“Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election — that is a matter of prudential judgment,” the editorial said. “That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.”

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Galli, who will retire from the magazine Jan. 3, wrote that the facts leading to Wednesday’s impeachment of Trump are unambiguous.

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“The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents," he wrote. "That is not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”

But the editorial didn’t just call out Trump. It called out his devout Christian supporters.

"To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve,” Galli wrote. “Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.”

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Graham had close friendships with several presidents before he died in 2018, but said late in his life that he wished he had distanced himself more politically. Graham’s son, the Rev. Franklin Graham, has been a highly vocal supporter of Trump and prayed at his inauguration.

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In an interview, Franklin Graham said his father would have been disappointed by the magazine’s stance because he said his father liked Trump and that they were friends.

“He would’ve been very embarrased that the magazine he started would call for something like this when there are no crimes committed," Graham said. “It’s a totally different magazine than what he started.”

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Based in the suburbs of Chicago, Christianity Today aims to be the voice of evangelicals, providing news and commentary through its monthly magazine and website. Many evangelical leaders and high-profile pastors are among the magazine’s 80,000 paid print subscribers, and its advertisements regularly feature major evangelical institutions. In the hours after the editorial was published, “Christianity Today” was trending on Twitter.

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Galli said that on Thursday night, the magazine had 17,000 people reading the website, when at a typical moment the site might have 400, and a “hot article” might have 3,000-4,000 readers.

Galli said that under his watch, the magazine has received criticism from some who wanted it to be more outspoken against the president. He said initially he thought criticisms of the president were “too panicky and fearful” and that it took him some time to decide to draw a line in the sand.

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“I bend over backwards to be charitable and patient with people, including people who support Trump,” he said. “I probably went too far on that.”

The editorial said that the Ukraine-focused impeachment hearings “have made it absolutely clear, in a way the Mueller investigation did not” that Trump had abused his office. Galli said in an interview that he decided Thursday morning, hours after the late-night impeachment vote in the House of Representatives, to write about why he thinks the president should be removed.

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“I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do another editorial like this. I hate doing editorials like this,” he said. “People are going to say mean, nasty things and say how much they hate me or hate the magazine, and I don’t like that.”

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Trump’s presidency has created divisions among evangelicals, especially across racial and generational lines. Many strongly support the president, and have hailed his choice of Supreme Court justices they hope will make anti-abortion rulings, among his policy choices. But others have decried Trump’s behavior and comments.

Galli said he thinks that many evangelical leaders have not been openly critical of the president because they have friends and family members who support Trump.

“It’s not easy to come out publicly that makes it seem like these people are our enemies,” he said. “There are times to be charitable. There are times to say, ‘No, I’m not going any further.’ ”

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His editorial called Trump’s behavior “profoundly immoral.”

“The reason many are not shocked about this is that this president has dumbed down the idea of morality in his administration,” he wrote.

The editorial said evangelicals are playing with a “stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence,” and predicted that “the whole game will come crashing down” if they continued to ignore what Galli described as Trump’s moral failings.

“It will crash down on the reputation of evangelical religion and on the world’s understanding of the gospel,” he wrote. "And it will come crashing down on a nation of men and women whose welfare is also our concern.”

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Christianity Today magazine has published some pieces in the past that were critical of Trump, including a piece by former editor Andy Crouch just before the election. In July, the president of Christianity Today, Timothy Dalrymple, wrote a piece calling out the silence among Christians in relation to Trump and racism.

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“On the other hand, I sense a profound frustration among non-white Christian friends that their white brethren keep silent as the president aims ugly and demeaning statements at people of color,” Dalrymple wrote. “These friends don’t like what the silence of the white church is saying, and neither do we.”

Dalrymple reviewed Galli’s editorial before it was published. “We write according to our sense of conscience and calling,” he said in an interview. “We trust that subscribers and audience are in God’s hands.”

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Exit polls in 2016 suggested that 80 percent of evangelicals voted for Trump. A NPR-PBS NewsHour-Marist poll from earlier this month found 75 percent of white evangelical Christians approved of Trump, compared with 42 percent of U.S. adults overall.

The magazine also posted past commentary it published during the impeachment investigations of President Richard Nixon and President Bill Clinton, noting that the magazine also had labeled Clinton “morally unable to lead.”

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“Unfortunately, the words that we applied to Mr. Clinton 20 years ago apply almost perfectly to our current president,” Galli wrote in the editorial. He specifically raised the issue of abortion, the reason that many evangelicals have said they voted for Trump and would do so again.

“Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?”

This piece has been updated.

Emily Guskin contributed to this report.