Over at The Corner, David French asks “Whither the Pro-Obama Evangelical?”
In 2008, the media celebrated Mr. Obama’s gains with young Evangelicals after he doubled John Kerry’s numbers with Evangelicals under 44. His gains were most pronounced in the swing states (where he obviously concentrated his efforts). Then, the pro-Obama Evangelical message emphasized “social justice” over abortion, appealed to Christian longing for unity and our weariness with the culture wars, and argued that Obama was a new kind of Democrat, one willing to listen to and work with Evangelicals.
Some evangelicals have subsequently turned from Obama, including Mr. French, who is a founder of Evangelicals for Mitt. He offers three points for discussion:
1. “First, many of the “Evangelicals” who worked most diligently to advance President Obama’s cause have turned out to be, well, not all that Evangelical.” Evangelicalism has been having an extended argument about the necessity of Hell and Judgement. Some evangelicals, especially the young don’t want to hear about them and have turned from the church; Obama appeals to the unorthodox side of the debate. Who are you to judge?
2. Young E’s helped elect Obama, but social justice hasn’t worked out quite as rapidly or effectively as expected. Obama is also a failure in correcting poverty, providing jobs, ending the wars, and purifying Gitmo. You may judge when it comes to these matters.
3. Obama turned a corner on various aspects of the sexual revolution, not only through approval, but by forcing or attempting to force American taxpayers, including the religious, of course, into subsidizing abortion, transgender surgeries, and other lifestyle choices. If you judge, you are subject to judgement and conscience is no excuse.
The church is present at the convention, including evangelicals, says the Huffington Post. The author even provides photos. The New Republic says Democrats are all about the church and religious expression, in “Debunking the ‘Democrats Hate God’ Lie”. Never mind what you heard at the convention yesterday. Heck, even Elizabeth Warren spoke about her years teaching Sunday School. Clearly people of real faith are Democrats and Republicans are hypocrites. Which of them cited Matthew 25:40?
In addition, the president of the American Values Network, Burns Strider tells us that he is a Democrat because of his faith and that you don’t have to mention God to live a Godly life. “Values over process. Results over the superficial. Heart over strategy. Examples lived from the Word, not the example of a word.” (What does that mean?) The Democratic Party is all about diversity that brings us together in unity. “The Democratic Faith Council sponsored panel discussions to packed rooms with panelists who are Baptists, Mormon, Jewish, Catholic and the entire, diverse bandwidth of the American religious tradition. We discussed our role in sharing the narrative of our party. We discussed the power of our collective efforts as the voice who tells the story, the story of values and faith of the Democratic Party.” I wish I could read a transcript of what they said. If their faith seems to be in the Democratic Party more than in God, that is only because we are looking at words.
I still do not understand faith within the Democratic Party. I’m trying; I’ll keep reading. Please feel free to make helpful reading suggestions to help me manage this conundrum. How do we ignore scripture about the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage, the necessity of individual charity, the idea that there is only one way to God, through the Christ? Seriously, how does anyone embrace the Bible, Christian faith and the Democratic Party at the same time?
September 7th, 2012 | 1:58 pm
Well, Kate, I was a pro-life Dem for a time, so here’s how it might work.
***************
But first, this. What I say below completely ignores the fact that the main body of elite Dems shouting “NAY” to the words “God” and “Jerusalem,” and the more-elite/more-strategic Dems like Obama trying to shut everyone’s ears to that, are both 100% poetically fitting happenings. Yeah, I know with the “Jerusalem” thing there are legitimate foreign-policy diffs at stake, but I still say POETICALLY FITTING. 100%.
In a fantasy world in which there was NO Roe v. Wade, no pro-abortion Dem platform, the animus against America’s Biblical heritage and believers has now become so widespread and so unchallenged in the Dem ranks that any responsible Christian (or Jew) would STILL need to hesitate long before voting Dem. I couldn’t have said that as recently as the late 1990s, but that really is the Dem party we now have–one that reacts viciously towards any connection its Republican opponents try to make between their political positions and their faith, and one that is suspicious of any religious belief to begin with. All the decent Dem-voting Episcopalians and Methodists and university-linked Evangelicals who (at times rightly) warn, warn, warn us against a Christian-Conservative identification, SOMEHOW NEVER MAKE THEMSELVES HEARD when one of the various Christian-bashing episodes is underway. They don’t call for the mayor of Boston to apologize or step down, for example. Thanks to their spinelessness, it’s Jello Biafra’s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBa6YMs-AbY party now, for which all religions are sick-making, but which has an especially impassioned NAY for all religion deriving from Jerusalem.
But let’s just pretend that ain’t the case, shall we?
********************
A.) Okay, first, there is a particular pro-choice case that says abortion is wrong, but, it’s the sort of thing that government should never get in the business of regulating. The danger of Govt. in the Bedroom is an evil so profound, so inviting of far worse evils than simply spying on citizens to prevent abortion, that it outweighs the evil of the 20 million or so abortions so far since Roe.
B.) There’s another moderate pro-choice case, of even weaker reasoning IMO, that we Christians/Jews/Muslims etc., who are bound by religious teachings against abortion, have to remember we are in a social contract with non-believers. And they, at least, have reason to be uncertain whether the unborn child is a person. So the evil of abortions occurring is accepted, for the good of liberal democratic government behaving within its proper bounds. And so believers keep doing the proper liberal democratic thing. To maintain something along the lines of Rawls’s Public Reason Test, which is seen as all-vital to liberal democracy and maintaining religious freedom, we believers have to accept those abortions.
C.) There is also a case for voting Dem, despite the party’s entrenched support for Roe v. Wade, that is not technically pro-choice at all. It says, even if it shares to some lesser degree the worries of A.) and B.), that permitting abortion really is wrong, and that evil really outweighs the others. However, it says, not everything has been weighed yet. There are other things the Dem party is offering, usually under the rubric of “social justice” or “war-aversion” that the believer is also obliged to take into consideration. Periodically, or usually, these goods (or if you will, the respective Republican evils) outweigh the real evil of abortion.
So Kate, that’s how, back in the day, being anti-abortion, as every Christian is obliged to be, could be reconciled with being Democrat. Some version of C.) was the line I fed myself.
I don’t think, BTW, that gay marriage considered in and of itself (and not in terms of the grave Constitutional damage it will do if its forced upon us by Courts–and not in terms of the utterly uncompromising and often openly anti-Christian rhetoric some of its supporters have gotten in the disturbing habit of encouraging), is a factor that even comes close to abortion. A new institution that will only be used (bear with my guesstimate) by around 20% of a segment of the population that is itself only around 3-6% of the total seems fairly easy for Christians who support the Dems on other issues to regard as a factor that gets outweighed by others.
September 7th, 2012 | 3:42 pm
Carl, truly great stuff. Could you please make it a full post? It deserves it.
September 7th, 2012 | 4:38 pm
I agree with Pete.
Years ago, via Joe Knippenberg, I kept up with and commented on a blog for and by politically liberal Christians. After a couple of months I couldn’t stand it anymore and quit writing. No one gave me a clear and logical political rationale for their positions, although the closest I got was something like your C. Some of them told me that it was better to be salt and light in the Democratic Party than to stand with heartless Republican capitalists. I asked, why not be salt and light with them? Because they are evil. I would ask, abortionists are not evil? Misguided, but well-intentioned, no, not evil. The argument would go on; you can imagine.
One argument with a socialist Christian went like this: If America is a Christian nation, then it must act towards the poor as a Christian would. Since we are a democracy, Christianity is the expression of the population, which must necessarily mean a charitable government. I asked, but if you know that this charitable government sponsors a permanent class of people incapable of self-sufficiency then is it good for the poor? Ah, I was told, Christ said the poor would always be with us. To which I asked, of course, does he tell us to guarantee it?
Yes, Carl, a public explanation of liberal Christianity made objectively would be very good, I think.
September 7th, 2012 | 8:02 pm
a) The comments seem to assume that a Christian’s vote/party allegiance ought to be determined almost exclusively by her interpretation of Christian ethics, but surely this is a contestable position, even from a Christian point of view. For example, the ultimately dismissed reasoners in Carl’s A & B hold that an understanding of the regime–not just Christian ethics–ought to influence one’s political commitments. This is a version of the classical view that ethics is only a part of politics. From a Christian perspective, this “realistic” stance might need to be justified with reference to the fallenness of the world, but I don’t think such is all that difficult.
b) even if Christian ethics is the standard, I think it’s tough to argue that, given the number and variety of issues involved, a definitive political orientation is the inevitable result of this balancing act.
September 8th, 2012 | 9:58 am
I enjoyed the discussion (great comment from Carl, by the way), but one point of clarification: I’ve never been a pro-Obama evangelical. I’ve been dismayed by the phenomenon since its inception. I apologize if my initial NRO post gave that impression. Anyway, I look forward to reading Kate’s further thoughts on faith and Democratic Party.
September 8th, 2012 | 10:27 am
I don’t understand the faith of the Democratic Party either. I like crushing young boy’s testicles, and I know that God loves crushing little boys testicles as much as Kate and myself!
September 8th, 2012 | 11:08 am
Yoon Joo, I think you are totally on your own in that hobby.
September 8th, 2012 | 11:21 am
David French, I don’t think anyone who followed the link to your post and read it could have missed that fact if I was unclear. I look forward to exploring the topic of faith and the Democratic Party.
September 8th, 2012 | 11:38 am
sara, out ethics inform all of our political decisions, and if a Christian, then Christian ethics apply. I’ve been thinking about “social justice” and know of no one who cries out loudly for social injustice. The difference between a conservative Christian looking at social justice and a Christian who is politically liberal is not in a lack of interest in said justice. It is merely a question of how to arrive at social justice. We only differ on a few relatively minor points, like a woman’s right to choose abortion or gay marriage as a question of social justice at all. Do I want factories to pollute? No, I don’t. Do I want children to go hungry? No, I do not. Do I want the elderly to suffer without medical care? No and to all of those and many more questions raised by Democrats along those lines that they use to accuse or condemn conservatives, I want to ask, “What? Are you crazy? Who wants those things? We just disagree on how to best run the regime to effect good ends.”
What is realistic to each of us is formed by our ethics, whatever those are. We apply our principles to our decisions, assuming we have principles. Sometimes that is a balancing act, but who really complains about balance?
September 8th, 2012 | 11:54 am
When I first became involved in politics as a college intern in the summer of 1972, I didn’t realize that the revolution within the Democratic Party that had caused the riots in Chicago in 1968 had led to the dominance by the left wing of that party and the beginning of the decline of Democrat conservatives. Despite their loss to Nixon in the election, the Demo left triumphed in forcing his impeachment, in blocking any support to South Vietnam against the tank invasion from North Vietnam, and embracing the 1973 abortion right announced in Roe v. Wade.
The Demo left transformed a party that had formerly included balanced liberal and conservative wings into a party of the Left at the national level. The conservative Dems rejected by their old home started to gravitate to the Republican Party, where there was still a spectrum of ideology on the left-right axis.
Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist and former Navy officer, looked like he should be a conservative Southern Democrat, but he was really a liberal at heart. I was in the Air Force stationed at Andrews Air Force Base when Carter decreed we would save energy by keeping our summer thermostat at 80 degrees and be charged for parking at government offices in order to force us to ride nonexistent buses. The Left believes it can bend reality to its will by seizing the levers of power. And people who seek such power as a profession tend to become partisans of the Left. That is why many government agencies are staffed predominantly by those on the Left (EPA, Interior) while others that serve more conservative functions tend to have career staff that are more conservative (Defense and its sister nuclear weapons agency Energy).
The Reagan presidency solidified the identity of Republicans as a home for conservative Dems. From that point forward, no conservative Democrat could ever be nominated for president, and no expressly liberal Republican could ever be nominated.
The spectrum of liberal v. conservative still exists in many religious denominations, and where it does, the churches do not seek identification with a political party that would exclude some of their members. Christians on the left, including Obama, identify government intervention in economic activity as justified by scriptural commandments to love and care for our neighbors. Christians on the right see the left as subordinating religion to a secular agenda that replaces Biblical sexual morality with acceptance of any personal behavior. It is an ideological divide among Christians that is played out in the two national parties that have now become strongly identified on the liberal-conservative political
axis, after decades in which their coalitions were assembled on principles at 90 degrees to that axis.
September 8th, 2012 | 9:00 pm
kate,
thanks for your response and for starting the discussion. i certainly agree with you that ethics does and ought to inform all our political decisions. it informs our selection of political ends and political means. my first point was just that other things do and ought to inform our political decisions, too, e.g. historical experience, ideas about the nature of government, etc. sure, our ethical formation conditions our interpretation of historical experience and so forth, but that doesn’t mean that the historical perspective or the perspective of the political scientist isn’t a distinctive way of viewing reality that has its own insights to offer.
September 10th, 2012 | 10:27 am
Nice discussion, but too restrained, I should think. At this point in our history, I think it is safe to say that the rank and file Democrat Party member is either, in the worlds of Lenin, a ‘useful idiot,’ or he/she, in rejecting God as the ground of existence, is spiritually/morally depraved.
I mean, come on gang, have you heard these people speak? Is it really possible to live among Democrats and expect to achieve an ordered society?
September 10th, 2012 | 6:20 pm
Christians who also identify themselves as democrats, like me, have far more reasoning behind our alliance to the party than has so far been explained here.
For republicans, it all boils down to the abortion issue (and only lately with concern over the sanctity of marriage added.) But the republicans seldom talk of the sanctity of life. It’s most usually “pro-life” talk. That’s important, in that abortion is the only issue concerned with that for them. Republicans are pro-capital punishment, more hawkish on war in national interests (which means many are going to die) and less prone to intervene in international affairs in which the sanctity of life, often en masse, is ignored.
But were one to argue merely on the issue of abortion, one would, if at all honest, concede that little has been achieved on behalf of unborn persons by either party. The Supreme Court, in 1973, was made up of six justices who were appointed by republican presidents and only three who had been appointed by democrats. It was a democratically controlled Congress (both houses, with 60 senators) that first halted Medicaid funding for abortions in 1976. And it was the democratic voters who, when polled back then, were more against abortion than in favor.
Televangelists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell had no stance for or against abortion for the better part of the decade following Roe. Their eye was only on controlling a party (either party), at the time, and they hadn’t made enroads into either until abortion came to be seen as an issue that could be used to galvanize christians. The republicans caught on first. That’s how the party’s came to take sides. It wasn’t, and at a party level still isn’t, the formulation of christian values up against evil. And make no mistake. I do believe that abortion is murder, and thus evil.
You may see all that as a past which shouldn’t have bearing on how we decide the issue going forward. That would be fair. However, the republican party has continued to use the issue of abortion as its plank in holding onto the evangelical voter. The GOP has done little else with it, even after 24 years under republican presidents; even after many years with more republican appointed justices on the Supreme Court than had been appointed by democrats. In 2004, there were 7 justices to 2. That doesn’t give me hope in ending abortions via a Supreme Court decision by voting for a republican presidential candidate who promises to make conservative appointments. How about any of you? What were they waiting for? There were ample state-supplied cases from which to choose. Why not bring forward an amendment which would provide for the rights of the unborn? Why do republican controlled states legislatures not narrow tolerances for abortions to the degree that the Roe decision allows. It allows very narrow access to abortion after the first trimester. Some states have acted. Others have not.
Most importantly to me, in light of these failures to act, are our very ineffective ways of attempting to win over the hearts and minds of fellow citizens concerning abortion. Notice I now say “our”, as I am now writing more from my concern as a fellow christian, and less as a politically minded person.
We argue over the act of abortion. We don’t argue over concern for the persons involved, not even the unborn so much. We need to offer some hope to women who find themselves in difficult circumstances. We need to offer praise for women who elect to value the life carried more than the hardships to be endured. Republicans miss that, especially. The lack of compassion is replaced with judgement for the lifestyle that caused the life. That’s harmful, obviously to the unborn, innocent person; yet some cannot stop themselves. How is that helpful? How is that pro-life?
Mitt Romney was pro-choice before he was pro-life, if he is pro-life. He was governor of the first state in the union to allow gay marriage, while he was in office. He did little to rescind it, and was very cautious when speaking of it. And republicans want me to vote for him? Over abortion and ethical values? You’ll need to make a valid argument as to why that makes any sense, and you haven’t yet begun. (Throw in a reasonable argument for considering him patriotic and ethically upright in light of his five deferments from military service for his country and his decisions to send his wealth to sit in off-shore bank accounts, where nairy one American job is being created with it.)
My stance on the abortion of living persons is that it is murder. It should be illegal, and that society should act as though the life of the unborn is of utmost importance; that life is a sacred gift from God, and that once that life begins in the womb, we should care for the mother rather than over-burden her.
In my mind, having found the issue of abortion to be stalled by both parties, I concern myself with other issues. Those issues include education, just compensation, poverty, peace, civil rights…
Republicans have paltry examples of achievement in anything save under-taxing the wealth of the wealthy and over-spending on obselete military projects. They can claim or try to run from “No Child to get Ahead”. They legislate to stack the wealth among the few, a redistribution if ever there was one. They legislate to legalize usury among lending institutions. They have advocated, throughout the last several decades, a decline in spending on the poor (and 47% of the poor are children.) They have ignored the advice which would have prevented great loss of American life and destruction eleven years ago, tomorrow. They currently advocate, throughout the nation, what amounts to poll taxes aimed at disenfranchising the poor from their right to vote.
The unrest at the Democratic convention, while voting on whether to place the word “God” back into the platform, and whether to name Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” In fact, why would one object should the word “God” not be included in a party platform and not object that the word is not found in the Constitution? Seems someone had the backbone to remember their history, and more importantly, the value of the collective wisdom of the Founding Fathers. It’s not that we’re not a nation made up predominately of christians; it’s that we are not a theocracy and that we have no state sanctioned religion. Evangelical Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals et al should be most appreciative of these facts. They shouldn’t be leading the cries against.
It also seems to me that all christians should be disillusioned with the treatment of Palestinian Muslims by their Jewish neighbors. The Jewish state has gone far beyond its agreed upon 1947 boundaries. We watch (or ignore) as people are forced out of their homes. Sometimes those homes are demolished. Sometimes they are given to Jews who have no justifiable claim. Muslims who work in Israel, as most do, are forced to wait for hours at gates in the wall before going to work, often missing work and getting fired. Ambulances are also forced to wait for hours, often so that those in need die while waiting. And yet we wonder how a few of a hopeless people could hate us enough to do us harm.
The US, during the Reagan administration, gave Israel $26,000 per Israeli citizen in aid. Israel has incredible support today from us, and yet they are one of the countries which have been caught spying on us. They inject themselves into our politics with their enormously powerful lobbies. Once we were a nation with a poor record on the acknowledgment of the rights of Jews, where lynchings went on in the South. That same South, where I live, has come to embrace Israel as “God’s chosen people.” Why is that? Is it that evangelicals suddenly opened their bibles and understood scriptures their parents hadn’t? No. It is that evangelicals, for more than a century now, have been enthralled with the notion that the End Times are at hand, at least if helped along by recreating the Jewish state. There is no true love of the Jewish people. They and their state are merely seen as a means to an end; the end. That has no place in christianity. Nor does our tolernace for the despicable treatment of the Palestinian muslims. Democrats don’t oppose Israel. Some of us oppose how they treat their neighbors and how they steal land. The historical Israel had many peoples within its borders. Abraham bought his first parcel of land in Cana’an.
This is but the beginning of why, as a christian, I usually vote for the democrat. I understand there are arguments for voting the other way. I understand that we must take heed that one issue may outweigh many others. Perhaps though, non-christians scoff at us because we too often lack tact, and not because they find the notion of God to be ridiculous. Maybe it’s us who are all too often ridiculous in the way we act as a light to the world. Shine it so I can see and I will be grateful. Shine it in my eyes and I won’t like you or your light.
September 11th, 2012 | 9:37 am
Daniel Eason, so much to argue with here, but I have classes to teach today. For one, as a Republican, all does not, NOT, boil down to the abortion issue. The support for capital punishment is because killing of the innocent is a crime against the sanctity of life that can require the most extreme sanction. That’s Biblical and I don’t see how we get around it, although it is not pretty.
A few points to start:
In 1973, Catholics were usually Democrats, which was why the Democratic Party had a strong anti-abortion wing. What happened there?
I am no fan of televangelists, but in their defense they were against abortion from the start. I was on the other side of the issue back then and we had a field day talking up the superiority of science over faith because those guys thought a clump of cells that felt no pain was a life. Guess what? Science subsequently discovered how early the nervous system develops, among other things, and no one looking at the science of life in the womb who thinks things like pain and consciousness matters can say there is nothing truly living in the womb at 3 months, at which point most abortions have been performed. We know more about how life forms in the womb, partly because of abortion.
Jerry Falwell started the “Moral Majority” as a movement in the late 70s because he saw the only way to fight a Supreme Court decision was through the legislature and the political process. Nothing attempted prior had worked; maybe the anti-abortion movement needed more organization. National Right-to Life began in 1968 by people already concerned with the way American politics had turned on the topic of abortion. It was an issue for both parties back then, although even then, more right-to-lifers were Republican than Democrat. Why?
I’ll have to get to the rest later.
September 12th, 2012 | 5:45 pm
Kate, your comments, as well as the original post and subsequent comments by most others, do little more than bear out just how much the issue of abortion is to what it all boils down. All one need do is go back and read this post and comments to see that. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
It looks as though I got your dander up, as I have rated a level three of three on the yell-o-meter, by your use of all caps, bold type and italics on the word “not.” That just proves how angry some of you do become when you’re pushing your interpretations of religion down the throats of the rest of us. It’s ugly, and it’s unbecoming. That was my point in the last sentence of my comment. That way of proselytizing isn’t at all helpful. In fact, it is harmful. But that doesn’t seem at all to matter. It seems it is only about who can be the most rigid in condemning culture.
As for capital punishment, should it continue on when so many who have been on “death row” have been exonerated, either before death or posthumously? Who should be put to death when an innocent person is put executed by the state? Whoops!
By using the “It’s Biblical” argument, do you also believe in the use of the death penalty for all of those crimes covered by it in the Bible? And could we or should we not also use this argument to allow a man to divorce his wife merely because she is barren? Should women not be allowed a divorce, as ancient Hebrew law does not allow such? Should a man be allowed several wives, but a woman only one husband, as is in the Bible? Should we really allow a man to force marriage upon a woman he has raped, so that he might avoid punishment?
All of that, and much more stuff which “is not pretty” is in the Bible. How do you say? What are your answers?
You’re right that Catholics were against abortion. A majority today are. And they historically vote for the democrats for president more often than they vote for republicans. What happened is that now about 40% of Catholics accept abortion, about 61% accept women having babies out of wedlock, about 54% accept homosexual relations. Some of those percentages are higher than those of the overall population. And the percentage of Catholics who use and/or approve of the use of contraception is around 96%. The Church is strong on social issues. The indivduals are not so swayed any longer by the Church.
Jerry Falwell was a reluctant and late-comer to the debate on abortion. True, he did start the Moral Majority in June of ’79, six years after Roe was decided, or the better part of a decade later. Abortion was in the news long before Roe. And it was only after Francis Schaeffer talked him into taking up the issue. He thought it a Catholic issue and didn’t wish to get involved until he saw the promise of its power to assimilate evangelicals, if led to do so.
There is an excellent book entitled “God’s Own Party – The making of the religious right”. It’s by Daniel Williams and is apolitical and gives an accurate history of the evangelical movement from the ’20′s until the Bush 43 years.
There is also an excellent site on the internet about the making of the issue of abortion. You can find it at:
http://pbs.org/godinamerica/interviews/frank-schaeffer.html
September 14th, 2012 | 3:18 am
First, I wasn’t angry at all. I emphasized that one word because I didn’t have time to make the arguments stronger. The middle of weeks can be very busy for me and had to write in haste, more than I should have for the time I had. You misread me as you pleased, but that is not how I was writing. No dander up. However, you are wrong about so much.
But, second, now I understand your sources. Those guys are not apolitical and Frankie Schaeffer is a bitter son. I have looked through the Williams book and was disappointed at his revisionism. I knew how very wrong he was in reference to the 70s, that I lived through and became both Christian and (necessarily, for me) a conservative in. A good and truly apolitical history of the church in politics would be better for you to cite.
As to Catholics softening, I wonder how Catholics call themselves Catholics when they don’t really care about Catholicism.
As to “it’s Biblical”, I do agree that the Judaic Law was for the Jews and all restrictions do not apply going forward to the Gentiles. That’s roughly what Jesus said. I don’t see God’s love in winking at abortion, condemning the innocent to death because we are apathetic.
Capital punishment is rarely wrongly sentenced. The fault in any wrongful death falls on those who are wrong. Many more innocent people wrongly die in car accidents every year and I hope you are not going to insist we ban cars because drivers make mistakes and people die. I’m sorry human beings make mistakes. I don’t see how we ban human error without banning humans and I am not willing to go so far. That latter was said with irony which I mention lest you misunderstand me.
September 15th, 2012 | 12:26 am
There is a marked difference in your writing style between those with whom you find agreement and those with whom you take exception. It’s not that I misread; it’s that the rules of e-mail, blogging, Facebook etiquette are that writing words in all caps, bold and italics means that the writer is upset and yelling. The use of all caps, alone, means that one is yelling, but, as you are a frequent blogger, I expect you already know all that. (The yelling doesn’t bother me.)
Now you’re misreading. I didn’t state that Frank Schaeffer is apolitical, just that Daniel Williams’ book “God’s Own Party” is apolitical. I don’t know whether Williams has any particular slant that he writes about or espouses elsewhere. In this particular book, Williams does a fine job with his citations. It was, after all, a product of his dissertation. The book provides excellent evidence for the reader.
Your use of “Frankie”, unless you were a childhood friend in Switzerland, reads as a silly insult of him. His story doesn’t seem bitter to me. Bitter at whom? He certainly doesn’t speak ill of his dad, who died in ’86. Neither he nor his dad cared for the politics of the GOP, or for the flamboyant lifestyles of the televangelists who sought their advice and support. The man was there in the room, not just alive in the ’70′s like you and me.
I too remember the 70′s. I remember never missing a Sunday School class for several years, and I remember standing in the DC snow and watching Jimmy Carter take his oath. I remember watching him and his wife walk to the White House. And I remember that he received the majority of the evangelical vote in ’76, not the republican.
Falwell had yet to decide which Party would be better with which to align. Falwell had also begun to search for a new issue. His old one, racial bigotry, was wearing thin and no longer profitable. There is ample proof that indeed he was a racial bigot. It’s in his quotes, his sermons, his leadership at what became Liberty University (whites only for a time.) Anyone, even you, can read what he said about issues along the way, including his notion that abortion was of no concern to him. You can also read his words about how he, if an attorney, would have represented the rights of homosexuals. You can read his disparaging remarks about MLK, Catholics and Jews. That history doesn’t belong to Daniel Williams. He doesn’t have a patent on it. You can search for yourself. I merely named a couple of excellent sources, of many.
I do admire the Catholic Church for not swaying from positions as easily as others do. But there is a danger in being wrong sometimes, like their stance on celibacy among the priesthood, their evil deeds with regard to inquisitions and WWII, latin-only sermons to non-latin speaking congregants, child molester cover-ups, superstitious use of rosaries and “Hail Mary”, payments-for-pardons, prayer to Mary…Perhaps the average Catholic has trouble knowing when his Church is in the right any longer.
With whom do you agree that the Law was for Jews and that it doesn’t apply to Gentiles? That’s not in the Gospel. Christ Jesus was the fulfillment of the Law (Matt. 5:17-48). In this passage, He not only requires us to uphold the Law, but makes even more stringent requirements of us than those of the Law of Moses. He places the bar much too high for us. There are at least two points there.
First, the Law of a perfect God requires perfection.
Second, Man is hopelessly sinful and flawed. Complinace with the Law of the Perfect God is beyond achievement. God uses the Law to indict us for our sin. We are without hope, if left to ourselves.
The Gospel message is that Christ Jesus, perfect Son of the perfect God, delivers us from our just punishment.
Evangelicals come across, by dwelling on the Law, as having forgotten the Gospel. We all know how to apply it to ourselves, realizing our sins and acknowledging them to few others, if any. And then laying claim to justification through salvation.
But evangelicals only remember the Law when sizing up the lives of others. That’s a perilous path. It’s harmful to deliver the news that a person is condemned, without also delivering the Gospel message as well. That’s what goes wrong for evangelcals. The message is accusitory and without love.
Republicans don’t have any less blame for abortion than do Democrats. People in both Parties pass on the issue. People on both sides are apathetic. The Republicans make alot of noise about it every four years so voters will remember that they promise to do something to end abortions. And then they don’t, every four years.
There have been hundreds of people in the country who have been exonerated after having been wrongly sentenced to death, and if you believe in the sanctity of life, one is too many.
“Wrongly” and “accidents” describe two different incidents in your illustration. Car accidents do happen. It is no accident when a jury wrongly convicts a man and sentences him to death. (See how I, too, used both words there, only correctly?)
Yes, I’ve taken to a stronger tone with you. I, like every one I know, take to heart when someone comes right out and tells me I misread, that I am wrong, when my words are blatantly twisted, and especially when somehow heresy is attributed to me, even as if to agree with me.
September 15th, 2012 | 6:49 am
1. Golly, I only emphasized one word.
2. Daniel William’s book has a particular slant and he gets some things wrong. I’m not the only person who noticed. I was never a follower of Falwell, but I think you malign his motives. He came from a religious tradition that avoided politics because politics was dirty. Falwell took a stand that made him a target of a liberal media that misunderstood him. I never thought he was very good at politics, but his real problem was that his words were often taken out of context, as I think you do here. What you say about Falwell and party affiliation is undoubtedly true because there were more shared values between the parties up to the 1980s. That things have changed was part of my original question in my post. Why is any Christian a Democrat?
3. I’ve known the “young” Mr. Schaeffer by his diminutive since the late 70′s, back when the whole Christian world opened up to me like an alternate universe. There are Christians who find him appalling and there are those who find his life sad. I’m of the latter crowd. I liked his father’s writing. How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture had recently been published when I became a Christian and influenced how all in the Christianity I had been “born again” into thought about relating to a secular world. The father’s work was of real value. The son is of no interest to me.
4. Like many Christians, I voted for Carter and regretted it. He wasn’t particularly Christian when in office, unless we choose to think of self-righteousness as a necessary Christian trait, which I don’t.
5. “There have been hundreds of people in the country who have been exonerated after having been wrongly sentenced to death, and if you believe in the sanctity of life, one is too many.” No, not hundreds: I know there are anti-capital punishment groups that claim this, but there methods of arriving at their numbers are specious. Even if I accept your number, talking about the sanctity of life, “one is too many”, how many abortions? I’m not sure how that group really knows, but the CDC cites similar numbers for the US.
6. Finally, Jesus did not follow the Law. Yes, he was the fulfilling of the Law, which means the end of it. That was the challenge to the serious Law-keepers of the time, the Pharisees and Sadducees. Wasn’t that why they had him killed? That was natural. In spiritual terms, Jesus had to die to fulfill the Law completely. He took our sins on him, yes, certainly, but Paul reminds us that makes sin no less sin.
This answer is necessarily disjointed and bothers me for that reason. I’ve numbered the main points for a little clarity.
However, you have given me a better understanding of Christians in the Democratic Party. Thank you, Mr. Eason.
September 15th, 2012 | 9:11 am
Falwell is a perfect example of why many Christians are Democrats. He is everthing in a person that we wish had never been associated with christianity. Televangelism in general has been harmful to the Faith. I was in Barnes & Noble yesterday and came across one of their newest books, titled, I think, “It’s Your Turn Now”.
And that’s the crap they preach, a faith that is centered around the notion that the individual is freed by the Gospel to make lots of money and that there is nothing wrong with the easy road. The problem is, the Gospel teaches the opposite. It teaches that, beyond aquiring riches, we shouldn’t even be seeking the mere comforts the world has to offer.
We watch as these men and women accumulate great wealth, fly around the world in private jets, live in several mansions made private with high fences. That’s not Christianity. What I have written about Falwell is accurate. He was a bigot, looking to fill his pews and his pockets by preaching fear and resentment. He used the Good News for bad purposes. He kept company with the likes of former Ga. gov. Lester Maddox, renowned for having chased blacks out of his Atlanta restaurant with a baseball bat. That was the man’s one deed that qualified him to be governor. And Falwell embraced that. He maligned himself.
You and I have seemingly flipped in our arguments over the use of the Mosaic Law. You were once arguing “that’s Biblical” and I was questioning the particulars. However, my argument was never that Jesus came to do away with the Law by fulfilling it. He didn’t. He actually tells us that from his own lips. He gives us even more to observe. The Law is still there to convict us of our sin, though you’re right that we do become free from the penalties of the Law through the Gospel message. Martin J. Heinecken, a contributor to the “Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics” writes that “Love is both the fulfillment and the end of the law (Matt. 22:37-40; Rom. 13:10; Gal. 5:14; 1 John 2:7-10). Love in obedience to law is not love. The one who acts in love is free to meet the needs of the neighbor creatively in the moment without being bound by principles or a code morality, even though, because still a sinner, he or she will submit also to the political use of the law out of love for the neighbor. The Christian is free to frame such laws as will meet the neighbor’s needs (a contextual ethic).”
Abortion is wrong. It is evil at work in our society. I’ve written that, and I have always believed that, never flip-flopping on it. The numbers are far greater on abortions. My recollection is that there have been some 20 million since Roe. (I could be wrong, but don’t have time to look it up.) Even one is too many.
The only things about abortion we seem to disagree on is what best way to end them, and that Republican leadership has any plan of stopping abortions. It would bring about the collapse of the Party as it is because millions of voters would now longer be bound to vote for them on that single issue.
Don’t waste your time arguing with Democrats like me about this. Hit the Republican leadership with it. Call them out on this. Light a fire under their asses and demand they either make headway or stop using the innocent lives of the unborn just to get elected. Your scorn is better placed upon those who lie to you for your vote.
I do appreciate you for taking the time and reading my views on this topic. It is extremely important to me. And your opinions do matter to me. Most of all, I am thankful to share with a fellow Christian.
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