Christians around the world are under attack like never before.
The Left’s war on faith has reached a fever pitch with believers dragged into courtrooms for simply sharing Gospel truth.
But Franklin Graham made one daring move that left Christian-hating activists reeling.
The Graham family declares war on Christian persecution
Franklin Graham isn’t backing down from the global assault on religious freedom – he’s fighting back with serious firepower.
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association just launched a stunning $1.3 million legal defense fund specifically designed to help Christians and churches across Europe who are being hauled into court for their biblical beliefs.¹
This isn’t some feel-good gesture that sounds nice in press releases.
The Graham family built this war chest from the damages they won after beating nine separate legal challenges in the United Kingdom over seven grueling years.
"We preach a message of God’s love, but when a small group of activists in the U.K. called it hate—we were cancelled," Franklin Graham told Fox News Digital. "Our advertisements were removed from buses and venues dropped our events. We stood our ground and challenged the decisions in court. Though it took seven years, all nine legal disputes were resolved in our favor."²
Here’s what makes this move so brilliant – Graham took every penny of those court settlements and turned them into ammunition for the next fight.
The Billy Graham Defense Fund started with £500,000 from those legal victories, then Samaritan’s Purse – which Graham also leads – matched it with another £500,000.³
Graham’s daughter issues urgent warning to American Christians
But Franklin Graham’s daughter Cissie Graham Lynch wants American believers to understand something critical – this isn’t just happening overseas.
The silencing of Christians is spreading to American soil faster than most people realize.
Between 2017 and 2024, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse filed 20 amicus briefs in religious liberty cases that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.⁴
These weren’t obscure legal technicalities – these were cases involving Coach Joe Kennedy, Jack Phillips, and Baronelle Stutzman that every Christian in America should know about.
"We are seeing so many concerning cases in the United States where Christians are dragged into the courtroom if they share their beliefs in the workplace, at school, or on sports teams," Lynch explained during exclusive interviews with Fox News Digital.⁵
She’s absolutely right to sound the alarm.
European Christians face jail time for quoting Scripture
The stories coming out of Europe should terrify every American believer who thinks it can’t happen here.
Take Finnish Parliament member Päivi Räsänen, who is facing her third trial – this time at Finland’s Supreme Court – for a 2019 tweet that simply quoted Romans 1 from the Bible.⁶
The police literally gave her the opportunity to renounce her faith to make the charges disappear.
"I said, ‘I will not apologize for what Apostle Paul has stated. It is the Word of God, it is not only my opinion,’" Räsänen told Lynch during a recent interview in Berlin.⁷
Think about that for a moment – a sitting member of Parliament in a supposedly free Western democracy is being prosecuted for quoting Scripture.
And here’s the most chilling part: Räsänen has already been acquitted twice in lower courts, but Finnish prosecutors keep appealing because they’re determined to make an example of her.
The real strategy behind the Left’s assault on faith
Kristen Waggoner, who leads Alliance Defending Freedom, explained to Lynch exactly what’s happening here – and it’s more calculated than most people understand.
"Around the world, we’re seeing a rising tide of censorship," Waggoner said during the Berlin interviews.⁸
But here’s what Räsänen identified as the Left’s real victory – they don’t even need to win these cases to accomplish their goal.
"If we start to censor ourselves, the more restricted becomes the space to use these rights," she warned. "The biggest threat to these rights is self-censorship."⁹
That’s the game plan – make the legal persecution so costly and exhausting that Christians just shut up rather than fight.
Make no mistake about what’s happening here.
The Left has figured out they can’t ban Christianity outright, so they’re using the court system to make expressing biblical truth so expensive and terrifying that believers police themselves.
Why Franklin Graham’s defense fund changes everything
Graham understands something that too many Christian leaders miss – you can’t fight a legal war without serious financial resources.
"We took the damages that we won through BGEA’s court cases in the U.K., and put those funds into the Billy Graham Defense Fund — a new ‘war chest’ to help other Christians in Europe who are threatened or intimidated into silence and not expressing their faith," Graham explained.¹⁰
The timing here isn’t coincidental.
Graham launched this defense fund just as the attacks on Christian speech are accelerating across the Western world.
His daughter Cissie made it clear that American Christians can’t afford to think this is someone else’s problem.
"My family personally knows the backlash that comes when you take a stand for the Gospel," Lynch said. "It may come with a high cost, but I want people to know how powerful their voice is when they fearlessly share the Good News of Jesus Christ."¹¹
The stakes couldn’t be higher for American believers
Franklin Graham put it in terms every Christian needs to understand: "There is no human liberty more precious and important than the freedom of speech and religion."¹²
The Graham family is backing up those words with real money and real legal firepower.
But they can’t fight this battle alone.
Every Christian in America needs to wake up to what’s happening before the European model of Christian persecution becomes the American reality.
The Left is counting on believers to stay quiet, keep their heads down, and hope someone else fights these battles.
Franklin Graham and his family just proved that strategy is a losing game.
¹ Jasmine Baehr, "Graham family responds to global crackdown on Christians with $1.3M defense fund and urgent call to action," Fox News, July 30, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² Ibid.
