on church | Local complains that it’s satanic symbol (East Anglian Daily Times, Ipswich, U.K.)
Churches could ‘double as discos’ | Archbishop of Canterbury seeks multiple uses in exchange for government funding.(BBC)
Also: “This Disco (Used To Be A Cute Cathedral),” (Steve Taylor song, 1985)
Putting the cat among religions | Every Sunday, parishioners in Hardingstone are ushered into church by an unusual escort…a fluffy, black cat (Northampton Chronicle & Echo, U.K.)
Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore? | Nearly one-third have changed congregations in the past five years (The Charlotte Observer)
With God and a gun on his side | Father Cirilo Nacorda of Basilan isn’t taking chances (The Age, Australia)
Earlier Catholic priest turns to guns to ward off Philippines’ Abu Sayyaf (Associated Press, June 8, 2001)
Churches struggle with Sunday morning segregation | Decades after Martin Luther King Jr. declared Sunday mornings the most segregated hour in America, some churches are experiencing more diversity in their congregations, yet many continue to remain predominantly black or white. (The Wilson [N.C.] Daily Times, see original)
Coral Springs pastor moonlights as model | David Hughes is senior pastor of Coral Baptist, one of South Florida’s fastest-growing congregations. He’s also a dues-paying professional actor who has been pitchman for several multinational companies (The Miami Herald)
Yes, God is everywhere, even at the local mall | 100 of the nation’s nearly 1,200 enclosed malls have some religious presence (The New York Times)