A House Divided

Why the Graham Family Dynamic Reveals the Evangelical Movement’s Rifts.

Graham’s final journey befitted his legend. A humble, golden-haired farm boy once felt a call from heaven, and left home to tell the world.

But in the wake of Graham’s death at age 99 on Feb. 21 comes discord. His prodigal firstborn son has risen as heir to his religious empire. And yet it is difficult to imagine most anything that Franklin Graham says coming from the mouth of his father. The elder Graham rose to the heights of religious power in America by uniting evangelicals after a fundamentalist crisis in the early 20th century. His son has risen to prominence by embracing the divisions of our time. He defends President Donald Trump amid allegations of affairs and hush-money payments. He rails against the Supreme Court’s ruling to legalize same-sex-marriage. He says Muslims have “hijacked Abraham,” the patriarch shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

It is not just outsiders who know that the house of Graham has entered a new era of division. The difference between father and son is impossible to ignore, even for those who love Franklin most. “Daddy’s style was so gentle, maybe not in the beginning, but loving and warm,” Franklin’s sister Anne Graham Lotz told TIME in 2016. “You think of Daddy speaking at the National Cathedral after 9/11,” she said. “That is Daddy, and Franklin is just not that.”

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