Yes indeed, the Frank Sinatra Junior of the God business has hit the nail on the head through the feet. How could the people possibly know it’s wrong to rape and murder a 14 year old girl when the teachers in their hellhole underfunded schools didn’t take time out from teaching them calculus to lead them in prayer? It’s spiritual need, not opportunism, and that’s what they should plead. This also explains why the vast majority of violent criminals in our prisons are atheists. (Oh wait, they aren’t.)
PS- I forgot to mention: I fucking hate Franklin Graham. I’m glad he finally overcame his own rough childhood as the son of a millionaire evangelist and gave his soul to Christ in spite of the sacrifices, though.
I don’t know if the ‘70s count as "early in Billy Graham’s career,’ but that’s when he said those things to Nixon about Jews. He was in his 50s at the time.
Those are for the godless heathen Catholics, which, I will admit, we do have lots of in Louisiana. (It’s the influence of those French, don’t you know.) Insert sarcastic smiley here. At any rate, a parish (with, IIRC, a few differences) is basically a county here.
Can you go into a bit more detail on that? I know that the governmental functions of a parish and of a county are more or less the same. But what are the differences you mention? And are you saying that “parish”, in this context, has no religious significance at all?
Anyway, if there are a lot of many parochial schools in LA, then there is “god in the schools”; it just doesn’t happen to be the god Graham recognizes. Which means his attitude, IMO, makes him little better than that of Jack Chick.
As far as I know, parish=county. Parish seat instead of county seat, that sort of thing. Here is a link which has a bit better explanation. Forty-six of the parishes in Louisiana are governed by police juries, which are like counties with county commissions. The other eighteen are governed by home rule charters, which I admit I had never heard of until just now. “Parish” in that context doesn’t have religious significance, although there are parishes in the religious sense as well, which do not necessarily correspond with the other type of parish.
I would like to hear responses to Franklin Graham’s comments from people that live around here. On Tuesday I should start asking around. I imagine it would be a fairly even split between agreement and “What the hell is he talking about?”
As for the rest, I was raised mostly Baptist (and am now a sort of theist, and that’s as far as I’m willing to go lately), but I was also taught that a Christian is a Christian, yes, even those Catholics. So this Catholic !=Christian thing is still really weird to me, though I’ve seen it a lot recently.