Robert P. Kennel: Graham a disappointment

Relative to your Jan. 4 Focus article “Graham will try to rally the Christian conservative vote”: Franklin Graham’s father, Billy Graham, has been my personal hero since I went to his Charlotte Crusade as a teenager. My experience also included attending crusades in California, Ohio and even Melbourne, Australia, in 1959.

Over the years I watched how Billy Graham kept his spiritual emphasis appropriately separated from political issues with a number of U.S. presidents. The apple seems to have fallen a bit farther from the tree with his son.

Despite his good humanitarian work with Samaritan’s Purse, Franklin Graham seems to want to push on the political issues of the day, including Islamic immigration, abortion rights, same-sex marriage and Planned Parenthood.

Partly out of my admiration for Billy Graham, I became a commissioned Disciple of Christ Minister post-retirement and consider myself “evangelical,” trying to bring Christ’s demonstrated love of people to all issues in life.

My fear is that Franklin is emphasizing Old Testament judgments beyond his father’s emphasis on Christ’s love in the New Testament. A disappointment.

This story was originally published January 5, 2016 at 4:46 PM with the headline "Robert P. Kennel: Graham a disappointment."