Category: Culture

A Preface

The December 19 issue of Christianity Today – prominent evangelical publication founded by the evangelist Billy Graham – came out with a scathing editorial calling for Trump’s impeachment by the magazine’s chief editor, Mark Galli.  A wide array responses critical of Galli views quickly ensued from notable evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham (Billy Graham’s son) and those affiliated with the Family Research Council.

It’s clear from Galli’s prior statements about Trump before the 2016 election that he had a strong anti-Trump bias.  In 2016 he disparaged not only Trump but his supporters, many of whom are evangelicals, when he wrote, “Enthusiasm for a candidate like Trump gives our neighbors ample reason to doubt that we believe Jesus is Lord.”

It would be a mistake to assume that Galli speaks for the majority of evangelicals, let alone his magazine’s founder, Billy Graham.  Franklin Graham, Billy Graham’s son, disclosed that his father voted for Trump: “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.”  Further he said, “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.”

Galli speaks for himself as he sets himself apart from the vast evangelical movement.  Below is my reaction to the obvious anti-Trump bias in a publication closely associated with Billy Graham.  Galli richly deserves the blowback of his words.

My Reaction to Galli

John O’Sullivan, adviser to Margaret Thatcher and pundit, announced O’Sullivan’s First Law: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”  I’m beginning to wonder if Mark Galli’s (editor in chief of Christianity Today) condemnation of Trump in his recent editorial is confirmation of O’Sullivan’s insight.  One has to ponder the possibility.

The transformation of originally center-right organizations into center-left ones starts with a muddle.  Fundamental canons of the institution are confused with the passing fascinations of our cultural arbiters in well-to-do urban enclaves and the commanding heights of our media.  Environmentalism, for instance, creeps into sermons and encyclicals by melding “stewardship” with campaigns against plastics, CO2, and preservationist land use policies.  Not surprisingly, Sunday school lessons are littered with the pop politics.  And it doesn’t stop there.

Further evidence of the politicized leftward infection is the facile proclamation of faithfulness to long-established principles while accepting the premises of the left.  Now here’s a real muddle.  It was clearly evident in Galli’s call for Trump’s impeachment.

First, the cognitive clutter of Galli’s piece was palpable in the attempt to erect a parallel between Bill Clinton’s perjury before a federal grand jury with Trump’s request to investigate the corruption of people who include the scions of powerful Democratic Party personages.  Galli blindly endorses the worst possible interpretation of a conversational and rambling phone call to the Ukrainian president as if his and the Resistance’s interpretation is the only one feasible.  Aping Adam Schiff, Galli proclaims that Trump “attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents.”  This is nothing but tendentious political boilerplate.  It’s demeaning for the editor of one of the most respected of evangelical journals.  Galli just reduced the magazine’s reputation many notches.

Perjury before a federal grand jury is a federal crime (18 U.S. Code § 1621), the last time that I checked.  Where would Galli put a rambling phone call asking the Ukrainians to investigate corruption of gold-digging American politicos in the federal penal code?  And if you wanted to put it in there, how would you state it without criminalizing the president’s Constitutional duty to conduct foreign policy?  Any effort would produce a hot mess.

Oh, I forgot, committing perjury in a federal district court and before a federal grand jury by a person with as many extramarital escapades as the Marquis de Sade – including quite probably a rape, like de Sade – is the equivalent of mentioning the Bidens in a congratulatory phone call.  Not!  Galli lacks the simple Biblical principle of proportionality.

For the benefit of Adam Schiff, Galli, and the rest of the Democratic scolds in the Resistance, here’s a more plausible alternative rendering of the call, one understandable to a 16-year-old.  Trump’s mode of conversation is not professorial, as in a lecture or a speech in the well of the Senate.  He rambles like a stand-up comedian in a club.  He’ll have a thought that originated on the couches of Fox and Friends and run with it.  So, if the eye-brow raising boast of Joe Biden getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired for investigating the younger Biden’s company gets Trump’s attention, and not being careful with his mouth like a smooth-talking politician, Trump bounced the idea off his cohorts and in his call to Zelensky.  In such an atmosphere, policy arises from a series of rambling conversations with no clear and obvious determination.  Trump brings it up in passing to Zelensky and some administrative underlings understandably mistake it for a directive to withhold aid, both before and after the call, while others aren’t quite so sure.  In the end, the aid was released without anything in return.  If the previous sentence is “B”, and Galli’s moral condemnation of Trump is “A”, how does Galli (and Schiff) ever get to “A”?  Galli fell for a partisan canard.

This scenario was borne out by the testimony before Schiff’s tribunal.  Those who mistook a meandering policy-making process for a clear directive appeared before the tribunal, but even they couldn’t identify the crime.  And neither they nor the hanging-judge Democrats on the panel could account for the Ukrainians getting the aid as no investigations were conducted by the Ukrainians.

And the hypocrisy of the whole thing is astounding.  Trump gave the Ukrainians lethal aid – i.e., weapons – while these same Democrats and Obama were only willing give the Ukrainians band aids and cotton balls.  Spare me the convenient discovery of concern for the fortunes of a small country in the jaws of Putin’s Russia.  Only mild protests came from the likes of Obama, Schiff, Pelosi, and Schumer as eastern Ukraine and the Crimea were amputated.  Galli, the glaring hypocrisy of the hyper-partisan Democrats should heighten your sensitivity to their incredulous proclamations.  They have no evidence of wrongdoing – least of all an impeachable offense – and neither do you [Galli].

I suspect a deep prejudice against Trump in people like Galli.  A prejudice can exist whenever a prejudgment has been made in spite of the evidence.  The prejudice allows a person to lose perspective.  A history of political behavior in the era BT [before Trump] might prove enlightening if the prejudice didn’t get in the way of doing the research.  A stroll down memory lane to the 1930’s and the reign of Saint FDR would prove instructive if only Galli cared.

Where shall I start?  The bloating of the federal budget under the guise of “fiscal stimulus” was very useful for advancing the FDR’s political prospects and was put at his service.  He withheld federal aid to states and districts who opposed his initiatives.  The larceny was naturally more active during election season.  Political opponents found their FCC licenses revoked.  Charles Lindbergh found himself under FBI surveillance with FDR’s nodding approval.  And let’s not forget the prosecution and persecution of Samuel Insull to fulfill FDR’s need for the scalp of one of the “great malefactors of wealth” for allegedly causing the Great Depression.  What about the herding of Japanese-Americans into concentration camps?  Of course, going down the memory hole is any recognition that FDR is probably the cause of a depression becoming a Great one.

To put finis on the Insull affair, after FDR’s prosecutors got their hands on Insull, he was acquitted of all charges in two trials.

Do we need to unearth the sordid political activities of the Kennedys and LBJ as the Church Committee did in 1976?  Galli, come on, take a look.

We have an ample history of the conjoining of “politician” and “skullduggery”.  Some of it is illegal, and, by Galli’s standard, all of it is impeachable … far more impeachable than a one-off congratulatory phone call to the president of a small country.

Galli’s standard for impeachable offenses is so loose that we might as well have a permanent congressional committee to handle presidential impeachments, particularly during periods of divided government.  We’ll need it.  At that point, the presidency will become the handmaiden of whatever majority happens to capture the House.  Right alongside “sequestration” and “continuing resolutions” we’ll have “impeachment” as part of our daily news briefing.  Galli’s standard has no limiting principle, at least not one recognizable to mortal man.

Isaiah quotes the Lord as saying, “Come now, let us reason together …”  Galli confuses partisan hyperbole for reason.  Context, perspective, and proportion have no role in his thought process.  He has substituted invective for “let us reason together” rather than pursue a more thoughtful rendering of the issues before us.

Roger Graf