Intertwining of church and electioneering

I read with great interest the front page article in this morning's LA Times entitled "Pastors Guiding Voters to GOP." The article details the efforts made by conservative evangelical pastors like Rick Scarborough of Texas to push the line on acceptable politicking in church. It tells how Focus on the Family is guiding churches to focus the attention of congregations on two issues. It directs pastors to help a congregant who shares that the two most important concerns are health care and national security to "suggest that Jesus would make abortion and gay marriage priorities." Now, I don't know about you, but I don't remember reading about either issue in the Gospels, but maybe that's just me. Anyway, there has been a significant effort to blur the lines.

An accompanying article tells about the Kansas Attorney General, Phil Kline, who is making significant use of religious connections in his bid for re-election. Again there are significant questions being raised about how much is too much. At the same time, liberal All Saints Episcopal Church of Pasadena is under investigation but the IRS because of comments made days before the 2004 election from the pulpit that the IRS feels were inappropriate (I take a look at this issue in next Sunday's Lompoc Record column --Faith in the Public Square.

Is the church being politicized yes. Is politics an inappropriate topic of discussion for religious folk, no. Like many pastors I have a social activist streak and I'm politically motivated. The question remains, though, how do we we keep a balance so that politics isn't running away with our faith. In this, I find much light in the message of Barak Obama, who in his recent address to the Call for Renewal conference, calls for people of faith to act from faith, but in a way that seeks a reasoned solution to America's problems.

Comments

Danny Bradfield said…
Bob, I enjoy reading your blog (even though my Lompoc relatives may not approve of all you say in your newspaper article ... ha!).

Re: Jesus' two "priorities:" 1. gay marriage -- an Episcopal priest/seminary professor lamented to me over the summer, "Thousands of children are dying in Darfur, and all we can do is argue about sex." Indeed.

2. abortion -- I notice a link on your blog to the God's Politics blog. Did you see the comments there from a poor mother who says she would have had an abortion were it not for the support she received? If we want to end abortions, we need to provide support for families & poor mothers ... not stand in the streets waving signs, as so many did here in my community over the weekend.
Robert Cornwall said…
Danny,

Thanks for the kind words. I think they're are many who don't approve of all I say in my columns, but hey, that's the way it is.

As I look at these two "issue", both of which are sexual in nature, it harkens back to the idea that moralism is an easy mark. It's as if I've got my house in order and you don't. But such an attitude doesn't require anything of me. To solve the problems of Darfur, the environment, or even the underlying issues that make abortion necessary for many -- as described in Amy Sullivan's article on the God's Politics Blog -- that will require something of me. But then I remember something about that in Micah 6.

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