For Chrissakes!

My subject is Franklin Graham, one of President Bush's very-public religious confidants. Franklin's father,Billy, served President Nixon in a similar capacity. Billy's efforts were crowned with a kind of earthlyimmortality: he's on those White House tapes in the National Archives sharing anti-Semitic remarks with Nixonand never flinching or clearing his throat over the idea of using atomic bombs in Vietnam.

Franklin has pretty well replaced his ailing father in leading the huge Billy Graham organization. You maywonder about religious ministries being handed down like fifteenth-century dukedoms, but the practice isfairly common in America, and several of the nation's big ministries - the type of outfits that might becharacterized as Las Vegas Showstoppers for Jesus - have been handed down in this fashion. This happens inAmerican politics, too. After all, a hand-me-down evangelist serves a hand-me-down President who ran against(and lost the popular vote to) a hand-me-down politician from Tennessee.

It's not that Americans accept aristocracy, but in a nation of insanely-frenzied consumers, an establishedbrand name always still has some juice worth squeezing.

The youthful Franklin seems to have been a bit of a trial for his mom and dad, reportedly exhibiting moreinterest in sowing oats than saving souls. He had an obsession with guns one could interpret as slightly atodds with the message of the Prince of Peace. He may just have been reflecting the quaint traditions ofAmerica's Appalachian subculture - his home is the mountains of North Carolina - when he once cut down a treeby blasting away at it with an automatic weapon (I did not make this up). Apparently, he used to be fond ofgiving automatic pistols as gifts.

Well, at some point, I guess the lad realized he was burning out and going nowhere, and automatic weaponsare expensive when you like to give the very best, so Franklin had something like the President'sroad-to-Damascus experience. I doubt he recalled Henry the Fourth's saying Paris was worth a mass (Henry ofNavarre became King of France by adopting Catholicism). It would have weighed heavily that dad's ready-made,super-slick organization offered a handsome, steady income, all expenses paid, especially if Franklin had cometo recognize that his next-best career option might be itinerant bingo caller.

Redemption is one of America's great ongoing themes. It's the spiritual extension of all the plasticsurgery, injections, drugs, youth-inducing potions, diets, and tales of lives changed by lotteries orget-rich-quick schemes, but it does have to be the right kind of redemption. None of your consolations ofphilosophy, peace of the Buddha, wisdom of the Great Spirit, or following the Prophet will do. Lives liveddecently and peacefully from beginning to end are not admired because they don't make juicy entertainment.

The approved American redemption-story template includes years of inflicting hell on others, often byabusing whisky or drugs, finally being overcome by frightful (drug-induced or otherwise) visions of going tohell yourself, and then spending the rest of your life annoying every person who crosses your path with theopinion that he or she does not know the truth. About 85% of the nation's country-and Western singers andabout 95% of its evangelists spend their declining years sharing such tales in magazines, tapes, interviews,and sermons. It's a major industry.

This is all by way of background to Franklin's words about his new mission. I suppose it's possibleFranklin thinks Nazareth is a trailer park somewhere in North Carolina or Texas which would account for histhinking that the people in the Middle East haven't heard about Jesus, but, in any event, Franklin is nowgoing to tell them about Jesus, at least his gun-totting Appalachian version. Well, almost, but Franklin hasprobably been advised that proselytizing for conversion from Judaism is against the law in modern Israel. Witha Bush-appointed Proconsul, that kind of law shouldn't get in the way of bringing the good word to Iraqis,although he'll be a bit late to save the souls of those smashed and broken by American bombs.

Franklin's organization, Samaritan's Purse, claims that it intends only to bring relief services and notevangelism to Iraq, but how valid can this claim be? The Billy Graham organization for decades has worked onlyto convert people to its narrow notion of Christianity. It has been criticized even by other Christians forthe nature of its work - cranking out converts like sausages in a vast Midwestern meat-packing plant. Perhapswhen Franklin created his offshoot relief organization, Samaritan's Purse, it was in part a response to thiskind of criticism.

Franklin's own words on Islam over the last year hardly resemble a second Albert Schweitzer yearning tohelp fellow beings. His tone is militaristic and has the same nasty, parochial feel as the President's"us and them." One looks in vain for any generosity of spirit associated with the words of Jesus.

"We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's notthe son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a veryevil and wicked religion."

Franklin here makes no distinction between the nineteen individuals responsible for 9/11 and the world'shundreds of millions of Muslims, yet he seems never to have made the same kind of connections betweencriminals of other religious backgrounds and the religions themselves. Did the IRA's outrages elicit suchcomments about Catholicism?

"…the persecution or elimination of non-Muslims has been a cornerstone of Islam conquests and rulefor centuries."

I suppose it would be foolish to expect any sensible perspective on history from a man of Franklin'slimited learning. The work of people calling themselves Christians in countless wars, religious persecutions,and exterminations just since the Renaissance dwarfs the volume of spilled blood in all the rest of humanhistory. The Holocaust, the African slave trade, and the extermination of many aboriginal peoples were thework of people calling themselves Christians.

"I believe it is my responsibility to speak out against the terrible deeds that are committed as aresult of Islamic teaching."

Why should it be his responsibility to speak against these particular deeds and no others? Franklincertainly is not known as an advocate for the world's abused and downtrodden. One does not find himshouldering this responsibility over other terrible deeds, a number of them the dirty work of his owngovernment. No, his time goes to "crusades," the word used for decades by the Billy Grahamorganization to describe its assembly-line salvation gatherings.

The denomination with which the Graham family generally has been associated, the Southern Baptists, has anugly history in the United States. Extreme segregationists founded this denomination to keep blacks out oftheir churches and a century later, through the Civil Rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, SouthernBaptists were better known for opposing Dr. King's work than supporting it. The denomination's official viewon a woman's role in marriage is among the most parochial in the United States. Incidentally, the SouthernBaptists' Mission Board also aims at providing aid in Iraq. Jerry Vines, former president of the SouthernBaptists, described the Prophet Muhammad not very long ago as a "demon-possessed pedophile."

"There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, themilitary and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism."

These are the words of a man teaching suspicion and fear rather than understanding and brotherhood. One has toask what such comments have to do with evangelism or Christianity, but American fundamentalists often ignoreJesus' clear teaching on the matter and put their visions of government and secular affairs at the heart ofsermons and pronouncements. This suggests that politics, and a particularly nasty kind of politics, is atleast as much a driving force here as religion.

Franklin recently gave a Good Friday service at the Pentagon. Reading that, I had the absurd image of an earlyChristian preacher praying for Rome's Tenth Legion. True, there were probably no Christian legionaries at thetime, but the fact remains that the purpose of the Pentagon is exactly the same as that of the legions,professional killing for the state and its policies, a purpose totally incompatible with any words of Jesus.

But of course, the more apt comparison would be a few centuries later when the legions did their bloodywork for a so-called Christian empire.