Franklin Graham calls for Christian political activism in tour stop in Tacoma

Evangelist Franklin Graham brought his Decision America Pacific Northwest tour to the parking lot of Cheney Stadium in Tacoma on Sunday night.

The turnout was smaller and weather milder than the tour’s stop Thursday in Spokane, where temperatures soared above 100 degrees. The stop was one of several for Graham in a sweep of the Northwest, with appearances also in Tri-Cities and Medford, Bend and Portland in Oregon.

Spokane crowd estimates counted nearly 15,000 at its fairgrounds. In Tacoma, while there was no immediate official estimate, Graham later tweeted that it numbered in the thousands.

There also were calls to action on social media over the weekend before his appearance from opponents to attend a counter-rally to protest Graham’s various political stances. The Faith Action Network shared on Facebook an open letter it signed onto in support of clergy leaders in Tacoma and the Pierce County area who generated the letter, titled: “Franklin Graham’s Hateful Version of Faith: Not Welcome in Tacoma.”

“As faith leaders in and near Tacoma and Pierce County, we write to you with a clear and unequivocal condemnation of Mr. Graham’s persistent, public actions and teachings that highlight bigotry and hate in disguise as the Christian faith,” the letter stated.

Graham’s event was billed on his website as “one-day evangelistic prayer events across Oregon and Washington to proclaim the Gospel and pray for our nation, our communities, and the lost.” Graham focused the first 12 minutes of the roughly 40-minute Tacoma address on a broad call to political action among Christians.

Much of Graham’s political content was the same as he’d delivered in Spokane.

“We’re more divided now racially, politically than we’ve ever been,” he told his Tacoma audience. “The Republicans cannot fix it. The Democrats cannot fix it. The only one who can fix it is God.”

He started off with calls for prayers for elected officials.

“I believe God can guide and direct their lives and the decisions they make,” Graham said. “But if we don’t pray, if we don’t ask God to intercede, he just may let this country continue on this downward spiral.”

He spent the first portion motivating the crowd to vote and to be politically active in the midterms.

“I’d like to encourage all of you to vote. I’m not telling you how to vote, but pray before you vote. God will show you who you should vote for,” Graham said.

He compared secularism to communism.

“Secularism and communism are one and the same. Godless forms of government,” Graham said. “We’ve taken God out of our schools, our government. Are we better for this? No. Our country’s in trouble.”

He encouraged local clergy “to look for people in your churches that could run for school boards.

“You could take the education of your state back,” Graham said. “You could kick secularism right out the window.”

He extended the call to action beyond educational governance.

“We need Christians not only on school boards, but mayors, city council, your state capital, Washington (D.C.),” Graham said. “We need Christian political activists who know how to organize, know how to get the vote out.

“I believe you can get your state back, but it’s going to take Christians standing up. ”

He emphasized the same sentiments after his Tacoma appearance later on Twitter.

In his Tacoma appearance, he also made mention of the death of Richard “Beebo” Russell, the Horizon Air employee who authorities said stole a 76-passenger plane from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Friday night and later died when it crashed on Ketron Island.

He’d tweeted about Russell on Saturday in a pair of tweets and revisited the subject during his Sunday address.

“He was running from something, I don’t know what.He told the controller his life was a broken life,” Graham said. “My heart goes out to his wife and to his mom and dad. We need to remember them and pray for them as they try to figure out what happened, what went wrong.”

Graham, in tweets Sunday, recalled that his father, the late Rev. Billy Graham, held crusades in Tacoma in 1983 and 1991, “and I preached here in 2007.“ Billy Graham passed away in February at age 99.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever see you here in Tacoma again,” Franklin Graham said in closing Sunday, looking over the crowd, “but we’re going to be in heaven together.”

Monroe, Washington, is the last scheduled city for Graham’s tour Monday evening.

This story was originally published August 13, 2018 at 9:55 AM.