Magazine didn't attack Trump; it defended Christianity
By Nancy French / For The Washington Post
Mark Galli is retiring in January from his position as editor in chief of Christianity Today, a publication founded by the late evangelist Billy Graham. On Thursday, he decided to go out with a bang by expressing an unpopular sentiment among much of the religious right in an op-ed titled “Trump Should Be Removed from Office,” which took off on social media, briefly caused the magazine’s website to crash and drew this lamentably predictable response from the president:
“A far left magazine, or very ‘progressive,’ as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President,” Trump said in a series of tweets. “No President has done more for the Evangelical community, and it’s not even close.”
Trump’s defenders are sure to chalk this up as just one more example that shows he is a “counterpuncher,” someone who always “hits back” when attacked. But the op-ed isn’t an attack; Galli concedes that the debate over impeaching and removing Trump is rife with partisanship, and he grants that reasonable minds can differ about whether impeachment or an election should decide Trump’s political fate. Rather, he is defending Christianity after years of its adherents’ moral compromises in the realm of politics.
He is clear that he will not immediately change minds and might lose readers: a December NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll found that 80 percent of white evangelical Christians oppose the Senate removing Trump from office, compared to 49 percent of the public overall. But on Friday, Galli explained his real mission: “As a Christian,” he told CNN’s John Berman, “I like to think of myself as a person who has given my ultimate loyalty to Jesus Christ and the gospel he’s called us to proclaim.”
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-magazine-didnt-attack-trump-it-defended-christianity/
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