I'm back from conferencing with a bunch of preachers--great time--I'm still processing it but will post more thoughts here. While staying in a downtown convention-oriented hotel in Nashville, I was provided with the daily complimentary USA Today by the newspaper fairy (or hotel staff member) who dropped it in front of my door each day. It was pretty much basic news stuff, but on Monday there was an op-ed that caught my eye.
It's titled "What is a 'real' Christian? And How might the question affect the GOP presidential field?" by Dan Gilgoff whose bio line reads: "Dan Gilgoff is a senior editor at U.S. News & World Report and author of The Jesus Machine: How James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are Winning the Culture War." I think I heard him interviewed back when he was out promoting that book.
In the op-ed, he discusses how James Dobson--current kingmaker on the Religious Right--said in an interview that he was not sure if Fred Thompson was a Christian. Thompson's camp replied with assurances that he was a believer and trotted out his baptismal information to prove it, but the Dobson camp treated this lukewarmly. In fact, this lukewarm response could be said foe all the top Republican contenders who do not fall into traditional categories of what an evangelical would consider to be Christian--for example, Catholic, Mormon, Episcopalian, etc.
I was raised as a good Southern Baptist to believe that a true Christian was one who had "accepted Jesus Christ as personal savior and lord." This meant that an individual had made this commitment to Jesus Christ when they were old enough to understand their own sinfulness and need for grace. The more dramatic the change in behavior/belief the better it was. Things like infant baptism, confirmation, etc. did not count. The only thing that mattered was an act of individual choice for or against Christ. Although this was made possible through God's grace and not through personal works, the proof that one's commitment was real and that one was truly saved came in the form of doing certain behaviors and not doing others. If you did not "walk the walk" then all you were doing was merely "talking the talk." Therefore, people like Catholics, Episcopalians and other Christians who had more of a cultural or community-based understanding of what it means to be a Christian were all suspect. And what about Mormons? Don't even get me started! I remember pamphlets put out by the Southern Baptist Mission Board and even some videos labelling the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints as a cult and tool of Satan.
Strictly speaking in doctrinal terms, I think that many evangelicals and certainly all fundamentalist Christians would still go along with this understanding of what it means to be a Christian. Gilgoff points out, however, that in the political realm, however, conservative Christians are learning to be less concerned with doctrinal purity and more concerned on political purity on issues like abortion, gay rights, etc. So candidates like Romney or Thompson or McCain or Giuliani could be okay just as long as they voted the right way on issues that are the bread and butter of the Religious Right political machine.
Personally, I can't blame them. Although my religious faith is at the core of my life and is the lens through which I try to look at political issues, I gave up long ago believing that any politician was a saint or that the political arena was a realm where I could ever hope to expect someone that truly held the same beliefs as I do to achieve any real power. Instead, I look for the candidate who lines up more with issues that matter to me (issues like poverty, justice, environment, peace, racial reconciliation, etc.) and his or her religious beliefs may or may not play into my decision to support them--to whatever extent I do support them. I have a rather pragmatic view of my involvement in politics, albeit one that often too easily slides into cynicism.
I can't help but point out, however, the inconsistency in the thinking of religious conservatives. They often choose to frame their support of a candidate in terms of his or her own personal morality and religious beliefs (think of the emphasis upon George W. Bush's personal religious conversion in 2000). It makes me wonder if such things ever really mattered to the power brokers of the religious right after all.
On a related note, I will be preaching about salvation this Sunday and different ways of understanding how a person becomes a Christian, so this posting is a little bit of a lead up to Sunday.
Grace and Peace,
Chase
No comments:
Post a Comment