Samaritan's Purse, if you don't know it, is an evangelical relief organization, one that does tremendous work to bring lifegiving support to places of crisis in the world. They're competently run and remarkably bold in stepping into areas of crisis to provide food, medicine, and emergency support. I have friends who have witnessed first hand the good work they're doing, particularly in Sudan and Haiti.
Workers for relief agencies work side-by-side in desperate conditions, even as they may come from different national and ideological backgrounds. Those workers face violence, desperation, and privation, all to ensure the hungry are fed, the thirsty have water, and those wrenched from their homes by war or natural disaster are cared for.
It's heroic work, and every effort counts.
Which makes Graham's statement about USAID utterly incomprehensible. USAID was founded during the Cold War to use American soft power to push back against Soviet propaganda. Like the Marshall Plan, the goal was to win the hearts and minds of the world by showing that we as a nation were noble, honorable, and generous. It provides relief in precisely the areas where Samaritan's Purse operates. And yet Franklin Graham said the following about it yesterday:
"USAID, under the control of the Democratic left, has been pushing LGBTQ, transgender, and other godless agendas to the world in the name of the United States of America. We the taxpayers have been paying for this to the tune of billions of dollars. Thank you Elon Musk for exposing this—and now President Donald J. Trump is bringing it to an end. I encourage the State Department to continue providing life-saving aid like food and medicine."
Is this true?
The first sentence has some truth to it, as do most well spun falsehoods. A tiny fraction of the USAID budget has been used to support organizations that assert that Queer folks are human beings with rights. But the second sentence does not follow from the first, and what it implies is false. Yes, the USAID budget is in the billions, but those billions are spent on economic development, humanitarian assistance, and health initiatives.
Because faith-based initiatives are a major part of American identity, much of that money goes to support the efforts of Christian relief efforts. The largest single recipient of USAID funding, at over $4 billion dollars, is Catholic Relief Services. World Vision and Lutheran World Relief and the Presbyterian Church in East Africa have also been significant USAID partners, with total annual giving to Christian organizations in the billions of dollars. USAID also buys billions of dollars of food for emergency relief from American farmers.
Franklin Graham knows this. He knows this because his own organization received $90,000,000 from USAID over the last four years. Ninety million dollars. Samaritan's Purse alone receives ten times as much USAID funding as all of the grants supporting Queer folk combined. Watch this far right propaganda video listing every "offensive" grant they could find, and add up the amounts. It's not even close.
Again, this is not meant to in any way denigrate Samaritan's Purse, which does excellent work. They're worthy of support. But Franklin Graham should know better. I think, on some level, he does know better. But when you've bent the knee to Powers and Principalities, and made your witness subordinate to a decadent worldly authority, you must parrot the lies that they tell. And that dissonance makes you angrier and angrier, as you shout down the voice of grace in your own heart.
Perhaps the greatest irony in all of this is that Graham seems to have completely forgotten the point of an obscure story Jesus told. Maybe you've heard of it? The one about the Samaritan?
That parable was about how we approach those who we consider our enemies, yet through the fruits of their actions show themselves to be our neighbors. Samaritans were hated by Judeans, considered unfaithful and idolatrous and traitors to the faith. Yet it was the good work of a Samaritan that Jesus honored, as a way of telling us who we are to love as much as we love ourselves.
It's straight up, right there, front and center. But Lord have mercy, we mortals are so good at missing the point.
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