“Ladies and gentlemen, we’re on the verge of losing our nation,” Franklin Graham, son of the famous Christian evangelist Billy Graham, told thousands who’d come to Boston Common for his Aug. 30, 2016, prayer rally. The midday event was part of his presidential election year “Decision America Tour,” which is billed as a 50-state tour “urging Christians to vote, to live out their faith in every part of their lives, and to pray for our nation.”
“We have a problem and that problem is sin,” Graham said. He criticized abortion, same sex marriage, “the entertainment industry that uses sex and gun violence as entertainment,” political correctness, “secularists and progressives.”
“You may be asking the question today,” Graham told the crowd, “maybe you’ve come and you’ve been wanting to know, you look at the political landscape, and you look at, this is an election year, and you’re saying to yourself, ‘What can I do?’ Vote.”
Graham called for prayer in public schools. “Freedom of religion means I can live my religion out on the street, in politics, in my business. … The progressives don’t want you to have that. They want to take that away from you.” In the 2016 presidential election, he said, “now it’s down to two people, and you can choose, I’m not telling you who to vote for. … Our country’s in trouble. You’ve got to vote now. You may have to go to the polls, you might even have to hold your nose, but vote.”
Photos copyright Greg Cook.
