Billy Graham Dead at 99

[WhatWouldJohnCrichtonDo?]

11 minutes ago, LilMissMetaphor said:

To be fair, I think that could be said of a lot (most? many?) men born in 1918.  

True. But my father-in-law was born 3 years earlier, and both of his daughters went to college. People differ, even within the same generation. 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

13 hours ago, Gnomewizard said:

I may be alone but I am not sad by his death and I am worried by the saint status he is given, people would be wise to not put him on a pedestal. The world has not lost a hero or a messenger of jesus. The world has lost another religious bigot and messenger of hate. May he rot in hell.

Found this comment under a Washington Post article about Bill Graham's death. I think it can mirror many people's feelings

Quote

This article — and the outraged expressed in some of the comments — has reminded me of Bette Davis' comment on the end of Joan Crawford:

"You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good… Joan Crawford is dead. Good."

 

[Queen]

Graham was vile towards LGBT people and therefore I don't mourn that he is dead. He was pretty antisemitic and sexist as well. And overall scary. The fact that he is by many seen as moderate is beyond my comprehension. No, not even if there are people way worse than him can he be seen as moderate. I got chocked when I found out he was Obama's and Bill Clinton's spiritual advisor as well, not just the conservative presidents' advisor. Obama tweeted how great he were and honestly I've never been more disappointed in him.

[Terrie]

He was a polite fundie, but still a fundie, and the kind who put his own advancement first. Hence his willingness to give Nixon a pass on antisemitism, even if he didn't agree. And his anti-woman and anti-LGBT views were all him. 

[Granwych]

2 hours ago, PennySycamore said:

Bunny and Ned seem to have chosen to live quiet lives unlike Gigi, Anne and Franklin. (Maybe I’m wrong about that though.)  It’s a shame that Bunny was not allow to go to nursing school.

Shoot, my father told me he wasn't going to pay for college for me and my three sisters, since we were all going to become housewives anyway.  I paid for nursing school my own damn self, graduated, and worked till retirement.

[JMO]

Considering all the fundies on IG are trotting out quotes in remembrance of him I'm going to side with those calling out his negative traits. I'm also with @Maggie Mae, I thought he was already long gone. 

[Cleopatra7]

2 hours ago, Queen said:

I got chocked when I found out he was Obama's and Bill Clinton's spiritual advisor as well, not just the conservative presidents' advisor. Obama tweeted how great he were and honestly I've never been more disappointed in him.

Billy Graham had been spiritually advising presidents since the days of Truman (ie 1940s). Clearly it’s nice work if you can get it. For me, the embrace of Graham by Clinton and Obama was part of the continuous unrequited love between establishment Democrats and white religious conservatives and more evidence for how the Religious Right sets the terms of the religious-political conversation in the US. White evangelicalism, especially the type promoted by Graham, is basically the default form of religion in the US and all other types of religion are compared with how much or how little they resemble this ideal type.

[hoipolloi]

3 hours ago, LilMissMetaphor said:

To be fair, I think that could be said of a lot (most? many?) men born in 1918.  

Considering he met his wife at college, maybe Billy was just ahead of his time in fundie hypocrisy, like many of our snarkees who went to college but have decided it's too evil for their kids.

[louisa05]

My grandfather, born in 1910, was adamant that his daughters be educated beyond high school. 

The first thing I think of regarding Billy Graham is the misogynistic and abhorrent "Billy Graham Rule". Mike Pence has brought it to the forefront again. For those who don't recall, it is the practice of a married man never being alone in any setting whatsoever with a woman other than one's spouse. 

One of my departments at Christian school was two men and me. One followed this rule. If we were having a department meeting, I was not allowed to enter the room if he was there and the other man was not yet. I was also not allowed to speak to him about anything without someone else present. It was absolutely absurd and in some cases resulted in me being left out of decisions or unaware of things. I can only imagine how this is magnified for women dealing with it in other work settings where much more collaboration is required. 

[Hane]

@Cleopatra7, last night on NPR I heard that Truman wasn’t a huge fan of Billy Graham, and was quoted as saying Graham “seemed to be only out for the money.”

[GenerationCedarchip]

6 hours ago, PennySycamore said:

Bunny and Ned seem to have chosen to live quiet lives unlike Gigi, Anne and Franklin. (Maybe I’m wrong about that though.)  It’s a shame that Bunny was not allow to go to nursing school.

I'd never heard the story about Bunny and nursing school but that makes me sad.

 

I think Bunny and Ned are a little more out of the mainstream spotlight but they've done things well-known in Christian circles.  Ned was (not sure if he still is) a missionary in China and later headed up a mission agency. Bunny had a hard life. She married young and after nearly 20 years, divorced after her husband cheated on her. Out of that, she started a ministry to  what she described as "wounded Christians." She later became an ordained minister which is a big no-no in fundie circles but I still see copies of her book In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart in plenty of conservative church libraries around here.

[KnittingOwl]

I was really surprised by the friendship between Billy Graham and Queen Elizabeth.  I started reading about it after watching Season 2 of The Crown.  Time has a good summary that just came out: http://time.com/5168217/queen-billy-graham-friendship/

[Cleopatra7]

2 hours ago, Hane said:

@Cleopatra7, last night on NPR I heard that Truman wasn’t a huge fan of Billy Graham, and was quoted as saying Graham “seemed to be only out for the money.”

To me, this speaks volumes about the political power of white evangelicalism in the US if a president has have to have a man he neither likes or respects as his spiritual advisor for the optics. I assume this is also why Obama invited Rick Warren to his first inauguration. Granted, I don’t know what Obama’s real opinion of Warren is, but it doesn’t really matter; the point is that including Warren was a way to show that he has respect for white evangelicalism. Not that that respect was ever reciprocated...

[Hane]

@Cleopatra7, absolutely. I wonder whether many of the recent presidents would even give lip service to their “Christianity” if religion weren’t so egregiously politicized in the US. Once again, I return to Jeff Sharlet’s “The Family,” which documents Dominionism’s deep roots in American politics. The innocuous-seeming National Prayer Breakfast is part of it, and has become so powerful that even the least religious, most left-of-center presidents dare not blow it off.

[MamaJunebug]

7 hours ago, LilMissMetaphor said:

To be fair, I think that could be said of a lot (most? many?) men born in 1918.  

BDJB: born 1916. Expected ALL his children, no exceptions!, to be college-prepped for the work world.

GranddaddyJB: born 1880. Same expectations. One of his sons (not my dad)  blew off college to get married. Broke Grandpa’s heart. 

Oh — and both my ancestors were straight-up Lutheran Christians.  Neither *ever* found Scripture calling women to kowtow. 

2 hours ago, GenerationCedarchip said:

I'd never heard the story about Bunny and nursing school but that makes me sad.

 

I think Bunny and Ned are a little more out of the mainstream spotlight but they've done things well-known in Christian circles.  Ned was (not sure if he still is) a missionary in China and later headed up a mission agency. Bunny had a hard life. She married young and after nearly 20 years, divorced after her husband cheated on her. Out of that, she started a ministry to  what she described as "wounded Christians." She later became an ordained minister which is a big no-no in fundie circles but I still see copies of her book In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart in plenty of conservative church libraries around here.

Is Bunny the one who married Tchvidjian and had Boz and Tullian?

[GeoBQn]

Billy Graham on Jews

[LilMissMetaphor]

35 minutes ago, MamaJunebug said:

BDJB: born 1916. Expected ALL his children, no exceptions!, to be college-prepped for the work world.

GranddaddyJB: born 1880. Same expectations. One of his sons (not my dad)  blew off college to get married. Broke Grandpa’s heart. 

Oh — and both my ancestors were straight-up Lutheran Christians.  Neither *ever* found Scripture calling women to kowtow. 

I know.  There are always exceptions.  My dad was born in rural Calvinist Holland in 1940.  Still expected all his daughters to sign up for shop classes and take mechanical aptitude tests along with the boys...and going to university wasn't even a choice, we had to , no SAHDs happening in our family.  But I still think your average man, even if personally inclined to see woman as his natural equal, may still be swayed negatively towards chauvinism by cultural conditioning (depending on the era he's born into and society he's surrounded by.)   

 

[BullyJBG]

1 hour ago, MamaJunebug said:

 

Is Bunny the one who married Tchvidjian and had Boz and Tullian?

No, that was Gigi the oldest daughter. Bunny, where did she say she wasn't allowed to go to nursing school? In In Every Pew Sits a Broken Heart, she talked about dropping out of college to marry her first husband who then cheated on her, and said her parents weren't happy about that.  But that yes, she looked forward to the "highest calling of a woman" which was to be a wife and mom.

[Howl]

Came across this in the new Opinion section of HuffPo, which lays out how Billy Graham politicized religion by breaking down the wall between church and state.    

Excerpt from Billy Graham’s Legacy Is Conflating White Christianity And Patriotism

Quote

World-famous evangelist Billy Graham died on Feb. 21, 2018. In the wake of his passing, there will be a grappling with and a whitewashing of his legacy ― his spiritual advisement to every president from Eisenhower to Obama and his loathsome attitudes toward LGBTQ people, for instance. But it’s also worth noting that the toxic brand of evangelicalism that has kneecapped American politics, the full merging of patriotism and Christianity, would not have been possible without Graham’s relentless pursuit of civil religion. (for full text click on the title)

 

[Cleopatra7]

I’m currently reading a book on Fuller Seminary by George Marsden, a scholar of evangelicalism and fundamentalism, and he says that one of the most important institutions in American evangelicalism is that of the personal empire that surrounds a popular evangelist. Obviously, Billy Graham would be an example, but so would Bill Gothard, Jerry Falwell, and Doug Phillips is a Tool (before he decided to ditch the religion game and cavort with half naked Continental types). To move to Max Weber, authority in American evangelicalism is a weird mixture of charismatic authority, bureaucratic authority, and patriarchal authority gone haywire. Like American celebrity culture in general, evangelicalism is a place where you can become fabulously wealthy and influential even if your only qualification is being able to preach marathon sermons and hawk licensed merchandise.

[Howl]

Over at The Wartburg Watch, there seems to be an informal zero tolerance policy for any criticism of Billy Graham in the comments section of the post discussing his death and legacy. 

[hoipolloi]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

Over at The Wartburg Watch, there seems to be an informal zero tolerance policy for any criticism of Billy Graham in the comments section of the post discussing his death and legacy. 

Noticed that too. Many of them seem to be surprised that not everyone thinks Billy Graham was a great guy.

 

[ophelia]

On 22.2.2018 at 6:47 PM, louisa05 said:

The first thing I think of regarding Billy Graham is the misogynistic and abhorrent "Billy Graham Rule". Mike Pence has brought it to the forefront again. For those who don't recall, it is the practice of a married man never being alone in any setting whatsoever with a woman other than one's spouse. 

Never heard of this rule before and it sounds insanely stupid.

Just another proof that all these manly man fundies who want to rule the world are actually crybabies in suits. 

[formergothardite]

Billy Graham is one of those people like Mother Teresa who are remembered as being much better people than they really were. 

 

[Granwych]

18 minutes ago, formergothardite said:

Billy Graham is one of those people like Mother Teresa who are remembered as being much better people than they really were. 

 

I want to read Christopher Hitchens' book on Mother Teresa even though I know Il'' be majorly disillusioned.