{"id":92,"date":"2010-04-26T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/obama-prayed-with-billy-graham-then-eulogized-w-virginia-miners.html"},"modified":"2010-04-26T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T07:00:00","slug":"obama-prayed-with-billy-graham-then-eulogized-w-virginia-miners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/obama-prayed-with-billy-graham-then-eulogized-w-virginia-miners.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama Prayed With Billy Graham, Then Eulogized W. Virginia Miners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On his way to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/04\/25\/AR2010042501013.html\">deliver a eulogy at a memorial service&nbsp;for the 29 West Virginia miners <\/a>who died in the explosion earlier this month, President Obama met with celebrated evangelist Billy Graham. Although Graham, 91,&nbsp;has counseled White House occupants since the Eisenhower administration, Obama is the first sitting president to visit his North Carolina&nbsp;home. <\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20100425\/ap_on_re_us\/us_obama_billy_graham\">Associated Press reports that <\/a>the men spoke for about 30 minutes,&nbsp;about topics ranging from golf to the&nbsp;loneliness that comes with the job of the presidency,&nbsp;then prayed together. Graham gave the president two Bibles: one for him and one for First Lady Michelle Obama. (Looks like Graham isn&#8217;t one of those evangelical Christians convinced that Obama is a Muslim&#8230;)<\/p>\n<p>Graham&#8217;s son, evangelical minister Franklin Graham, was also in attendance, and&nbsp;asked&nbsp;Obama about the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/washington-dc-events-rescind-invites-to-catholic-cardinal-evangelical-leader.html\">Pentagon&#8217;s recently rescinded invitation to have him speak <\/a>at its upcoming National Day of Prayer event (due to his&nbsp;previous comments against Islam). Obama said he was looking into the matter, the younger Graham told reporters after the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>Check back for updates and share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">*<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>subscribe to Belief Beat<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/strong><\/a>and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On his way to deliver a eulogy at a memorial service&nbsp;for the 29 West Virginia miners who died in the explosion earlier this month, President Obama met with celebrated evangelist Billy Graham. Although Graham, 91,&nbsp;has counseled White House occupants since the Eisenhower administration, Obama is the first sitting president to visit his North Carolina&nbsp;home. The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Obama Prayed With Billy Graham, Then Eulogized W. Virginia Miners - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/obama-prayed-with-billy-graham-then-eulogized-w-virginia-miners.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama Prayed With Billy Graham, Then Eulogized W. Virginia Miners - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On his way to deliver a eulogy at a memorial service&nbsp;for the 29 West Virginia miners who died in the explosion earlier this month, President Obama met with celebrated evangelist Billy Graham. Although Graham, 91,&nbsp;has counseled White House occupants since the Eisenhower administration, Obama is the first sitting president to visit his North Carolina&nbsp;home. The&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/obama-prayed-with-billy-graham-then-eulogized-w-virginia-miners.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-26T07:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Obama Prayed With Billy Graham, Then Eulogized W. 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She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}