{"id":2149,"date":"2010-04-23T17:23:33","date_gmt":"2010-04-23T17:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f.php"},"modified":"2010-04-23T17:23:33","modified_gmt":"2010-04-23T17:23:33","slug":"conservatives-decry-pentagon-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f","title":{"rendered":"Conservatives Decry Pentagon for Pulling Graham from Event"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) Conservative Christian leaders blasted the Army&#8217;s decision to disinvite evangelist Franklin Graham from a Pentagon event on the National Day of Prayer because he has been critical of Islam.<br \/>\nGraham, this year&#8217;s honorary chair of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, was scheduled to speak at a May 6 event coordinated by the independent task force with the Pentagon chaplain&#8217;s office.<br \/>\nThe Military Religious Freedom Foundation and the Council on American-Islamic Relations pushed the Pentagon to rescind Graham&#8217;s invitation, citing his comments that Islam was an &#8220;evil and wicked religion&#8221; and Muslims are &#8220;enslaved by Islam.&#8221;<br \/>\nCol. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, said Army leaders thought it was &#8220;problematic&#8221; to include Graham in the annual program. &#8220;His past comments about Islam are not consistent with the multifaith emphasis and inclusiveness of this event at the Pentagon,&#8221; Collins said.<br \/>\nFamily Research Council President Tony Perkins said Graham&#8217;s &#8220;deeply held biblical convictions&#8221; were not a reason to deny him the speaking opportunity.<br \/>\n&#8220;The fact that he has theological differences with Islam &#8212; differences wholly in keeping with the teachings of the New Testament &#8212; and that he has expressed them publicly, is now being used by anti-Christian zealots in a manner offensive to the freedom of religion guaranteed by the very Constitution military leaders are sworn to uphold,&#8221; Perkins said.<br \/>\nShirley Dobson, who leads the task force, said Pentagon officials &#8220;melted like butter and withdrew the invitation&#8221; after receiving complaints from &#8220;a small group of naysayers.&#8221;<br \/>\nGraham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, issued a statement saying he regretted the Army&#8217;s decision and will continue to pray for the troops.<br \/>\n<em>&#8212; Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nCopyright 2010 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) Conservative Christian leaders blasted the Army&#8217;s decision to disinvite evangelist Franklin Graham from a Pentagon event on the National Day of Prayer because he has been critical of Islam. Graham, this year&#8217;s honorary chair of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, was scheduled to speak at a May 6 event coordinated by&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Conservatives Decry Pentagon for Pulling Graham from Event<\/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\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conservatives Decry Pentagon for Pulling Graham from Event\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) Conservative Christian leaders blasted the Army&#8217;s decision to disinvite evangelist Franklin Graham from a Pentagon event on the National Day of Prayer because he has been critical of Islam. 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Graham, this year&#8217;s honorary chair of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, was scheduled to speak at a May 6 event coordinated by&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2010-04-23T17:23:33+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f","name":"Conservatives Decry Pentagon for Pulling Graham from Event","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-04-23T17:23:33+00:00","dateModified":"2010-04-23T17:23:33+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2010\/04\/conservatives-decry-pentagon-f#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Conservatives Decry Pentagon for Pulling Graham from Event"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/9cadc277e135f295b85f71137e2447a6","name":"mconsoli","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/2ad\/2ad44a0d65de6022a5c619dffa5e7fddx96.jpg","caption":"mconsoli"},"description":"\"Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d -Benjamin Disraeli","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/mconsoli"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}