Billy Graham Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

With God On Our Side

Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Recent events have gotten the song With God On Our Side stuck in my mind. Yes, the Bob Dylan original, but also the Neville Brothers version.

The antepenultimate verse:

But now we got weapons of chemical dust

If fire them, we’re forced to, then fire them we must

One push of the button, and a shot the world wide

And you never ask questions when God’s on your side

The final verse:

So now as I’m leavin’ – I’m weary as Hell

The confusion I’m feelin’ ain’t no tongue can tell

The words fill my head, and fall to the floor

That if God’s on our side, He’ll stop the next war

When I was in fourth grade, two things happened. I had a “born again” experience watching a Billy Graham revival. And I learned the lyrics to the fourth and final verse of the Star Spangled Banner, which I still know by heart.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause, it is just,
And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

At 9, I was fully inculcated in the mythos of God and country. But by the time I was 16, the linkage began to fray.

Atomic Cafe

Still, I “get” it. When I saw the movie Atomic Cafe in the early 1980s, I was most taken by the songs that linked the struggle for nuclear supremacy with religiosity, none more than Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb by Lowell Blanchard.

Everybody’s worried ’bout the atomic bomb

But nobody’s worried about the day my Lord will come

When he hits (great God almighty) like an atom bomb

When he comes, when he comes

Here are versions by the Soul Stirrers and the Pilgrim Travelers.

O.M.G.

I found reports that “US military commanders have been invoking extremist Christian rhetoric about biblical ‘end times’ to justify involvement in the Iran war to troops” to be heretical to true Christianity.

“The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) says it has received more than 200 complaints from service members across all branches of the armed forces, including the Marines, Air Force, and Space Force.”

One noncommissioned officer said their commander had “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. He said that [FOTUS] has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

This is disturbing but hardly surprising. “Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, is known for his embrace of Christian nationalism. He previously endorsed the doctrine of “sphere sovereignty”, a worldview derived from the extremist beliefs of Christian reconstructionism (CR). The philosophy calls for capital punishment for homosexuality and strictly patriarchal families and churches.”

A current meme online: “If your pastor is telling you that murdering Iranians will hasten the return of Jesus, you’re not a church member. You’re a cult member.”

Confronting Christian nationalism

I really loved what Rep. James Talarico, now the Democratic candidate for the US Senate seat in Texas, had to say on the Stephen Colbert YouTube interview.

SC: One of the things that gotten you attention out there is that you are a Presbyterian seminarian…

JT: The right attempts to co-opt Christianity… But the religious right is a largely a political movement that references spirituality… They convinced a lot of our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage. Two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Two issues that Jesus never talked about.

Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how you and I and every one of our fellow believers how we’re going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved. By feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. Nothing about going to church, nothing about voting Republican. It was all about how you treat other people…

Two commandments

JT: My granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas. And when I was little, he told me that Christianity is a simple religion. Not an easy religion, he would always clarify, but a simple religion, because Jesus gave us two commandments. Love God and love neighbor. And there was no exception to that second commandment.

immigration status or religious affiliation. And it’s why I have fought so hard for the separation of church and state in the state capital in Texas

JT: That’s right.

JT: Well, because we are called to love all of our neighbors, including our Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, agnostic, and atheist neighbors. And forcing our religion down their throats is not love.

First Amendment

JT: It’s why I fought so hard for that sacred separation in our First Amendment. Because my granddad, he raised me to believe that that boundary between church and state doesn’t just benefit the state or our democracy -although it certainly does -but it also benefits the church.

Because when the church gets too cozy with political power, it loses its prophetic voice, its ability to speak truth to power, its ability to imagine a completely different world. And so this separation between church and state is something we have to safeguard. It’s something we have to fight for.

And I think we need someone in the US Senate who is going to confront Christian nationalism and tell the truth, which is that there is nothing Christian about Christian nationalism. It is the the worship of power in the name of Christ. And it is a betrayal of Jesus of Nazareth.

It goes on from there, but you get the point: Christian nationalism is not Christianity.

Z is for survivor Louis Zamperini

Louie Zamperini’s remarkable story of survival garnered new attention in 2010 with the Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken, which hit #1 on the New York Times best-seller list.

Stuck for a Z topic, the Daughter said, “How about Louis Zamperini?” Of course. She read parts of Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010), a biography of Zamperini by Laura Hillenbrand, for her English class.

Louis, born on January 26, 1917 in Olean, NY to Italian immigrant parents, grew up a troublemaker in Torrance, California. As a child, he was smoking and drinking, stealing and fighting. Trying to impress some high school girls, he joined the school’s track team, and ended up breaking a national high school record, running the mile in only 4 minutes, 21 seconds.

Zamperini competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and even met Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Olympics. He didn’t medal, though he seemed like a sure bet for the 1940 team, but the games were called off because of World War II.

Louis Zamperini enlisted in the Army Air Corps in September 1941, cheating death several times as a B-24 bombardier. His missions included a famous December 1942 air raid on Wake Island. .

On May 27, 1943, Zamperini and his crew were participating in a search and rescue mission over the Pacific when their plane suddenly lost power to two of its engines, careening into the sea. Zamperini and two others were the only ones of an 11-man crew to initially survive.

One of the trio, Francis McNamara, perished after 33 days at sea. Zamperini and Russell Allen Phillips drifted for another two weeks before being captured by the Japanese Navy near the Marshall Islands.

Zamperini was tortured daily as a POW. Over the next two years, he also suffered from disease, exposure, and starvation. The Japanese tried to use him as a propaganda tool, but once he agreed to read a message telling his parents he was alive, he refused to cooperate any further.

After the war, he used alcohol to fight the nightmares. Zamperini says he was saved from his post-war trauma after witnessing a sermon by the evangelical preacher Billy Graham in 1949.

In 1950, Zamperini returned to Japan for the first time since his liberation to address some Japanese war criminals. He shook hands and embraced many of his old camp guards. He became an inspirational speaker, and he wrote two memoirs, both titled Devil at My Heels (1956 and 2003).

Zamperini’s remarkable story of survival garnered new attention in 2010 with the Hillenbrand book, which hit #1 on the New York Times best-seller list. Louis became a celebrity all over again when he charmingly made the rounds with Angelina Jolie, who was directing the film Unbroken, based on the book, starring Jack O’Connell as Louis, which was released on Christmas Day 2014.

Louis Zamperini died from pneumonia on July 2, 2014.

There’s a movie sequel to Unbroken, Path To Redemption (2017), with Samuel Hunt as Zamperini and Will Graham playing his grandfather, Billy Graham.

For ABC Wednesday

Billy Graham, at peace with God

Billy Graham actively discouraged Jerry Falwell, a founder of the Moral Majority, from mixing religion and politics.

When I was nine years old, while watching a Billy Graham crusade on television, I had a “born again” experience. I don’t remember whose house I was at, but it was on Oak Street, between Winding Way and Dickinson Street, across the street and half a block from my church in Binghamton, NY.

It was a specific theology that wasn’t so different, I suppose, from what I learned from Trinity AME Zion, but it resonated so much that, somehow, I got recruited by the secretary at my school, Pat, for Friday Night Bible Club. My sister Leslie soon went as well, and we attended for several years.

I’m fairly sure it was Pat who gave me a copy of Peace with God, Graham’s 1952 classic book about salvation. This codified my budding theology so that I thought, as did others, that I would grow up to be a preacher.

I could quote Scripture pretty darn well in those days. Psalm 119:11 – “Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee.” Didn’t have to look it up, even after all these years.

By 9th grade, I started carrying around my Bible to school. By 10th grade, my friend Bobby and I would walk over two miles to the Primitive Methodist Church in Johnson City every Sunday afternoon for more fundamentalist training, and then usually walk back.

I really became “holier than thou.” Even when some of my friends drank and smoked pot, in my presence, I remained resolute. Until I wasn’t.

When I understood that all those people in India and China who never accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, who perhaps never really even heard of him, were supposedly going to go to a literally fiery pit called Hell – which is why why we “needed” so many missionaries – I simply couldn’t accept that.

Fairly soon thereafter, I fell away from this belief system, which I had initially learned from Billy Graham, and it took a long time to find my way back to a theology that made sense to me.

I started re-examining the preacher. His close ties with Presidents, when I had been younger, I saw as a good thing in spreading the Word.

His friendship with Richard Nixon, in particular, became problematic for me, as I believed even by my freshman year in college that Graham was co-opted by the power elite, rather than speaking truth to that power.

To his credit, Graham eventually came to that same conclusion himself. He actively discouraged Jerry Falwell, a founder of the Moral Majority, from mixing religion and politics.

“Evangelicals can’t be 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, according to Time magazine. “I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.”

I have a soft spot in my heart for Billy Graham, despite his significant shortcomings, as accurately laid out by Arthur. Not so for his dreadful son Franklin, whose appearance in Albany in 2016, I protested.