At an April 1 White House event, Franklin Graham said a prayer referencing Esther, the Old Testament book in which the Jewish people faced destruction by the Persians. Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse, thanked God for raising up President Trump “for such a time as this” (Esther 4:14).
In response, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson accused U.S. Protestant leaders of being “spiritually corrupt,” saying, “They’re not preaching Christianity, not just because of their fealty to Israel, which is bizarre and kind of hard to understand.” On an “even deeper level,” he added, high-profile Protestant leaders are “preaching a religion that bears no resemblance to Christianity” and is “not what the gospels describe.”
Carlson, a former Fox News anchor, has been critical of Christian Zionism and of Graham specifically. Last month, Carlson said Graham had called him an antisemite—a claim Graham denied.
RELATED: Tucker Carlson Claims Franklin Graham Called Him an ‘Antisemite’; Graham Denies Claim
Tucker Carlson: Franklin Graham’s Prayer Endorsed the ‘Murder of Civilians’
On the April 2 edition of “The Tucker Carlson Show,” the host—who says he’s a Christian but not a “very good” one—claimed we’re seeing “the end of whatever American Protestant Christianity, one of the greatest and most positive forces in the history of this world…became after the Second World War, which is something unrecognizable.”
Although Carlson said his point wasn’t “to beat up on poor Franklin Graham,” he used the evangelist’s White House prayer to back up his claim about Protestantism’s decline. Graham, son of late evangelist Billy Graham, prayed in the Oval Office on April 1 that God would protect President Donald Trump and help him win the war with Iran.
Graham prayed, in part:
Father, you tell us in the book of Esther that the Persians, the Iranians, were wanting to kill every Jew, woman, child, and do it all in one day. But you raised up Esther to save the Jewish people. Father, we thank you. Today, the Iranians, the wicked regime of this government, wants to kill every Jew and destroy them with an atomic fire. But you have raised up President Trump. You’ve raised him up for such a time as this. And Father, we pray that you’ll give him victory.
Graham asked God to protect American military members, and he also prayed “for the people of Iran who want freedom, to be set free from these Islamic lunatics.” He concluded by thanking God for sending his Son to die for our sins and for raising Jesus back to life.
Carlson criticized Graham for not requesting “wisdom and restraint” but appearing “to endorse the murder of civilians, which is a war crime. But more important, it’s a moral crime.” Carlson continued, “You can’t kill people who have committed no crime, who did nothing wrong. You can’t murder the innocent, you can’t kill kids and women. Yet Franklin Graham is up there standing at the podium praying for that.”
In response to a prayer from Franklin Graham, commentator Tucker Carlson accused U.S. Protestant leaders of being spiritually corrupt.Click to Post
