The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) is calling it the “war chest.”
The evangelistic association headed by Franklin Graham has a legal fund, started with the damages it won in lawsuits against seven venues in the United Kingdom that canceled BGEA events in 2020. That fund has now grown to $1.25 million, partly due to an influx of cash from Samaritan’s Purse, the humanitarian organization also run by Franklin Graham. The money will help conservative Christians in Europe going to court in freedom-of-speech and freedom-of-religion cases.
“Considering what is happening in wider Europe,” BGEA general counsel Justin Arnot told CT, “it seemed appropriate to make this assistance available to Christians across the continent.”
Without a war chest and a smart legal strategy, Arnot said Christians are in danger of losing the right to share the gospel in Europe. The BGEA and other conservative groups are afraid that widespread cultural opposition, especially on issues of sexuality and ethics—and new regulation on speech deemed hateful, harmful, or misleading—will erode people’s ability to condemn sin and preach Scripture.
To date, Christians have won a remarkable series of legal victories in Europe. Graham triumphed in his lawsuits. Activists upset by his past comments on LGBTQ people (“the enemy”) and Islam (“an evil and very wicked religion”) successfully pressured stadiums, conference halls, and theaters to cancel BGEA events, despite signed contracts. The seaside city of Blackpool, England, pulled ads from city buses, citing community complaints and “heightened tension.” Then in 2021, British courts said that was religious discrimination and not allowed under the UK Human Rights Act or the European Convention on Human Rights.
Minister Olaf Latzel triumphed in Germany in 2022, when a court ruled that his comments about homosexuality and LGBTQ people in a church marriage seminar were “strange” and “more than alienating” but not hate speech. He was acquitted on all charges.
A conservative politician and a church leader won in Finland the same year, when a court ruled that the things they said about homosexuality were “offensive, but not hate speech.” The judges found that parliamentarian Päivi Räsänen and Juhana Pohjola, a bishop with the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, were not trying to incite hatred but attempting to explain their views of Scripture. According to the court, that is allowed under Finnish and European law, even if people feel denigrated by the particular biblical interpretation.
Prosecutors appealed, and the case went to trial again in 2023. Räsänen and Pohjola won a second time. Now the case is with Finland’s Supreme Court.
Yet many conservatives in Europe and the US are concerned about what they see as weakening support for freedom of speech and freedom of religion. In a speech in Munich in February, for example, US vice president JD Vance warned about Europe’s “backslide away from conscience rights” and “retreat … from some of its most fundamental values.”
On the other side of the political spectrum, LGBTQ- and abortion-rights advocates are also sounding the alarm about loss of freedom. But they blame conservative Christian groups, including the BGEA and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International.
Neil Datta, executive director of the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, said Christian groups have pushed for and funded debates about abortion access and LGBTQ rights in an attempt to roll back human rights and win power for far-right political parties.
“The scale of financial resources, international coordination, and political integration … is unprecedented,” Datta wrote. “Pushback against decades of progress in gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights is at the centre of the far-right’s strategy for gaining power across Europe.” Datta pointed to countries like Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Italy, where rollbacks on abortion access and LGBTQ rights have prompted concern from members of the EU parliament.
Datta points to the Vision Network as a critical hub in the coordination of this conservative agenda. The group, co-led by ADF International’s director of strategic relations Sophia Kuby, connects a wide variety of groups and helps them develop legislative and legal strategies around sexuality, abortion, marriage, or access to contraception.
One of those strategies, according to Datta, is to set up “designed provocations to generate a reaction which can then be adjudicated in the courts.”
Datta pointed to debates over UK laws that create buffer zones around abortion clinics in response to Christians’ protests in the form of silent prayer and candlelit vigils. Datta said the zones are necessary to curtail coercion in the guise of religious ritual. ADF International, however, claims prayer is being criminalized and freedom of religion is under threat. The organization is fighting a series of cases related to buffer-zone breaches.
Political scientist Andrea Hatcher, whose research focuses on evangelicals in the UK, said the Christian right doesn’t have the numbers to support a political movement in Europe. Electoral victories, in most places, would be impossible. Court battles, however, can be one way of broadening support.
“Framing their efforts … as ‘free speech’ is a strategic appeal to a wider, secular audience,” Hatcher said. And each lawsuit leads to more connections with more sympathizers and “well-funded global Christian nationalists.”
The Christian groups taking their cases to court dispute many of these characterizations, of course, and reject the conspiratorial framing. But they do acknowledge they’ve had more victories in court than at the ballot box. And the fight for freedom of speech has been more successful, in recent years, than the fight for the issues that conservative Christians speak about.
“Our work on things like abortion was more and more difficult within institutions that are deeply biased and influenced by the ideological control of our opponents,” said Grégor Puppinck, head of the European Centre for Law and Justice, a Christian conservative think tank. “We must fight to try and help Christians to express themselves … within societies that are increasingly hostile to our values.”
Felix Boellmann, head of ADF’s European advocacy efforts, said the emphasis on litigation is also a response to changing legislation. He pointed to the Digital Services Act, which the EU passed in 2022. Supporters say the law, which regulates online platforms, is critical for tackling “disinformation” and “hate speech.” But the implementation has set the stage for widespread censorship, Boellmann said.
The result, he said, “will be a tightly controlled internet where the free exchange of ideas is stifled.”
That’s not just bad for conservatives, according to Boellman. It’s bad for all of Europe. “Without open debate you cannot have a free democratic society,” he said.
The BGEA’s defense fund, with its $1.25 million “war chest,” may have a far-reaching impact on European law and politics. The BGEA, however, says the real goal is just making sure that Christians have no restrictions sharing the gospel.
“We know that true hope can only be found in Jesus Christ,” Graham said when the fund was first announced in 2024, “so we need to support one another in getting the good news of Jesus Christ out, whatever it takes.”
