Why evangelist Billy Graham’s granddaughter says she’s supporting Biden for president

One of Billy Graham’s grandchildren is bucking other members of her famously religious family to work with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project to get Joe Biden elected president.

Jerushah Duford, who lives in Greenville, said she questions evangelicals’ support of President Donald Trump, who she called “a liar, a cheat and a narcissist.”

She decided to publicly support Biden after “seeing the things Trump has done to harm the church and Christian leaders not speaking out. That’s not what Jesus was like.”

Duford called Trump’s appearance outside a Washington, D.C., church holding up a Bible amid the summer racial justice protests “idiotic” and suggested he did not know anything about the message inside.

Jesus supported refugees, women and others in a loving, accepting way, as did her grandfather, Duford said.

Duford’s aunt Anne Graham Lotz has said Trump was selected by God to be president, and Durford’s cousin Cissie Graham Lynch spoke at the Republican National Convention, as did her uncle Franklin Graham, who is now the president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

Billy Graham, who died in 2018, preached all over the world from 1947 to 2005 to some 210 million people via his crusades and satellite feeds. He held the first integrated crusade in apartheid South Africa in 1973.

Duford said her grandfather wondered why there were no African Americans in his United States audiences and staged crusades in their communities. Once, she said, at the beginning of a crusade during the civil rights movement, he asked an usher to remove the rope that separated whites from Blacks, and when the usher refused, Graham did it himself.

“I saw his values,” Duford said.

She remembers going to Morrison’s Cafeteria — her grandfather’s favorite restaurant — in Coral Gables, Florida, with him when she was in middle school. People kept stopping him, and he spoke to each of them. When he finally made it to the table, he said, “Everyone is so friendly here.”

“He genuinely did not understand the impact he had on the world because he was so focused on giving praise to the Lord,” Duford said.” My grandfather was the most authentically humble man I have ever known.”

Her association with the Lincoln Project grew from a friendship that developed from a tweet.

About a year ago, she spoke out against the president’s actions, and someone wondered who was going to have a more awkward Thanksgiving, Derushah or George Conway, the Washington lawyer married to Trump’s former counselor Kellyanne Conway. Conway was one of the founders of the Lincoln Project but stepped away at the same time his wife quit her job, both saying they needed to focus on their family.

Duford and George Conway began communicating through Twitter, and finally he asked if she would be part of the women’s coalition for the Lincoln Project.

“I had so many people speak to me about their discouragement over the church’s support of Trump,” she said. “They had been taught to value honesty and treating others with kindness and dignity the way Jesus did, and then no one condemned Trump’s actions.”

She believes many evangelical leaders will not speak out against Trump because the president demands absolute loyalty and they would lose their access to him to advance their policies.

She’s not willing to do that.

“It has more to do with my truth than policies,” Duford said.

Casting her ballot for Biden will not be the first time Duford has voted for a Democrat. She said she voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. And this year she voted for Jaime Harrison over incumbent Lindsey Graham for U.S. Senate.

Duford said she was concerned about Lindsey Graham’s support for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court justice. She said she doesn’t have anything personally against Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s most recently confirmed Supreme Court appointee, but she said she did not like the Republiican Party confirming a justice right before the election.

“It’s time for a change,” she said.

This story was originally published October 30, 2020 at 5:00 AM.