The Body of Christ is made of many parts, and people experience their understanding of God in many different ways. On this blog, we'll consider the beliefs and activities of congregations, denominations and different religions.
Wednesday, October 9, 2024
RNS Weekly Digest: Evangelicals for Harris’ anti-Trump Billy Graham ad prompts threat of lawsuit
The ad begins with a clip of renowned evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham, wearing glasses, a gray suit and tie, leaning in toward a pulpit.
“But you must realize that in the last days, the times will be full of danger,” Graham declares. “Men will become utterly self-centered and greedy for money.”
Suddenly, a clip of former President Donald Trump is spliced in. Standing before a row of American flags at a campaign rally in Des Moines, Iowa, Trump says: “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy.”
For the next few seconds, the ad, which has racked up over 30 million views, flips between Graham’s 1988 sermon, contrasting his points with shots of Trump using violent language, claiming to be “the chosen one” and talking about kissing women without their consent.
That ad, the result of a $1 million ad campaign by Evangelicals for Harris, is now the subject of a potential lawsuit from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based nonprofit that supports the ministries of Billy Graham’s son and grandson.
In his bestselling book “The Color of Compromise,” author and historian Jemar Tisby explored the history of racism in the American church.
Now, in his new book, “The Spirit of Justice: True Stories of Faith, Race, and Resistance,” he looks at the other side of that history: “What about the Christians who did fight against racism?”
The book details the faith and fortitude of more than 50 people, mostly Black individuals and often women, whose stories are little known. As his research, which included the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, neared the present day, his book shifts to include some non-Black leaders.
“History is the study of both continuity and discontinuity,” said Tisby, who once pastored a majority white evangelical church in the Arkansas Delta and now teaches at Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically Black institution.
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