Christianity Today's editorial has sparked a family fight about Billy Graham and Trump


As Christianity Today editor Mark Galli mentioned Thursday in his editorial calling for President Trump's removal from office, the evangelical magazine was founded by Billy Graham. One of his children, Franklin Graham, is among the president's evangelical abettors, and his response insisted the late evangelist was pro-Trump.
Billy Graham "would be very disappointed," Franklin wrote on Facebook. "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."
Another Graham family member disagreed: "A heavy hearted bravo to CT!" tweeted Boz Tchividjian, a grandson of Billy Graham who runs an organization which helps churches prevent and confront sexual abuse. "Well said on so many levels. I believe my grandfather would have had a similar perspective."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Graham served as an adviser to presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush. But after the scandals of the Nixon administration, he took a step back from politics, cautioning evangelicals against being "closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle, to preach to all the people, right and left," Graham said in 1981. "I haven't been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future."
In 2016, a Trump surrogate claimed Graham "prophesied" over Trump, but Graham's office denied the account, saying he simply signed a Bible with a generic greeting.
This is not Christianity Today's first critique of the Trump administration, its policies, or associated public figures, as Andrew Lewis, a University of Cincinnati professor who studies the Christian right in America, documented in a lengthy Twitter thread. But despite the magazine's willingness to buck Republican orthodoxy, it is hardly the "far left" or "liberal" institution Trump, Franklin Graham, and Liberty University's Jerry Fallwell, Jr. have claimed since the editorial dropped.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
-
Five best ways to save money at the petrol pump
The Explainer You don't have to wait for petrol prices to fall to reduce your fuel costs
-
Exurbs: America's biggest housing trend you haven't heard of
Under the Radar Northeastern exurbs were the nation's biggest housing markets in 2024
-
How to enjoy a coolcation in Sweden
The Week Recommends You won't break a sweat on Lake Asnen or underground at the Adventure Mine
-
Supreme Court allows transgender troop ban
speed read The US Supreme Court will let the Trump administration begin executing its ban on transgender military service members
-
Hollywood confounded by Trump's film tariff idea
speed read President Trump proposed a '100% tariff' on movies 'produced in foreign lands'
-
Trump offers migrants $1,000 to 'self-deport'
speed read The Department of Homeland Security says undocumented immigrants can leave the US in a more 'dignified way'
-
Trump is not sure he must follow the Constitution
speed read When asked about due process for migrants in a TV interview, President Trump said he didn't know whether he had to uphold the Fifth Amendment
-
Trump judge bars deportations under 1798 law
speed read A Trump appointee has ruled that the president's use of a wartime act for deportations is illegal
-
Trump ousts Waltz as NSA, taps him for UN role
speed read President Donald Trump removed Mike Waltz as national security adviser and nominated him as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
-
Trump blames Biden for tariffs-linked contraction
speed read The US economy shrank 0.3% in the first three months of 2025, the Commerce Department reported
-
Trump says he could bring back Ábrego García but won't
Speed Read At a rally to mark his 100th day in office, the president doubled down on his unpopular immigration and economic policies