RE: Voices: Christians should resist partisanship in politics
Jack Goodyear’s opinion piece could be summed up with, “Sorry, that train already has left the station.”
This would have been good counsel when Jerry Falwell started the Moral Majority movement in 1979. However, few voices were heard warning conservative Christians about hard-wiring their faith to a particular social, narrow agenda and ultimately a political party. Too few pastors spoke up and spoke out.
Jim Wallis, also quoted in Goodyear’s article, perhaps knowing the direction the culture was going, established Sojourners—whose publication appeared first under the name The Post-American—as a call to a more well-orbed faith focused on justice and mercy.
The present times are the fruit of years of political attempts to address moral issues. In failing time and time again, conservative religious leaders in their despair and desperation allowed themselves to be joined at the hip with a right-wing political party.
I also would note the Family Research Council, cited in Goodyear’s article, is a part of that decline into manipulation by a specific party. Early on, their focus was three-fold: homosexuality, pornography and abortion. It has evolved little since then.
For me, this article feels like it was pulled out of a dusty folder somewhere. Perhaps what would help more at this moment is, “How does the conservative church recover its witness and veracity?”
Michael Chancellor
Round Rock, Texas
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