This week, gay minister Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush attacked Franklin Graham. Graham had criticized woke Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde for lecturing Donald Trump. Raushenbush defended the bishop and slammed the CEO of Samaritan’s Purse. Rev. Raushenbush is a member of the LGBTQ community and a champion of progressive causes.
The controversy started when Graham reacted to Budde’s viral sermon attacking President Trump. In an interview, the pastor criticized the Bishop for “mixing the LGBTQ+ agenda, along with the immigrants” into her sermon. He added, “She took advantage of that national pulpit for her own personal agenda, and that was wrong.” Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush watched a clip of the interview and said Graham was a man who “does not love the LGBTQ community.”
The Rev. rebuffed Graham, saying he was the one guilty of using his pulpit to promote politics. The great-grandson of former Justice Louis Brandeis stated, “He’s using his pulpit right now to say something about how he feels about what Bishop Budde said.” Raushenbush added, “Bishop Budde was in the cathedral, the National Cathedral. She is the bishop of the National Cathedral. It was her pulpit. She was speaking the gospel.”
He is married to a man, identifies as gay, and thinks that Graham is bigoted towards the LGBTQ community. “Trans people are feeling unsafe,” Raushenbush stated. “For Franklin Graham, who actually does not love the LGBTQ community, and who has said terrible things about the Muslim community and other things — let me say: Franklin Graham is no Billy Graham.”
He also claimed that Trump’s policies are harming immigrants and trans people. He specifically took aim at Trump’s recent executive order, which banned the federal government from funding gender reassignment surgery for minors. “I know parents of trans children who have had to move away from their state because they could not provide the care for their children that their children required,” he posited.
The woke activist thinks, “This is government saying we don’t want you to love your child. We’re going to tell you how to love your child. This is overreach of government.” While the Rev. is certainly passionate about politics, he is less concerned with grammar. As he concluded his remarks, he attacked the idea that conservatives are concerned with religious liberty.
“A lot of times conservatives use the term ‘religious freedom,’ but it’s always religious freedom for me, not for thee,” he claimed. “And so, let’s go back to the idea that everyone deserves religious freedom for whatever tradition you’re in, including … the many, many people in America who are not religious, but who deserve every bit of freedom to live their life as any religious person.”
Watch Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush here:
Graham is not the only pastor who criticized woke Bishop Budde. “It wasn’t really a sermon,” said Rob Pacienza, a prominent Presbyterian pastor. “It was a lecture that really came across as mean and divisive. And I think the irony was she attempted to preach on unity, but her rhetoric and her very unwelcoming spirit — from the beginning to the end of her message — actually created more division in the end.” He said, “It was a lecture that really came across as mean and divisive.”
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