Mormonism No Longer a Cult, according to Billy Graham

Billy Graham met with Mitt Romney last week. According to the press secretaries of each, Graham told Romney he’d do “all I can” to help get Romney elected. It seems that one of those things is to remove the long-standing statements about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints being a cult from the BGEA website:

A Billy Graham Evangelistic Association article labeling Mormonism a cult has been removed from the group’s website following the 93-year-old televangelist’s meeting with the Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last week.

Graham pledged to do “all I can” to help Romney get elected during the meeting

The Citizen-Times at 4:56 p.m. on Thursday captured the article, which said cults are “Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spiritists, Scientologists, and others.”

Graham met with Romney at his Montreat home just hours before. The article is not on the association’s Website today. [Mormonism ‘cult’ claim vanishes from Graham site | The Asheville Citizen-Times | citizen-times.com]

Some, like Steve Knight, have questioned whether Billy is being played like a puppet by son and heir, Franklin, in these, his last days. According to Steve,

Billy Graham is 93 years old, in the advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease (among a host of other age-related ailments). He’s been having fluid drained from his brain on a regular basis for over a decade. When I worked for BGEA and Mr. Graham was still leading evangelistic crusades around the country, it was well-known that all of his sermons, articles, letters and books were ghostwritten — and had been for quite some time.

If Billy is being used in this way by Franklin, it’s shocking.

But, in any case, here’s the point: Evangelicals say that the Bible and theological orthodoxy are the most important things for a Christian to abide by. And yet, time and time again, evangelicals will forsake these tenets for political expediency.

I’ve been quite candid on this blog: I do not think that the LDS church is a Christian church. I do not think that the Mormon faith is Christian. I think it’s a sect — or call it another religion — that drew inspiration from Christianity at its birth. (I think it’s too big and diverse to call it a cult.) But it’s not Christian.

It seems that Graham, like many other evangelical leaders, is supporting Romney. That’s totally fine. But to sweep under the rug their long-standing teaching that the LDS Church is a cult is not only disingenuous, it’s downright deceptive.