While giving a sermon in 1988, the Rev. Billy Graham, a renowned Christian evangelist, recalled a passage from the Bible that he let a man sitting next to him on a plane read.
“But you must realize that in the last days, the times will be full of danger. Men will become utterly self-centered and greedy for money,” he said, quoting the passage.
Men “will be proud and abusive” and “treacherous, reckless and arrogant, loving what gives them pleasure instead of loving God,” he added. “They will maintain a facade of religion, but their lives deny the truth. Keep clear of people like that.”
Clips from that sermon were intercut with comments made by former President Donald Trump over the years in an ad released by Evangelicals for Harris, a group supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race against Trump.
“My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” Trump says in one of the clips used in the ad. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get.” In others, he describes himself as “the chosen one,” talks about wanting to “punch” someone in the face and boasts about kissing women without permission.
The “Keep Clear” ad is part of Evangelicals for Harris’ $1 million campaign to reach evangelical voters in crucial swing states and convince them to turn out for Harris in November instead of Trump or not voting at all.
But the Rev. Franklin Graham, the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and a longtime Trump supporter, has taken issue with the group’s use of footage of his late father.
“The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in August.
“They are trying to mislead people. Maybe they don’t know that my father appreciated the conservative values and policies of President @realDonaldTrump in 2016, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed.” Graham died in 2018 at the age of 99.
Evangelicals for Harris says it has now received multiple letters, which Newsweek reviewed, from lawyers representing Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) that demanded they cease using the footage.
The association acknowledged in a statement to Newsweek that it has “communicated directly” with Evangelicals for Harris about “the unauthorized, political use of BGEA’s copyrighted video” and said it “will continue taking appropriate steps to address the matter.”
The statement added: “It may be worth noting that in all of his years of ministry and across relationships with 11 U.S. presidents, Billy Graham sought only to encourage them and to offer them the counsel of Jesus Christ, as revealed through God’s Word. He never criticized presidents publicly and would undoubtedly refuse to let his sermons be used to do so, regardless of who is involved.”
Evangelicals for Harris issued a statement this week, saying that Franklin Graham has “turned to a page in the Trump playbook and is trying to silence us with threats of a long and costly court process.
“Franklin is scared of our ads because we do not tell people what to do or think. We merely hold Trump’s own words up to the light of Scripture, the necessity of repentance, and Biblical warnings against leaders exactly like Trump.”
The group also shared a letter that its lawyers sent to the BGEA which asserts that the “limited” use of footage from Graham’s 1988 sermon is protected under the fair use protections afforded by Section 107 of the Copyright Act.
“Our ability to publicly discuss the moral failings of Donald Trump and how his behavior comports with the values espoused by evangelical leaders, including Billy Graham, is essential First Amendment expression,” the letter said.
The Rev. Jim Ball, chair of Evangelicals for Harris, told Newsweek that the footage of Graham—whom he said was a personal hero of his—was used because “we feel voters need his biblical wisdom now more than ever as they decide who to vote for.”
While white evangelical voters overwhelmingly back Trump—about 8 in 10 cast a ballot for him in 2020 and a similar share did so in 2016—not all evangelicals are a lockstep with the GOP. In a close contest where the outcome is expected to hinge on small margins in battleground states this year, Ball said the group is being strategic about the evangelical voters it is targeting.
“Our efforts in both 2020 and 2024 are focused on winning enough evangelicals in target states to help achieve victory,” he said.
Trump, meanwhile, has urged evangelicals to rally behind him once again in November, portraying himself as a champion of conservative Christian values and touting his appointment of U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion.
“What we see here is an ongoing struggle to define what matters most for evangelicals in voting—is it economic conservatism, definitions of what the family and gender are, and religious freedom, or is it a move toward more economic liberalism, a focus on the marginalized, and individual freedom?” Michael Emerson, a fellow in religion and public policy at Rice University and author of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion, told Newsweek.
“The struggle is partly because of our two-party system, forcing voters to make compromising choices and forcing certain issues to take precedence over others as neither party holds all evangelical positions.”
Richard Flory, executive director of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at the University of Southern California, said Evangelicals for Harris using footage of Graham in their ad is “a political marketing technique to sway evangelical voters, but they are trying to put lipstick on the pig of evangelical political efforts.
He pointed to Graham’s lifelong connection to Republicans.
“For example, Graham famously supported [Richard] Nixon—the only other Republican presidential candidate [besides Trump] who received over 80 percent of the evangelical vote,” Flory said.
Evangelicals “are predominantly conservative, even reactionary in their politics, and most, regardless the efforts of groups like Evangelicals for Harris, will still vote for Trump,” he said. “So, if they are using Billy Graham as an exemplar of their claim that true Christian values are represented in Democratic policies and principles, they are choosing the wrong person.”
He said he doubted the group would have “widespread impact within evangelicalism, but it may have some success with evangelicals who do not want to be associated with Trump and thus pick up enough votes for Harris to make a difference in the election.”
Others were more skeptical that the group could sway enough evangelical voters toward Harris.
“Frankly, I don’t think Evangelicals for Harris is going to have much an effect on the 2024 presidential election,” John Fea, a professor of history at Messiah University in Pennsylvania and author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, told Newsweek.
The group “will pull very few white evangelical voters away from Trump,” Fea said. “Franklin Graham has very little sway over white evangelicals who will vote for Harris in November. He lost their trust and confidence, if he ever had it, in 2016 and 2020.”
What could make a difference, Fea said, is if the Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, give white evangelicals a reason to vote for them.
“A lot of white evangelicals are disgusted by Trump and looking for any reason not to vote for him,” Fea said, adding that Harris and Walz have not given them one.
“The GOP/evangelical alliance appears unbreakable, even with the manifest moral character and policy problems of Donald Trump,” David Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University, told Newsweek.
“This is, in my view, most unfortunate. Christians should have much more independence of judgment and clearer discernment than this. In my view, it is good that there are evangelicals who are quite clear about Trump and who stand for a very different kind of politics.”
Ball is confident that Evangelicals for Harris’ efforts will have an impact in November. He said the group saw success in 2020, when it was known as Evangelicals for Biden. Biden won about 2 in 10 white evangelical voters in 2020, and about one-third of evangelicals overall, according to AP VoteCast.
Harris “aligns with our biblical values of loving our neighbors as ourselves and protecting the most vulnerable as we are called to do by Jesus,” while Trump “uses fear and hate to divide and conquer,” Ball said.
“The bottom line: Character still counts. Harris will do what’s best for the country even if it costs her, whereas Mr. Trump will always do what’s best for him, even if it hurts the country.”
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