Nearly 200 Christian Leaders Sign Open Letter Opposing Christianity Today's Editorial
A recent editorial in Christianity Today called for President Donald Trump’s removal from office and challenged evangelicals who continue to support the president to “remember who you are and whom you serve.”
An open letter signed by nearly 200 Christian leaders, however, said the editorial “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity” of millions of Christians.
“We have done our best to give evangelical Trump supporters their due, to try to understand their point of view, to see the prudential nature of so many political decisions they have made regarding Mr. Trump,” editor-in-chief Mark Galli wrote in the editorial, published Thursday.
“To use an old cliché, it’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.”
Evangelist Franklin Graham, whose father, the Rev. Billy Graham, founded Christianity Today, responded to the editorial and claimed his father would not approve.
“The list of accomplishments is long, but for me as a Christian, the fact that he is the most pro-life president in modern history is extremely important — and Christianity Today wants us to ignore that, to say it doesn’t count?” Graham wrote. “The President has been a staunch defender of religious freedom at home and around the world — and Christianity Today wants us to ignore that?”
“Christianity Today said it’s time to call a spade a spade. The spade is this — Christianity Today has been used by the left for their political agenda.”
Graham wasn’t the only Christian leader who spoke out against Christianity Today’s editorial.
Nearly 200 other Christian leaders — including leaders from Bethel Church and Focus on the Family Founder James Dobson — signed an open letter to the publication’s president, Timothy Dalrymple, that said the editorial “offensively questioned the spiritual integrity and Christian witness of tens-of-millions of believers who take seriously their civic and moral obligations.”
The letter cited an interview Galli gave to CNN in which he said that Christians on the far-right” didn’t read CT and claimed that those individuals would be “as dismissive of the magazine as President Trump has shown to be.”
The leaders who signed the letter rebuked the label.
“We are Bible-believing Christians and patriotic Americans who are simply grateful that our president has sought our advice as his administration has advanced policies that protect the unborn, promote religious freedom, reform our criminal justice system, contribute to strong working families through paid family leave, protect the freedom of conscience, prioritize parental rights, and ensure that our foreign policy aligns with our values while making our world safer, including through our support of the State of Israel,” the letter read.
The letter recognized that the political system is “a reflection of the fallen world within which we live.”
“We are proud to be numbered among those in history who, like Jesus, have been pretentiously accused of having too much grace for tax collectors and sinners, and we take deeply our personal responsibility to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s — our public service,” the letter went on.
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr., Bethel Music artists Brian and Jenn Johnson and DC Talk and Newsboys lead Michael Tait were also among the nearly 200 leaders who signed the open letter.
In response to Galli’s article, Dalrymple wrote his own editorial in which he denied the claims made by both Franklin Graham and Trump that the magazine had become “far left.”
“Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness,” he wrote.
He continued by expressing the publication’s convictions to remain critical of an “an extravagantly immoral candidate” as well as the publication’s desire for a peaceful conversation among evangelicals.
Dalrymple specifically mentioned the open letter published in the Christian Post and his hopes that it would lead to “the beginning of a dialogue.”
“We hold fast to our view that the wholehearted evangelical embrace of Trump has been enormously costly,” Dalrymple wrote, “but we are committed to irenic conversation with men and women of good faith who believe otherwise.”
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