Sophistry, special pleading and ignorance of America’s constitution were all on display in evangelical pastor Franklin Graham’s Lunch with the FT (Life & Arts, July 27).
So often it seems Americans forget that their country was born with the ideals of European enlightenment that flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries as a reaction to the appalling wars of religion that so disfigured our continent.
By their writings Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin were agnostics a century before Darwin and would almost certainly have been atheists in today’s world. The south-eastern US is littered with neoclassical buildings and Jefferson’s own design for the University of Virginia harks back to a Florentine respect for the human-sized. The founding fathers wanted freedom to worship or not to worship. That is certainly not the case today where it seems almost compulsory for politicians to genuflect to religion.
It’s ironic to recall it was the rather unlikely figure of the conservative Republican senator Barry Goldwater who objected to evangelicals holding him to ransom for their votes. “Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them,” he said in 1994.
But today who exactly is stopping Graham from setting up his stall and preaching? There are no threats to religious freedom in America, Mr Graham. Enlightenment ideals saw to that. What is true is one of the side-effect of the absence of a state religion in America is the field is wide open and a thousand Elmer Gantrys — you remember the Sinclair Lewis novel — have rushed to fill the space, selling religion like you would sell soap flakes.
David Redshaw
Saltdean, East Sussex, UK
