On Trading the Gospel for Political Power
August 30, 2010
Okay, I don't hide the fact that I am conservative politically. I believe the federal government is too big and that it taxes people too much. I believe abortion is a moral crime and a national shame and am committed to never voting for anyone who is pro-choice. But I continue to be concerned that some of my fellow conservatives seem to be undiscerning when it comes to the relationship between politics and the Christian faith. Too often it seems that some of my conservative brethren are willing to ignore distortions to the Gospel in order to enjoy the cheap pottage of political power. The political left has done this for generations. Why have we followed suit?
Certainly there were many good and decent people attending the "Restoring Honor" rally this weekend. But brothers and sisters we must clear: Glenn Beck is not a Christian. He is a Mormon. Mormons deny every fundamental doctrine of biblical faith. My fellow conservatives, recall how we fume and fuss when the Christian left partners with universalists, Buddhists, Nation of Islam and other Christ-deniers in order to further political ends? Why are we doing the same thing?
Russell Moore (no liberal!) of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has written a fine article on the subject. I ask you to consider it carefully.
Certainly there were many good and decent people attending the "Restoring Honor" rally this weekend. But brothers and sisters we must clear: Glenn Beck is not a Christian. He is a Mormon. Mormons deny every fundamental doctrine of biblical faith. My fellow conservatives, recall how we fume and fuss when the Christian left partners with universalists, Buddhists, Nation of Islam and other Christ-deniers in order to further political ends? Why are we doing the same thing?
Russell Moore (no liberal!) of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has written a fine article on the subject. I ask you to consider it carefully.
A Mormon television star stands in front of the Lincoln Memorial and calls American Christians to revival. He assembles some evangelical celebrities to give testimonies, and then preaches a God and country revivalism that leaves the evangelicals cheering that they’ve heard the gospel, right there in the nation’s capital.Read the entire article HERE.
The news media pronounces him the new leader of America’s Christian conservative movement, and a flock of America’s Christian conservatives have no problem with that.
If you’d told me that ten years ago, I would have assumed it was from the pages of an evangelical apocalyptic novel about the end-times. But it’s not. It’s from this week’s headlines. And it is a scandal.
Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, of course, is that Mormon at the center of all this. Beck isn’t the problem. He’s an entrepreneur, he’s brilliant, and, hats off to him, he knows his market. Latter-day Saints have every right to speak, with full religious liberty, in the public square. I’m quite willing to work with Mormons on various issues, as citizens working for the common good. What concerns me here is not what this says about Beck or the “Tea Party” or any other entertainment or political figure. What concerns me is about what this says about the Christian churches in the United States.
It’s taken us a long time to get here, in this plummet from Francis Schaeffer to Glenn Beck. In order to be this gullible, American Christians have had to endure years of vacuous talk about undefined “revival” and “turning America back to God” that was less about anything uniquely Christian than about, at best, a generically theistic civil religion and, at worst, some partisan political movement.
Rather than cultivating a Christian vision of justice and the common good (which would have, by necessity, been nuanced enough to put us sometimes at odds with our political allies), we’ve relied on populist God-and-country sloganeering and outrage-generating talking heads. We’ve tolerated heresy and buffoonery in our leadership as long as with it there is sufficient political “conservatism” and a sufficient commercial venue to sell our books and products.
Too often, and for too long, American “Christianity” has been a political agenda in search of a gospel useful enough to accommodate it. There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship. The liberation theology of the Left often wants a Barabbas, to fight off the oppressors as though our ultimate problem were the reign of Rome and not the reign of death. The liberation theology of the Right wants a golden calf, to represent religion and to remind us of all the economic security we had in Egypt. Both want a Caesar or a Pharaoh, not a Messiah...
Where there is no gospel, something else will fill the void: therapy, consumerism, racial or class resentment, utopian politics, crazy conspiracy theories of the left, crazy conspiracy theories of the right; anything will do. The prophet Isaiah warned us of such conspiracies replacing the Word of God centuries ago (Is. 8:12–20). As long as the Serpent’s voice is heard, “You shall not surely die,” the powers are comfortable.
