{"id":5170,"date":"2010-05-07T00:30:50","date_gmt":"2010-05-07T08:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=5170"},"modified":"2010-05-06T21:45:08","modified_gmt":"2010-05-07T05:45:08","slug":"franklin-graham-prays-at-pentagon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/07\/franklin-graham-prays-at-pentagon\/","title":{"rendered":"Franklin Graham Prays at Pentagon"},"content":{"rendered":"

As promised<\/a>, Franklin Graham prayed outside of the Pentagon<\/a> yesterday before joining other National Day of Prayer events in the Capitol area.<\/p>\n

At least one organization that opposed Graham’s invitation applauded the “religious freedom<\/a>” that allowed Graham to pray on the sidewalk:<\/p>\n

Rev. Franklin Graham may not have had all the bunting and military brass of an official Pentagon event backing him, but he managed to pray today anyway, and in what I consider a more suitable venue: impromptu on the sidewalk. There, any American of any faith can pray, without needing an invitation, without appearing to speak for the government, and without compromising their prophetic voice. Religious freedom is alive and well in America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They are not the only ones to presume that Graham’s presence would be “speaking for the government,” and they are also not the only ones to forget the “religious freedom” of the men and women in the military who\u00a0wanted<\/em> to hear Rev. Graham minister to and pray with them.<\/p>\n

The statement above, published under the auspices of the Baptist Joint Committee, would essentially proscribe any<\/em> Christian leader who preached the exclusivity of Chrisianity from speaking to the military — notwithstanding the fact that Christians in the military<\/em> may share those theological views.<\/p>\n

Religious freedom in the US\u00a0military means one can continue to hold to the tenets of one’s faith,\u00a0even\u00a0if they are offensive to another.<\/p>\n

Albert Mohler has an interesting commentary on this controversy<\/a>\u00a0in which he notes the selective amnesia of the media.\u00a0 He highlights,\u00a0for example, that Graham was disinvited from yesterday’s event\u00a0over comments he made in 2001\u00a0— yet he was\u00a0allowed<\/em> to\u00a0speak at the\u00a0Pentagon in 2003, despite the same\u00a0controversy over\u00a0the same\u00a0comments.\u00a0 (Many have objected to Graham’s comments on Islam without noting Graham’s own “clarification” of those remarks<\/a> years ago.)\u00a0 In 2010, the Army called his views “not appropriate.”\u00a0 In 2003, the official spokesman for the same Army said<\/p>\n

While I, personally, would not agree with some of Rev. Graham\u2019s comments and observations, I would defend his right to have his religious views as part of the freedom we have as Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The content of the controversy was the same; the only difference was the government’s reaction.\u00a0 Kind of makes you wonder what changed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As promised, Franklin Graham prayed outside of the Pentagon yesterday before joining other National Day of Prayer events in the Capitol area. At least one organization that opposed Graham’s invitation applauded the “religious freedom” that allowed Graham to pray on the sidewalk: Rev. Franklin Graham may not have had all the bunting and military brass of an official Pentagon event […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[4,82,406,19,2,63,11,10],"class_list":["post-5170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-churchandstate","tag-constitution","tag-franklin-graham","tag-government","tag-military","tag-pentagon","tag-prayer","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}