Word: preachers
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...Over the course of his long public ministry, Graham has certainly acquired his share of critics - a group which includes Graham himself. In our hours of interviews with him - while researching our own book, The Preacher and the Presidents - he was quick to find fault with his own conduct and quite willing to explore the reasons behind the mistakes he admitted making. The odd thing about Hitchens' attack is not that he assaults an ailing icon - that's both his specialty and his right - but that the evidence he cites actually proves him wrong...
...Hitchens calls as his main corroborating witness a Canadian contemporary of Graham's, whom he misidentifies as "James Templeton." Hitchens explains that as a young firebrand preacher, Templeton (whose name was actually Charles), found his faith faltering; but when he challenged Graham, Hitchens claims, the evangelist told Templeton that it was too late to stop now - "We're in business" - and proceeded to spend the next 50 years as a kind of religious racketeer...
...true story of Graham's encounter with Templeton is fascinating and critical in understanding the ministry that followed - just not in the way Hitchens describes. Like Graham, Templeton was young and handsome; he was also the more talented preacher. But his growing spiritual questions led him to leave the sawdust trail in 1948 for Princeton Theological Seminary to put himself through a kind of theological boot camp. He tried to talk Graham into coming with him; Graham's unquestioning faith in the literal truth of the Bible, he said, amounted to intellectual suicide. He tried to phrase it in Graham...
...Templeton was actually pressing Graham to modernize his ministry, make it more commercially viable. What could be more tempting - to a rising preacher trying to reach young people, a preacher who stressed being approachable and relevant - than to tailor his theology to the tastes of the times, especially if the latest scholarship allowed wider appeal? But for Graham this was not an option. He felt that he could either believe the Bible or leave the ministry. "It was not too late to be a dairy farmer," he concluded...
...morning of the church coup, and had put his First Minister's hat back on by Monday afternoon. He talked about making sure their political apparatus represents "all sections of society": practically that means his office funds things like Belfast's growing gay pride festival, even as Paisley the preacher continues to condemn "sodomites." It's a contradiction much of Northern Ireland can live with. In a society plagued by religious division, Ian Paisley may have become the unlikely example of the separation between church and state...