These Guys Just Don't Get it!
Time to unyoke Christians, party politics
By Daniel Vestal - Atlanta
Thursday, May 17, 2007 - Web Link
I hate to burst your bubble, Dan, but you are making assumptions that are not realistic…Jerry Falwell was a very clever marketer…When he began his ministry, he believed that preachers ought to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ and stay out of politics…It didn’t work – didn’t make him a success…So he did a 180…
The constituency of the Christian Right are largely bottom feeders who prefer rhetoric over doctrine…To equate them with the broad evangelical community is making an error that Falwell would never make…When he lashed out at homosexuals and abortionists, the money rolled in…65% of Evangelicals simply continued on in their lifestyles, more or less oblivious to politics…
The merger of the Christian Right and the Republican Party is no accident…They both tend toward easy answers to complex questions and have developed cynicism from a long history of minority status…The idea that we can snap our fingers, now that Jerry Falwell is gone, and “unyoke” Christians from party politics is absurd…God is still in command here…
The party did not control the Christian Right; the Christian Right controlled the party…
This author continues in the delusional state of McChurch…
Stan Moody is the author of "Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship" and "McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry
It is no accident that the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, the emergence of the Moral Majority and the election of Ronald Reagan all occurred at the same time. Falwell was a significant player in this convergence, and for the past 27 years was an influential presence on the American religious and political scene.
At times Falwell spoke and acted like a biblical prophet challenging the presumptions and presuppositions of secularists, relativists and hedonists. This led to his active engagement in the political process, where his power reached all the way to the White House. I appreciate and respect his prophetic and political influence.
Where I have had serious problems with Falwell and the Moral Majority is the partisan nature and use of their influence. They so identified evangelical Christian faith with party politics that they have become inseparable in the minds of many.
We are living in tumultuous and tense times. In reaction to these times, there has been this rising tide of fear and fundamentalism that offers partisan politics as the solution to long-standing and complex problems.
It seems that we are caught between two horns of a cultural dilemma:
On the one hand is the pervasiveness of a secularist, materialistic and hedonistic society. On the other hand are highly offended people of faith who would seek to impose narrow and strict interpretations of faith on everyone.
I deplore the loss of respect for human life, the decline of private and public morality, the diminishing of personal responsibility and the general permissiveness in our society. On the other hand, I am not comfortable with those who equate Christian faith with only one political perspective, seem blind to racial and economic injustices and allow little room for dissent and disagreement. I also am grieved by the growing polarization in our society, divisive rhetoric and a general "mean- spiritedness" in civil conversation.
Perhaps many of us are seeking a third way, a radical way. We desire to hold our Christian faith close to our hearts, but we also desire to have genuine friendship and dialogue with people of other faiths to build a human community. We desire to be involved in political decision making from our faith perspective, but we don't believe that any one party has a corner on the truth. We do believe that the story and truth of Scripture come from God, but we want to preserve the freedom of conscience that allows for different interpretations.
In contrast to seeking a "moral majority," which seems to have the connotation of partisan power, it seems that as followers of Christ we should seek to be bold witnesses, humble servants, compassionate ministers in our society. Of course this will mean engagement in the political process and public advocacy as well as prayer and worship, but not in a way that so clearly identifies the eternal Gospel of Jesus Christ with partisan politics.
— Daniel Vestal is a former Baptist pastor and is executive coordinator of the Atlanta-based Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.
