Controversial conservative Christian and evangelist Rev. Franklin Graham gave a typically outspoken interview last week, telling David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network that Obama’s second term will “usher in the largest changes in our society since the Civil War." He also maintained that President Barack Obama's reelection is proof that America has “turned our back on God.”
As Right Wing Watch points out, the noted religious right leader told Brody that both parties have lost sight of moral values.
“We need someone like a Jerry Falwell to come back and resurrect the Moral Majority movement where you get people that have a moral background who are willing to come together and vote for moral issues that are important to this nation," Brody said during the interview.
Graham singles out gay marriage as an area where Americans have lost sight of God's directive.
Same-sex marriage puts society in jeopardy, he told Brody, because it “takes the family away and there is no way you can have a family with two females or two males, if you just think biologically how God made us our plumbing is completely different.”
“There is no room for us to consider gay marriage or same-sex marriage,” Graham said, “that is redefining what God gave us.”
The interview comes on the heels of Graham's interview with Newsmax's Kathleen Walter on Thursday, in which he reiterated the point that the country is becoming secularized -- a trend that may hasten the country's destruction.
“In the last four years, we have begun to turn our backs on God,” Graham told Walter. “We have taken God out of our education system. We have taken him out of government. You have lawyers that sue you every time you mention the name of Jesus Christ in any public forum. What has happened is we have allowed ourselves to take God out everything that we do – and I believe that God will judge our nation one day.”
And, “maybe God will have to bring our nation to our knees – to where that we just have a complete economic collapse” to do that, Graham said. “Maybe at that point, people will again call upon the name of almighty God.”
Graham is the son of one of America's most famous evangelists, Rev. Billy Graham. He's also the president and CEO of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and the Christian relief organization Samaritan's Purse.
The organization has come under fire for pushing its “Vote Biblical Values” ad campaign despite special nonpartisan tax exempt status, according to WSOC-TV. A complaint was recently filed with the Internal Revenue Service by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
“It’s ridiculous,” Graham told Newsmax. “The African-American churches do this all the time... We wanted people to remember that, as they were going into the voting booth, that there were political decisions, no question, but there also were moral issues,” Graham added. “At every level, we need to think about who we are voting for and encourage Christians, especially, to vote for candidates who support biblical values.”
“They want to shut the mouths of evangelicals. They want to shut the mouths of Christians," he said.
As Mother Jones notes, this is not the first time people have taken issue with some of Graham's more controversial statements.
In February, Graham was forced to apologize after questioning Obama's faith and telling MSNBC that the president "seems more concerned about [Muslims] than the Christians that are being murdered in the Muslim countries."
Perhaps with this in mind, Graham emphasized that it was the duty of all Americans to support the sitting president.
“I would encourage everyone to pray for the president,” Graham said. "The president is our president. We need to get behind him. We need to rally behind him. We need to bathe him in prayer.