The Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush accused evangelist Franklin Graham last week of being someone who “does not love the LGBTQ community” after the Samaritan’s Purse CEO criticized Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s recent rebuke of President Donald Trump.
Raushenbush, an ordained Baptist minister who serves as president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, also suggested Graham pales in comparison with his father, the late Rev. Billy Graham.
During the Jan. 29 episode of C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” host John McArdle asked Raushenbush to respond to a clip of Graham on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” during which Graham excoriated the bishop of Washington for “mixing the LGBTQ+ agenda, along with the immigrants,” when she rebuked Trump to his face from the pulpit of the National Cathedral during the Jan. 21 inaugural service.
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‘She took advantage of that national pulpit for her own personal agenda – and that was wrong.”
Rev Franklin Graham reacts to Bishop Mariann Budde’s Washington sermon
???? https://t.co/mnncKBm0X3@piersmorgan | @Franklin_Grahampic.twitter.com/i16dxkjqbn
— Piers Morgan Uncensored (@PiersUncensored) January 22, 2025
“She took advantage of that national pulpit for her own personal agenda, and that was wrong,” Graham said.
Raushenbush, who is the great-grandson of former Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, pushed back against Graham and suggested he was also using his national platform to promote his own agenda.
“He’s using his pulpit right now to say something about how he feels about what Bishop Budde said,” Raushenbush noted. “Bishop Budde was in the cathedral, the National Cathedral. She is the bishop of the National Cathedral. It was her pulpit. She was speaking the gospel.”
Raushenbush, who identifies as gay and is married to a man, went on to suggest that Graham possesses animosity toward LGBT-identified individuals and that Trump is hurting the trans community especially.
“Trans people are feeling unsafe,” Raushenbush said. “For Franklin Graham, who actually does not love the LGBTQ community, and who has said terrible things about the Muslim community and other things — let me say: Franklin Graham is no Billy Graham.”
Despite Raushenbush’s implication that Franklin Graham is at odds with his father, Franklin’s views on sexuality echo those of Billy Graham, who maintained throughout his ministry that homosexuality is sinful.
During a 1980 interview with Paul Harvey at his home in Montreat, North Carolina, Harvey asked Graham, “Is homosexuality a sin?”
“Yes,” Graham replied simply.
Raushenbush went on to suggest during his C-SPAN interview that Trump is harming both immigrants and trans-identified people, suggesting that the president’s recent executive order, titled “Protecting Children From Chemical And Surgical Castration,” has made “trans children” and their families feel unsafe.
“I know parents of trans children who have had to move away from their state because they could not provide the care for their children that their children required,” he said. “This is government saying we don’t want you to love your child. We’re going to tell you how to love your child. This is overreach of government.”
Raushenbush also suggested the idea of religious freedom is being unfairly co-opted by conservatives.
“A lot of times conservatives use the term ‘religious freedom,’ but it’s always religious freedom for me, not for thee,” he said. “And so, let’s go back to the idea that everyone deserves religious freedom for whatever tradition you’re in, including … the many, many people in America who are not religious, but who deserve every bit of freedom to live their life as any religious person.”
Raushenbush — who is also the great-grandson of clergyman Walter Rauschenbusch, who promoted the Social Gospel in the 19th century — has been outspoken regarding his feeling that he is among “a targeted community” under Trump because he is gay.
During an interview with Salon published last December, Raushenbush claimed religion in the U.S. is at “a moment where [it] is again being used as a pretext for subjugation and discrimination.”
Budde, who received a glowing write-up in The Washington Post on Monday, has received mixed reactions for her sermon last month, with some arguing she politicized a religious service while others asserting she courageously spoke truth to power.
Rob Pacienza, senior pastor at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, attended the service and was among Budde’s critics, saying in a recent interview with The Christian Post that he believed it “wasn’t really a sermon” but rather “a lecture that really came across as mean and divisive.”
Conservative commentator Mark Steyn recently accused Budde of being “a tool of Satan” for claiming from the pulpit that “transgender children” exist.
“Some may think there is, and a confused 8-year-old boy or 11-year-old girl may think there is. But what it boils down to is you, the bishop, supporting slicing off the breasts of middle school girls. That makes you, the bishop, a tool of Satan. So you should be on a roasting spit in Hell for promoting that.”
