Graham family launches $1.3M legal defense fund for Christians in court

EXCLUSIVE: As Christians around the world face mounting legal and cultural threats for expressing their faith, the Graham family is stepping up efforts to defend freedom of speech and religion through both financial support and public advocacy.

The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) has launched a new $1.3 million legal defense fund to assist Christians and churches across Europe who are being taken to court over their biblical beliefs. 

At the same time, Cissie Graham Lynch, daughter of Franklin Graham and granddaughter of the late Rev. Billy Graham, is urging believers not to stay silent in the face of growing hostility, including in the United States.

“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.”

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Following those victories, BGEA created the Billy Graham Defense Fund, seeded with £500,000 (approximately $678,000) from court settlements. Samaritan’s Purse, which Graham also leads, contributed an additional £500,000, bringing the total to £1 million, or about $1.3 million.

“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 said.

But the issue, he added, is not confined to other countries. 

“The silencing of Christians isn’t just happening in other countries,” he said. “BGEA and Samaritan’s Purse have also been involved in many different legal cases that affect the freedom of believers to live out their faith here in the U.S.”

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Between 2017 and 2024, BGEA and Samaritan’s Purse filed 20 amicus briefs in religious liberty cases, including Coach Joe Kennedy, Jack Phillips, and Baronelle Stutzman, all of which were heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We want Americans who are standing up for biblical beliefs in court to know that we are with them — they are not alone in this fight,” Graham said. “We must work to preserve the right to proclaim the Gospel here in the U.S. and in the U.K., so that we can continue to share the hope of Jesus Christ around the world. There is no human liberty more precious and important than the freedom of speech and religion.”

Cissie Graham Lynch said she hopes the Defense Fund serves as a practical and symbolic source of strength for believers facing public pressure and legal retaliation. “You could be canceled for speaking the truth. You may be called names,” she said. “But every time you choose to fight that fight, you help build a stronger foundation for other people of faith to stand on.”

“There is no human liberty more precious and important than the freedom of speech and religion,” she added. “We must work to preserve the right to proclaim the Gospel here in the U.S. and in the U.K.—because the stakes are far too high to stay silent.”

Lynch shared a series of interviews exclusively with Fox News Digital recorded during the European Congress on Evangelism, a Berlin gathering hosted by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. The event brought together more than 1,000 Christian leaders from 55 countries and territories.

She said Christians around the world, including in the United States, are increasingly being pressured to suppress their beliefs.

“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.”

“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,” she added. “If you care about preserving religious liberty and free speech for the next generation, we all need to pay attention.”

Among those Lynch interviewed was Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish member of Parliament. Räsänen told Lynch she is once again on trial for a 2019 tweet quoting Romans 1 from the Bible. She has been acquitted twice in lower courts, but Finnish prosecutors have appealed, sending the case to the nation’s Supreme Court.

“The police gave me a possibility to renounce what I believe,” Räsänen said. “I said, ‘I will not apologize for what Apostle Paul has stated. It is the Word of God, it is not only my opinion.’”

She warned that even unsuccessful prosecutions can lead to a broader effect. “If we start to censor ourselves, the more restricted becomes the space to use these rights,” she said. “The biggest threat to these rights is self-censorship.”

Kristen Waggoner, president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), also spoke with Lynch. ADF has represented clients in multiple U.S. Supreme Court cases related to religious freedom, including Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The organization has also taken on international cases involving silent prayer arrests in the U.K. and blasphemy charges in Nigeria.

“Around the world, we’re seeing a rising tide of censorship,” Waggoner said. “These are God-given rights. It’s upon us to defend them and to protect those rights — knowing that it leads to human flourishing, and the flourishing of the Gospel.”

British theologian Dr. Amy Orr-Ewing, who has taught at Oxford University, told Lynch that she sees a hunger for truth among young people in the West despite increasing pushback on public faith.

“I’ve been in ministry for over 25 years and I haven’t known a moment like the one we are in, in the West… for truth, for the Gospel,” she said. “Grievance and rage, victim culture and identity politics are not the answer to your rage — Jesus is.”

Lynch said her goal is to equip Americans with a broader understanding of global threats to religious liberty and to encourage them not to retreat. She hosts the “Fearless with Cissie Graham Lynch” podcast.