How Donald Trump Replaced ‘the Protestant Pope’

In the final stretch of a presidential election between two candidates who don’t speak often about their personal religious beliefs, an itinerant evangelist born in 1918 has become the subject of a skirmishin the ongoing civil war over the future of evangelical Christianity in America.

The battle began in August, when a PAC-run campaign called Evangelicals for Harris juxtaposed a 1988 sermon by the Rev. Billy Graham — the towering figure of 20th-century American Protestantism who died in 2018 — against clips of Donald Trump, who has come to dominate the movement in the 21st century.

“You must realize that in the last days, the times will be full of danger,” Mr. Graham said in the sermon, reciting from the New Testament book of 2 Timothy. He went on, listing the qualities that will be on display in those treacherous last days: greed, pride, violence, recklessness, pleasure-seeking.

“They will maintain a facade of religion, but their lives deny the truth,” he concluded, still drawing on the same passage. “Keep clear of people like that.”

As Mr. Graham denounces greed, the ad cuts to Mr. Trump, speaking at a rally in Iowa: “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy. I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy.” After Mr. Graham warns that people will become “uncontrolled and violent,” the video shows Mr. Trump at a rally saying, “I’d like to punch him in the face.”