The NYT Magazine has a great article on what looks to be a split in the evangelical base between old guard propagandists like Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and younger, moderate evangelicals like Bill Hybels, pastor of the Willow Creek megachurch movement.
With Dobson and his crew already threatening to leave the GOP if Guiliani gets the nomination—and, well, at this point, if anyone but their perfect imaginary candidate gets it—a split is approaching. This has been building up for years now, epitomized by the moderates reconquista of the Southern Baptist Convention. (Remember, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are Southern Baptists as much as Falwell was.)
Some highlights from the ten page article:
- A skit during worship comparing the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima to the crucifixion. (I’ll bet no World War II vets were involved in the planning of that one.)
- The evangelical monthly magazine Christianity Today asks if evangelicals should repent of their easy support of Iraq War, and the moderate head of the Southern Baptists says, “I believe in the Word of God. I’m just not mad about it.” Apparently, this has become something of a catch phrase now.
- Are evangelicals assimilating into moderate society, becoming the new “mainline Protestants?”
- Hybels says that pastors doing politics leads to “heartache and disappointment.” How un-Falwell is that?
- A Guiliani-Obama race would see many evangelicals crossing party lines to vote for the Dems.
It’s time we start looking to Carter-Clinton evangelicals to break this thing wide open. (And I count Obama among them.) The religious right juggernaut has been going for thirty years. It too will pass.
The conservative movement for years has said (in one way or another) that to vote for abortion (Democrate) is to kill the babies yourself. But to kill thousands of Iraqis because the President and his co-horts falsified documents with “evidence” of WMD is justified? Or is it better to “have the babies” but no way to feed them because the Republicans shipped all of our jobs and manufacturing capability to China. Now we have no job and no way to feed the babies. Wages in the US have not increased in the US since NAFTA and the WTO were signed.
Now, we have Dad and Mom (instead of working 1 job) working 2 and 3 jobs. They are working so much just to make ends meet that they have no time to raise their own kids…that is “Day Cares” job. I believed the conservative line for so long…until I ran accross the falsities of the current administration about a year ago.
What State was the ONLY state to declare martial law 2 days BEFORE 9-11? Flordia. Jeb Bush’s state. And the administration didn’t know anything about it? Yea right. Go to http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com. Funny but some things are chilling.
Right on, Ghost — it’s all linked together.