The editor-in-chief of Christianity Today is sharing about the day the magazine published the article “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.”
Mark Galli will soon be leaving the evangelical magazine, as his last day in the position is Jan. 3, before he retires.
He recently sparked a lot of discussion following his recent editorial, where he took a swing at President Donald Trump shortly after the House of Representatives voted to pass two articles of impeachment against the president. Though he stirred up mixed reactions, his retirement was already known prior to the article’s publication.
In his editorial published on Dec. 19, Galli called for Trump’s removal from office, and called on evangelicals who support the president to “remember who you are and whom you serve.”
Speaking with The New York Times, Galli noted that the website crashed “almost immediately” after his piece was published, something he didn’t see coming.
One of the prominent people who reacted to Galli’s story was Christian evangelist Franklin Graham — whose father, Billy Graham, started the magazine in 1956. Graham, as IJR previously reported, expressed strong disagreement with the editorial.
In response to Graham’s opposition, Galli told The Times, “It did strike me as a bit ironic that [Franklin Graham and Trump] both said that it wasn’t significant or going to make any difference. It makes you immediately think that they do think it’s significant, or they wouldn’t comment on it.”
However, to his surprise, Galli says the positive reactions were actually what surprised him most.
“People wrote to me and said they had felt all alone and were waiting for someone in the evangelical leadership to say what the editorial said. I wish I could tell you that I had noticed that and wanted to respond to it, but I didn’t see that. There were a lot of people who were feeling alone and they’re not feeling that way now.”
Asked if Trump could do anything to lose his support by evangelical voters, Galli said there was an “ethical naïveté” in the response to the article.
“I’ve been surprised by the ethical naïveté of the response I’m receiving to the editorial,” Galli said, adding, “There does seem to be widespread ignorance — that is the best word I can come up with — of the gravity of Trump’s moral failings.”
“Some evangelicals will acknowledge he had a problem with adultery, but now they consider that a thing of the past. They bring up King David, but the difference is King David repented! Donald Trump has not done that.”
Galli added: “Some evangelicals say he is prideful, abrasive and arrogant — which are all the qualities that Christians decry — but they don’t seem to grasp how serious it is for a head of state to talk like that and it does make me wonder what’s going on there.”
As IJR previously reported, following Galli’s article, the magazine’s president penned another piece to discuss the mixed reactions they received and to call for a discussion on Christian loyalty to Trump.