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 Response to Franklin Graham

Franklin Graham wrote an insensitive facebook post and the Sojourners are responding in the name of Christ and love.


Here is an excerpt:

Quote:
An Open Letter to Reverend Franklin Graham

Dear Rev. Graham,

We write to you in the spirit of Matthew 18: we aim to reconcile with you. You have sinned against us, fellow members of the body of Christ. While your comments on March 12 were just a Facebook post, your post was shared by more than 83,000 people and liked by nearly 200,000 as of Monday morning, March 14, 2015. Your words hurt and influenced thousands. Therefore, we must respond publicly so that those you hurt might know you have received a reply and the hundreds of thousands you influenced might know that following your lead on this issue will break the body of Christ further.

Frankly, Rev. Graham, your insistence that “Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else” “Listen up,” was crude, insensitive, and paternalistic. Your comments betrayed the confidence that your brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those of color, have afforded your father’s ministry for decades. Your instructions oversimplified a complex and critical problem facing the nation and minimized the testimonies and wisdom of people of color and experts of every hue, including six police commissioners that served on the president’s task force on policing reform.



http://sojo.net/blogs/2015/03/19/open-letter-franklin-graham

 2015/3/19 13:32
TMK
Member



Joined: 2012/2/8
Posts: 6650
NC, USA

 Re: Response to Franklin Graham

I wish they would simply respond to the point made in his post rather than spouting rhetoric we have heard ad nauseum.

It makes them seem disengenous.

The truth is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, that a person will not be injured by police if they 1) don't commit a crime or 2) don't resist when arrested.

I realize there may be exceptions but in today's society it seems generally this would be true, regardless of a person's race.

In regard to "mass incarceration" are they arguing those incarcerated have committed no crime deserving same? If so, I agree that would be a travesty. But I strongly suspect that is not the case.


_________________
Todd

 2015/3/19 13:50Profile









 Re:

When looking at the history of America, it was lawful and legal to own slaves and to persecute and abuse blacks and others.

The laws in the land are still not perfect, nor will they ever be because Christ's ways go deeper than the letter of the (any) laws and His ways are perfect.

There are numerous studies to that show and expose that Blacks are profiled and thrown in jail longer and quicker than their white counterparts. Among other racial biases.

Franklin Graham is speaking ignorantly. The situation and solution aren't simple. These leaders bind together to hopefully illuminate Graham. And I for one, am with them.

 2015/3/19 14:27
dolfan
Member



Joined: 2011/8/23
Posts: 1727
Tennessee, but my home's in Alabama

 Re:

Wow.

I had no idea he had said that.

Police are increasingly amok and increasingly act as government thugs. Just last month in Madison, AL, police threw an old man from India to the ground for NO REASON. Broke his neck. He was visiting his son in an affluent neighborhood and he was tackled and slammed HARD to the ground when he did not "obey" a simple command to stand still. He is elderly, thin, was unarmed and did not speak good English.

Police have a horrible job. But, as time passes and Paul's aduration regarding civil authorities as enemies of God's people (yet servants to bring about His judgment) becomes more apparent, the lie is put to Graham's reasoning.

We are not to MERELY obey and submit to these human adversaries. We can love them while not subjecting our hearts to tyranny. We can love them while saying, "There is one God and you, O arm of the law are not Him. We can obey God and submit to powerful, armed thugs with badges in love. But, let us not confuse submission with subjection to tyranny. As the love of many waxes cold, and power is the overarching lust of government and its agents, we should see that things are deteriorating rightly as they must. Jesus is coming, and the powers of civil government will yield, submit, subject, burn and confess His lordship in their own judgment. We rightly leave that to Him.

Meanwhile, Graham is wrong. This relates back to my post past week. I never dreamed he would follow that earlier comment with this one. I teach my daughter that government is a God ordained evil that He tolerates and utilizes as man rejects His authority. Government is not to be loved, nations are not to be revered, and societal orders are not to be venerated. I am fully Scriptural here. She has one Potentate. One Nation, His Kingdom. One Law -- His Word. One Hope -- His Redemption. One Enemy -- Satan and his spiritual wickedness in high places in Earth, and his agents in flesh, which include civil government from the UN to the Dog Catcher. She is called to a royal priesthood, not a ruling policehood. She is part of a peculiar people, not a patriotic one. She belongs to a holy nation called out of darkness and into Christ's marvelous light, not to an unholy fallen conglomerate of fleshly interests aligned against Jesus. That is her hope, not.....this. I hammer this home as often as I can.

Graham has no idea what reality is in the American street. He can pontificate about parenting all he wants. Fact is America long ago planned and carried out the substitution of the plantation with the prison-house and every politicial party and stripe has coalesced with intent to subject black people to a life of poverty, want and servitude, of drunkenness, divorce, illegitimacy and criminal activity born of hopelessness, and the powers have long leveraged the fallout of their design to grow their own power and to ingratiate the people to them for their controved protection, amassing great wealth to themselves in the form of revenue and political control.

Graham is screaming at the outcome of the problem, not the cause of it.

I do not care one whit for Sojourners and do not endorse them. The whole lot of them is wrong. Satan is behind all of this and we should not be ignorant of his devices, especially now. Be sober, be vigilant. Do not believe anyone who tells you we are good.


_________________
Tim

 2015/3/19 15:34Profile









 Re:

I do enjoy the Sojourners a little but I don't fully endorse all of their perspectives.

Anywho, dolfan, your comments, in the quote below, are marvelous. I really enjoy how precise and eloquent they are.

Quote:
Dolfan said: I teach my daughter that government is a God ordained evil that He tolerates and utilizes as man rejects His authority. Government is not to be loved, nations are not to be revered, and societal orders are not to be venerated.

 2015/3/19 15:52
brothagary
Member



Joined: 2011/10/23
Posts: 2556


 Re:

iv just read the full letter here , and you brothers have all taken frank out of context ,,

The way im reading this letter is that he is against that sort of racist comments and the comments that you are suggesting he is making are the verry comments from some unknown source that he is refuting...


look at this




Dear Rev. Graham,

We write to you in the spirit of Matthew 18: we aim to reconcile with you. You have sinned against us, fellow members of the body of Christ. While your comments on March 12 were just a Facebook post, your post was shared by more than 83,000 people and liked by nearly 200,000 as of Monday morning, March 14, 2015. Your words hurt and influenced thousands. Therefore, we must respond publicly so that those you hurt might know you have received a reply and the hundreds of thousands you influenced might know that following your lead on this issue will break the body of Christ further.

Frankly, Rev. Graham, your insistence that “Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else” “Listen up,” was crude, insensitive, and paternalistic. Your comments betrayed the confidence that your brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those of color, have afforded your father’s ministry for decades. Your instructions oversimplified a complex and critical problem facing the nation and minimized the testimonies and wisdom of people of color and experts of every hue, including six police commissioners that served on the president’s task force on policing reform.

In the nadir of your commentary, you tell everyone to “OBEY” any instruction from authorities and suggest that the recent shootings of unarmed citizens “might have been avoided” if the victims had submitted to authority.

And you bluntly insist, “It’s as simple as that.”

It is not that simple. As a leader in the church, you are called to be an ambassador of reconciliation. The fact that you identify a widely acknowledged social injustice as “simple” reveals your lack of empathy and understanding of the depth of sin that some in the body have suffered under the weight of our broken justice system. It also reveals a cavalier disregard for the enduring impacts and outcomes of the legal regimes that enslaved and oppressed people of color, made in the image of God — from Native American genocide and containment, to colonial and antebellum slavery, through Jim Crow and peonage, to our current system of mass incarceration and criminalization.

As your brothers and sisters in Christ, who are also called to lead the body, we are disappointed and grieved by your abuse of the Holy Scriptures. You lifted Hebrews 13:17 out of its biblical context and misappropriated it in a way that encourages believers to acquiesce to an injustice that God hates. That text refers to church leadership, not the secular leadership of Caesar.

Are you also aware that your commentary resonates with the types of misinterpretations and rhetoric echoed by many in the antebellum church? Are you aware that the southern slavocracy validated the systematic subjugation of human beings made in the image of God by instructing these enslaved human beings to “obey their masters because the Bible instructed them to do so?”

Your blanket insistence on obedience in every situation exposes an ignorance of church history. God called Moses to resist and disobey unjust authority. Joseph and Mary were led by the Spirit to seek asylum in Egypt, disobeying the unjust decrees passed down by authority figures in order to ensure the safety of Jesus. And Paul himself resisted authority and ultimately wrote Romans 13 from jail.

In modern times, Christian brothers and sisters abided by Paul’s command to the persecuted Roman church. They presented their bodies as living sacrifices. They refused to conform to the oppressive patterns of this world. Rather, they were transformed by the renewing of their minds. (Romans 12:1-2) Throughout the Jim Crow South, in El Salvador, and in the townships and cities of South Africa Jesus followers disobeyed civil authority as an act of obedience to God — the ultimate authority, the Lord, who loves and demands justice (Psalm 146:5-9, Isaiah 58, Isaiah 61, Micah 4:1-5, all the prophets, Luke 4:16-21, Luke 10:25-37, Matthew 25:31-46, Galatians 3:27-28). Likewise, Christians who marched in Ferguson, Mo., New York City, and Madison, Wis., follow in the holy footsteps of their faithful predecessors.

As one who understands human depravity, your statement demonstrates a profound disregard for the impact of sinful individuals when given power to craft systems and structures that govern millions. The outcome is oppression and impoverishment — in a word, injustice.

Finally, if you insist on blind obedience, then you must also insist that officers of the justice system obey the U.S. Constitution, which protects the right of all to equal protection under the law. Yet, reports confirm unconscious racial biases in policing, booking, sentencing, and in return produce racially disparate outcomes within our broken justice system.

Likewise, you must also call on officers to honor their sworn duty to protect and serve without partiality. The Federal Bureau of Investigations director, James B. Comey, acknowledges that law enforcement has fallen short of this mandate : “First, all of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty. At many points in American history, law enforcement enforced the status quo, a status quo that was often brutally unfair to disfavored groups.”

Let us be clear: We love, support, and pray for our police officers. We understand that many are doing an excellent job under extremely trying circumstances. We also understand that many officers are burdened by systems that routinely mete out inequitable racialized outcomes.

For the past nine months, many of your fellow Christian clergy have been engaged in sorrowful lament, prayerful protest, spirit-led conversations, and careful scriptural study to discern a Godly response to these inequitable racialized outcomes within America’s justice system. We have wrestled with God like Jacob, begging God to bless us with peace in our streets and justice in our courts.

Rev. Graham, as our brother in Christ and as a leader in the church, we forgive you and we pray that one day you will recognize and understand the enduring legacy of the institution of race in our nation.

Now is the time for you to humbly listen to the cries of lamentation rising nationwide. We do not expect you to be an expert in racial issues, police brutality, or even the many factors that go in to our complicated and unjust criminal system. We do, however, expect you to follow the example of leaders and followers of Jesus throughout the scriptures and modern history. We expect you to seek wise counsel and guidance first from those who bear the weight of the injustice and second from other experts in the field.

Ultimately, we invite you to join us in the ongoing work of the ministry of reconciliation.

In Jesus,




frank says this is what you said ..(refuring to those who he is refuting }




Frankly, Rev. Graham, your insistence that “Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else” “Listen up,” was crude, insensitive, and paternalistic.

He says your instance that BLACKS AND WHITES [ECT]

frank said any of these things ,,,,have a closer read of the artical


 2015/3/20 6:54Profile
brothagary
Member



Joined: 2011/10/23
Posts: 2556


 Re:

wopss hang on i thought that was franklins open leter and it was a responce to some one else and love meek hope was responding to that,,,my bad ,,my bad

sorry it would be interesting to read what he has oridginaly said in his letter

can that be posted please so i can see what that says

 2015/3/20 7:09Profile
sermonindex
Moderator



Joined: 2002/12/11
Posts: 39795
Canada

Online!
 Re:

It is sad to see a man judged so quickly that is standing up for righteousness in many ways. Where are the pastors in the land speaking boldly on issues and for truth and righteousness?


_________________
SI Moderator - Greg Gordon

 2015/3/20 8:02Profile









 Re:

Keep in mind, this is the second post of Franklin Graham. But it's also what prompted Sojo's response.

Quote:
Franklin said: Listen up--Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and everybody else. Most police shootings can be avoided. It comes down to respect for authority and obedience. If a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. If a police officer tells you to put your hands in the air, you put your hands in the air. If a police officer tells you to lay down face first with your hands behind your back, you lay down face first with your hands behind your back. It’s as simple as that. Even if you think the police officer is wrong—YOU OBEY. Parents, teach your children to respect and obey those in authority. Mr. President, this is a message our nation needs to hear, and they need to hear it from you. Some of the unnecessary shootings we have seen recently might have been avoided. The Bible says to submit to your leaders and those in authority “because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account.”

 2015/3/20 8:03
AbideinHim
Member



Joined: 2006/11/26
Posts: 5185
Louisiana

 Re:

"It is sad to see a man judged so quickly that is standing up for righteousness in many ways. Where are the pastors in the land speaking boldly on issues and for truth and righteousness?"

I agree with you Greg that Franklin Graham is standing up for righteousness, and out of all of the false prophets and teachers that are perverting the gospel, why some on this forum are going after Franklin Graham is beyond my understanding.

I know that part of it is a misunderstanding of the scriptures and the call of God on His servants to stand up in the public arena and hold governmental leaders accountable for their actions.

There are many Christians that are on the right side of the issues that are putting their trust more in government and politics than in the living God, and that have an inordinate view of patriotism, and those that are critical of these men are just in doing so, but I don't believe that this is the case with Franklin Graham, who is consistently lifting up the name of Jesus Christ and calling men to repentance and salvation.

"When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn." (Proverbs 29:2).

God is the one that is over all authority, and government was His idea. What makes government good or bad is the leaders. There have been godly leaders over nations that have done the will of the Lord, and there have been ungodly leaders such as our current president that have been out of alignment with God on almost every point.

Franklin Graham is only speaking the truth, declaring God's will, and in early America many of those in authority in government were themselves men of God, and they addressed the issues of their day.

The seperation of Chruch and state has been carried too far by athiests, liberals, and misguided Christians to the extent that God is not to have any part in our government, even to the point of having the ten commandments removed from a courhouse.

I have a picture in my living room of the First prayer of the Continental Congress of 1774 in which all of these governmental leaders were on their knees before the Lord praying for wisdom and guidance.

Franklin Graham is not perfect, but I beleive that he does have a love for the truth, and he is bringing to light the issues that the enemy would like to keep hidden that are destroying our nation.

God is judging America, but what is our attitude going to be? Some Christians seem to be more like the sons of thunder that if they could would call fire down from heaven to destroy our nation.

However, God is looking for men and women that would stand in the gap and make up the hedge, confessing our own sins and the sins of the nation, and crying out to God that in His wrath that He would remember mercy.

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Our trust and faith is not in government, it is not in political parties but it is in the King of kings and the Lord of lords, who is Lord of heaven and earth, and who has instructed us to pray that His Kingdom would come, and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.




_________________
Mike

 2015/3/20 9:19Profile





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