Did your church, or a church in your neighborhood, observe a “special
day of prayer” for President Trump this past Sunday? Mine didn’t, but some
churches did--and Franklin Graham, who proposed the idea, thought that such a
day was possibly necessary to avert a new civil war in the U.S.
Graham’s
Proposal
On May 30, Graham posted the following on the BillyGraham.org website:
“Along with 300+
Christian leaders, I am asking followers of Christ across
our nation to set aside Sunday, June 2,
as a special day of prayer for the President, Donald J. Trump” (bolding in
original).
Prior to that, on May 26
Graham posted this on his Facebook timeline:
President Trump’s enemies continue to try everything to destroy him, his family, and the presidency. In the history of our country, no president has been attacked as he has. I believe the only hope for him, and this nation, is God.
Many prominent
conservative evangelicals soon signed on and indicated their full support for
Graham’s proposal. Some of the most recognizable names of those supporters are
James Dobson, Jerry Falwell Jr., Mike Huckabee, Robert Jeffress, Richard Land,
Tony Perkins, and Ralph Reed--all noted leaders of the Christian Right in this
country.
Graham’s Fear
According to a May 31
article in the Christian Post (see here), “Trump’s enemies
will hurt America, could spark civil war if impeached.” Thus, prayer is
necessary to protect the President from his enemies who seek his impeachment.
Graham explains,
If the president was brought down for whatever reason, it could lead to a civil war. There are millions of people out there that voted for President Trump that are behind him that are angry and they are mad. We are just living in a very dangerous territory and we need God’s help [sic for entire paragraph, bolding added].
Graham went on to say that
the President needs to be encouraged.
It is discouraging when you wake up every day and it doesn't matter if you do something good or not. They only report the bad. That gets discouraging. I pray that the president will be encouraged knowing that there are millions of people praying for him.”
So, is Graham saying
maybe that if DJT gets enough encouragement he will say and do things that
would squelch the talk about impeachment? Is that how prayer might keep the
country from descending into a civil war?
Is Civil War Possible?
Franklin Graham is
not the first public figure in recent years to post the threat of civil war. As
I wrote about briefly in the second part of my May 25 blog posting, back in 2005
Charles Colson wrote about “The New Civil War” (in the Feb. issue of Christianity Today).
Colson was worried
about the “deepening of hostilities between ‘red’ and ‘blue’ states” as
witnessed in the 2004 presidential election. And, arguably, things got even worse
after the election of Obama in 2008 and then after the election of Trump in
2016.
But a (literal)
civil war? I can’t imagine how that would be even faintly possible at the
present time. How would the two sides mobilize? Where would they fight, and
how?
It seems to me that
Graham was just using inflated rhetoric to drum up support for the President.
If anything,
mobilizing churches to pray that the president be protected from his
enemies--such as the Democratic members of Congress who want to impeach him--is
exacerbating the polarization in the country rather than lessening the tensions.
Nevertheless,
praying for the President is a good thing--and I thought David Platt did a good
job of that on Sunday morning. (Check that out here.)
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