Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Franklin Graham goes the Full Olasky

Franklin Graham goes the Full Olasky

Last updated on: May 25, 2011 at 2:11 pm by Fred Clark

Franklin Graham goes the Full Olasky 2011-05-25T14:11:50-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Bruce Watson of AOL asks “What Would the Rapture Do to Real Estate Prices?“

In New York City, for example, a 49% drop would reduce the city’s population to 1910 levels. In the short run, this would cause property values to plummet in the city, but the effects would quickly spread beyond mortgages and rents. …

This is assuming a post-Rapture world in which the political and economic systems would remain relatively stable — admittedly, a somewhat unrealistic expectation. … However, even if everything else stays the same, one thing is clear: The Rapture would have an apocalyptic effect on real estate.

And in one loosely written column, Watson has already spent more time on post-Rapture world-building than Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins spent in the whole of a 16-volume series.

Speaking of the Rapture …

The photo here looks like it might have been taken immediately following some mass vanishing event, but actually it’s from a huge tea party rally planned for South Carolina last week. Well, it was planned to be huge. They expected 2,000 people and wound up with 30. That’s not a rally. That’s barely enough for a soccer game.

Speaking of disappointing and woefully inadequate numbers …

Robert Parham says “‘Let the Churches Do It’ Is a Deceptive Myth.” He quotes Franklin Graham, among others, as a promoter of this deceptive myth. Graham said:

A hundred years ago, the safety net, the social safety net, in the country, was provided by the church. If you didn’t have a job, you’d go to your local church and ask the pastor if he knew somebody that could hire him. If you were hungry, you went to the local church and told them, ‘I can’t feed my family.’ And the church would help you. That’s not being done. The government took that. And took it away from the church.

That’s got all the hallmarks of Marvin Olasky’s bogus mythmaking:

Laughably false and easily disproved claims about the Golden Age of the past? Check.
Attempt to spin the church’s abandoning its responsibility as a case of government usurpation? Check.
Ridiculously inflated claims about the scale, capacity and expertise of faith-based assistance? Check.
Deliberate exclusion of the opinions of those actually providing that assistance, both today and “a hundred years ago”? Check.
Fundamental confusion that imagines all duties and obligations as mutually exclusive? Check.

Yep. Graham is five for five. That’s the Full Olasky right there.

Parham then turns to Wayne Flynt to explain what this would mean, for example, for Alabama:

When Flynt started making speeches about a just tax system in Alabama, he was accused of wanting government to solve all the problems.

“When people insisted that I was a socialist, that I wanted government to solve all the problems, I would offer this alternative,” said Flynt. “OK, I accept your argument. There are 10,000 communities of faith – Muslim, Jewish, Baptist, Baha’i, Buddhist, Shintoist – in Alabama… Let’s divide 10,000 communities of faith into the 740,000 [poor] people.”

He asked, “How many does your church get?”

The retired Auburn history professor pointed out that most of those faith communities had about 100 members. That meant that each faith community would get between 50 and 100 poor people to look after.

The “deceptive myth” Parham is addressing was most influentially promoted in a deceptive, mythmaking book by Olasky called The Tragedy of American Compassion. It’s a profoundly misled and misleading work that follows the basic outline above, portraying America before the Roosevelts as a paradise in which generous churches sufficiently cared for the poor with generosity and tough love and no one ever went hungry except lazy people who deserved it. For a useful counterpoint, see Norris Magnuson’s Salvation in the Slums: Evangelical Social Work 1865-1920. Magnuson covers the very same ground, but he provides an honest assessment of the actual scope of the poverty and deprivation of the time — most of which remained beyond the reach of the laudable, but vastly inadequate work being done by the churches.

More importantly, Magnuson cites the same primary sources as Olasky, but he does so in full and in context. That illuminates how selective and misleading Olasky’s use of those sources is. The devout believers Olasky cites to support his claim that the government has no role in helping the poor are nearly all revealed, in Magnuson’s book, to have been advocating and pleading for the larger government role that Olasky is arguing against.

Olasky is a partisan ideologue, but that’s precisely why I don’t think his mendacious book is evidence that he is lying. I think it’s a sad case study in what happens if one is, primarily, a partisan ideologue and the way that can blind one to anything one doesn’t wish to see. The tragedy of The Tragedy of American Compassion isn’t that Marvin Olasky is telling lies, it’s that he’s repeating lies he sincerely believes. (Call them “deceptive myths” if you’d prefer to be more euphemistically polite.) That and he’s trapped in an either-or framework of mutually exclusive responsibilities which prevents him from imagining that both the state and the church are responsible for those in need and that these mutual responsibilities are complementary, not competitive.

Anyway, speaking of Marvin Olasky …

The Randian Calvinist editor of World magazine belatedly weighs in on the controversy surrounding Rob Bell’s Love Wins, dubbing Bell an example of the “self-hating evangelical“:

Among the self-haters are those who display virulent opposition to the existence of churches that are not emergent, or don’t meet in a house, or are not radically redistributionist, or are not something other than standard.

Yes, “radically redistributionist.” He really talks like that. He really thinks like that.

And that’s what keeps him from realizing that what he describes here as “self-hatred” is actually pity and sadness for what people like him have become and the shame they’ve thereby brought to our evangelical family. I don’t hate myself, or my evangelical faith or heritage. What I hate is the selfish stupidity that people like Olasky foster in themselves and in their followers by using slogans like “radically redistributionist” as though they were quoting Jesus. I’ve seen how this weird devotion of theirs to an ideology of unbridled greed is a choice that makes smart people dumb, kind people cruel, good people bad.

And to paraphrase Dean Wormer, stupid and cruel is no way to go through life, son.

To be embarrassed by the enthusiastically stupid and cruel members of our evangelical family who have become our most vocal representatives doesn’t make me a “self-hating evangelical.” If Stephen Prothero is right, it puts me in the same camp as the Rev. Billy Graham. The iconic preacher and longtime friend of Jesus and Johnny Cash is now 92 and, Prothero notes, is suffering the indignity of having his eldest son going on TV and dragging the family name through the mud by spouting off the Full Olasky. “Franklin Graham is embarrassing his father“:

If you want to see how American evangelicalism has lost its way, you need look no farther than Billy Graham and his son Franklin. Billy Graham was a powerful preacher of the gospel. Franklin Graham is a political hack.

Previous Post

May 23, 2011

TF: Identification hallmarks

Next Post

May 27, 2011 An inescapable network of mutuality

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What animal did Samson kill with his bare hands?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Lion Bear Leopard Wolf