Yesterday, it was reported that the Army had rescinded its invitation to Franklin Graham to speak at a National Day of Prayer event at the Pentagon due to his past attacks on Islam.
Not surprisingly, Religious Right activists are upset.
While Gordon Klingenschmitt focuses his ire on Mickey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, TVC’s Andrea Lafferty blamed CAIR:
Nihad Awad, a founder of the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its chief public spokesman, was the first to start taking a victory lap and announced that evangelist Franklin Graham was “disinvited” from a National Day of Prayer ceremony at the Pentagon.
“This attack on Franklin Graham and Christians was engineered by CAIR and it has the fingerprints of Barack Obama’s White House all over it,” said Traditional Values Coalition Executive Director Andrea Lafferty.
“Nihad Awad and CAIR offer us a preview of what America will be like if they are ever successful. Playing by their rules – shariah law—there is no separation of church and state. There is one state religion and Islam is it. There is zero tolerance for anything at variance with Islam, particularly if it’s Christian or Jewish.
For this part, FRC’s Tony Perkins claimed the decision is an attack on the religious freedom of all Christians:
The fact that he has theological differences with Islam, differences wholly in keeping with the teachings of the New Testament, and that he has expressed them publicly, is now being used by anti-Christian zealots in a manner offensive to the freedom of religion guaranteed by the very Constitution military leaders are sworn to uphold.
“This decision is further evidence that the leadership of our nation’s military has been impaired by the politically correct culture being advanced by this Administration. Under this Administration’s watch we are seeing the First Amendment, designed to protect the religious exercise of Americans, retooled into a sword to sever America’s ties with orthodox Christianity.
“For those Christian leaders who have avoided the controversy of political issues, saying they just wanted to preach the gospel – this should be a wake up call!”
And never one to be outdone, the AFA’s Bryan Fischer sees it as proof that our military has been taken over by “fundamentalist Muslims and homosexual activists”:
Bottom line: you want to know who’s now running the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy and the Marines and calling the shots where it counts? Fundamentalist Muslims and homosexual activists.
In fact, I’ll predict that there will be a day of prayer at the Pentagon on May 6, and it will feature a Muslim imam, a homosexual clergyman, and no conservative Christians of any kind.
This is not your father’s military. It’s not even your father’s country anymore.
