Showing posts with label Richard Nixon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Nixon. Show all posts

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Stick to the job at hand, Franklin!

I have long been an admirer of evangelist Billy Graham.

For years, I financially supported his organization with small contributions.

My ministry and my life as a Christian have been enriched by attending two Billy Graham Schools of Evangelism.

And, in what turned out to be the penultimate evangelism campaign of his illustrious career, I served on five different committees for the Billy Graham Mission in Cincinnati, held at Paul Brown Stadium. I served (and was the only Lutheran on) the invitation committee that asked Dr. Graham to come to the Queen City. Later, I chaired a regional prayer team, two other teams, and, finally, as chair of the counseling team, that group of counselors who met people who came forward to give their lives to Christ after Graham issued his call to faith in Christ.

I've also read and learned a lot from Billy Graham's books like Facing Death, The Holy Spirit, Angels: God's Secret Agents, and others. Billy Graham's preaching and teaching have been a source of inspiration to me from the moment I came to faith in Jesus Christ.

Along with Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Phillipp Melanchthon, Martin Luther King, Jr., and my mentor, Pastor Bruce Schein, Billy Graham is one of my heroes as a Christian servant-leader.

But I have become disgusted with the overt political pronouncements being made by Mr. Graham's son, Franklin, now head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA).

Billy Graham grew close to presidents, of course, especially to Democrat Lyndon Johnson, for whom Graham almost decided to lead the War on Poverty. Graham was nearly as close to Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon.

[Billy Graham and Lyndon Johnson]

After being used by Nixon though, Billy Graham decided that while he would be available as a pastor to presidents, he would never again allow himself or his message to be co-opted by a political figure. He had bigger fish to fry: to make disciples of Jesus Christ by proclaiming the good news of new life and the forgiveness of sins for all who repent and trustingly surrender to Jesus.

When pastors or evangelists get involved with politics, they risk alienating groups of people who associate political parties and candidates with the good news, the gospel, and so reject Jesus with the candidates or parties they don't like.

Franklin Graham seems to ignore this lesson learned by his father. (One I've had to learn myself after mistakenly making a run for the state house of representatives while still serving as a pastor.) The younger Graham has recently made statements that seem to intimate that God preferred Donald Trump in the recent election.

That's ridiculous. I guarantee that I know as many committed, prayerful Christians who supported candidates other than Trump in the recent presidential election as those who did back the real estate mogul.

I think that it's fine for Graham to offer an opening prayer at the Trump Inauguration this coming Friday. I myself have offered prayers for the openings of a legislative session of the Ohio House of Representatives and, more recently, of a session of the Centerville (OH) City Council. We need to pray for public leaders, both in our public and private praying.

But both clergy and the Church should stand clear of seeming to stamp the approval of Jesus on particular political parties, policies, or candidates. It's an unauthorized misuse of Jesus' name and it inhibits our capacity to reach others with a far more important message than any that might be offered by any office-holder or political party: The message about Jesus than can transform believers from God's enemies to God's eternal friends.

Some day, when I'm no longer involved daily in pastoral ministry (I think I may retire in about ten or twenty years...I'm only 63 and feel as though I'm just getting started!), I may get engaged in publicly talking my politics.

But until then, I'm sticking with commending Christ. I'd rather that one person would come to faith in Jesus through the witness of Christians like me than see fifty million people vote for the candidate of my choice. The reason for that is simple: The candidate of my choice may be a bust, but Jesus will never let anyone down, now or in eternity. Only Jesus can give us life with God that never ends.

Just my two cents' worth.

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]


Saturday, January 29, 2011

David Frye is Dead

Back in the day, all our Nixon impressions were really impressions of Frye imitating Nixon. He suffered the same fate as that previously dealt to Kennedy impersonator Vaughn Meader, whose comedy career largely went away when JFK was assassinated.

Following Nixon's resignation, Frye was seldom seen or heard again. Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but as a source of income, it usually has pronounced ups and downs.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Does Clinton Sound Like Kerry on the War?

Ann Althouse thinks so. I see things a little differently. I commented:
Ann:
What Hillary Clinton is saying about Iraq reminds me a bit of what Eisenhower said about Korea in 1952 and Nixon said about Vietnam in 1968.

Eisenhower promised that he would go to Korea and that he would bring a rapid end to the war there. Ike's credibility was so enormous and his military credentials so impeccable that he could get away with what was, after all, a rather vague formulation. He did end the conflict there within six months, much to the relief of the American people, who had become disgusted with the conflict.

Although Nixon is often cited as saying he had secret plan to end the war, he never specifically said that. He spoke of achieving "peace with honor." He also frequently alluded to how Eisenhower, under whom he served as vice president, had quickly wrapped up the Korean War, implying that he would do something similar in Vietnam. Voters, disgusted with the management of the war, suspicious of the bases on which the US became engaged in it, yet still not in favor of immediate withdrawal, gave Nixon a mere 300,00-vote victory in the November, 1968 election.

Hillary Clinton's formulations are reminiscent of those of Eisenhower's and Nixon's. They needed to convince voters that they would manage their inherited conflicts better than the incumbents. But for both political and sound strategic reasons, they wanted to avoid divulging specific plans. (It's unlikely that either had such plans anyway.) Clinton who, as you say, is at least divulging more of her thinking than John Kerry, faces similar political and strategic imperatives.

But one thing that makes Clinton's discussions of Iraq today different from those earlier discussions is the existence of a large "withdraw now" contingent within the Democratic Party. Neither Eisenhower or Nixon had to placate such sentiments within the Republican Party of their days. Many Republicans, far from favoring withdrawal from either Korea or Vietnam, would have preferred deploying more troops, going nuclear, or doing anything to achieve "victory." There isn't a victory caucus in the Democratic Party.

Eisenhower could, politically, get away with a rapid end to the Korean conflict because he was a general and was massively popular. (Arguably the most popular public figure in the US since George Washington.)

Nixon though, had to play to his base, which is why his "peace with honor" formula was so shrewd. Everybody wanted peace. But "with honor" let his base--and the rest of the country which still overwhelmingly opposed precipitate withdrawal from Vietnam--know that the allegedly "new Nixon" was no peace-at-any-price pol.

It's interesting that Clinton, who served as a lawyer for one of the congressional Watergate committees and was a functionary of the 1972 McGovern campaign, appears to be attempting to swipe from Nixon's 1968 playbook.

Whether this will work for her or not, I don't know. Though she's trying to be Nixonian, the fact that she's Democrat, as much as the substance of what she's saying, may be a big reason that she's sounding like John Kerry to you these days.

Mark
What do you think?