Franklin Graham's campaign for more Christians in government won't change America's moral climate, former North Dakota lieutenant governor says

Evangelist Franklin Graham is scheduled to visit Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in June during the next leg of his "Decision America Tour 2016," but some say that encouraging Christians to run for office is rather pointless -- it will not change culture or the moral climate in the United States.

"If we can get Christians to run for mayor, if we can get Christians to run for city councils, if we can get Christians to run for school boards, if we can get Christians to run for the statehouse, we can win this thing," Graham said at the recently held prayer rally in Bismarck, North Dakota.

In an article on The Bismarck Tribune, political scientist Lloyd Omdahl, former lieutenant governor of North Dakota, said that Graham's approach is naive, and while his proposal sounds persuasive, "there is a devil in the details."

Omdahl argues that while Graham seems to assume that there are few Christians in government, almost all of North Dakota's officials, including legislators, mayors, council members, and county commissioners, say they are Christian and are members of a church. Christian ideologies, however, are not always reflected in state policies.

"Apparently, Graham is not thinking of run-of-the-mill Christians when he urges Christians to run for office," Omdahl wrote. "He is thinking of Christians who are Christian Christians."

According to the article, it seems Graham would want candidates to publicly declare they are Christian and run as a Christian candidate. This would mean that people would expect them to demonstrate the virtues exhibited by Jesus, something that is not often seen in the political arena. Some public officials, he said, would rather keep a low religious profile rather than defame Christ "by their mean-spirited, confrontational behavior."

While Ohmdahl lauded Graham's goal of trying to reverse the American culture's "immoral drift," the strategy, for him, is nonetheless "wrong." He said that Christianity has become so generic that even though the public votes for a candidate who professes to be a Christian, there is no certainty of "what brand of a Christian we have."

"We have elected enough Christians in our history to know that office holding is not the solution," he said.

Citing a point made by Evangelical Christian leader Chuck Coulsen, previously known for having been part of the Watergate scandal, Ohmdahl said that only when people change will culture change. Therefore, he said that Graham should abondon his tour and instead "get Christians to be Christians one person at a time," in the same way that his father, Billy Graham, did.