The Billy Grahams have never been good at scandal. It’s just not their forte. In recent weeks they’ve cooked up their own family-style dust-up but it’s remarkable how tame the whole thing is, especially in a year where evangelicals have done far more spectacular things.

The Washington Post revealed that Franklin Graham, he of the Iraq-war-supporting and father-succeeding, wants his parents to be buried on the grounds of the ministry campus he’s building. Well, specifically, he wants Ruth Graham there since it seems like she’s the closer of the two to the pearly gates. Ruth wants nothing of the sort — according to the article, she has a spot picked out in the mountains and she has no interest in being an attraction at Franklin’s theme park. OK, it’s a library, but still — it’s being created as a tourist attraction, and can you imagine all the Protestant pilgrims dutifully parading down the garden path to prostrate at the graves of dead evangelists. (This is where people in my family would say something like, “That’s so Catholic!”)

A lot of progressive evangelicals (for real, sometimes you can put those two words together!) are withdrawing from Franklin Graham and this is likely to only hasten that process.