In an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network this week, right-wing evangelist Franklin Graham declared that Christians have a duty to vote even if their options do not include a candidate with a strong biblical worldview:
“And I’m not going to tell people who to vote for, I’m not going to do that — let God tell you who to vote for,” he said. “You may have to hold your nose, you may have to decide which is the least heathen of the two heathen.”
Graham, who is travelling across the country for his Decision America tour, told CBN that he has no faith in either political party and that he left the Republican Party after congressional Republicans failed to defund Planned Parenthood. But he said America is at a “moral tipping point” and he denounced voices from “a left movement within the evangelical community” who he said were telling people not to vote if a particular candidate, seemingly a reference to Donald Trump, is the GOP nominee.
The goal of his tour, he said, is to encourage Christians to run for public office and vote for candidates who uphold biblical principles. The six-part pledge he wrote asks voters to promise to pray for the country and to vote in every election – “supporting, where possible, candidates who uphold biblical principles.”
Signers of Graham’s pledge also commit to “prayerfully consider running for office,” even though Graham told CBN that he has never considered doing so himself. He thinks he can do more, he said, by challenging the church and challenging Christians to get out and vote.
On previous stops on his Decision America tour this year, Graham has said that if every city in America had a Christian mayor we wouldn’t have “evil” and “wicked” laws that protect LGBT people from discrimination, and that there is “only one election left” to save America from godless secularism. In the midst of it all he found time to announce his support for a spectacularly unsuccessful boycott of Girl Scout Cookies called by St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson.
