P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

ARE ALL REPUBLICANS AUTOMATICALLY SAVED?

I have a couple of soundbites for you to consider. If Regis Philbin were to put this up on the screen, with a "who-said-it" question, this would be worth $250,000, easy. Here's the quote:

"It is my personal feeling," says this United States senator, "that the legislation of abortion on demand is NOT in accordance with the values which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized — the right to be BORN, the right to love, the right to grow old."

Can you guess who? Here's the good senator's concluding thought.

"When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, AND to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very MOMENT of conception."

That's rather strong, isn't it? And the man who said those eloquent words was . . . none other than Senator Ted Kennedy. That's from a letter signed and dated by the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, August 3, 1971. From conception, he says, children have a right to be born.

All right. Some of you probably veered your car off into a cornfield in shock, but while you're pulling back onto the freeway, let's hear now the $500,000 question. You're out of life lines, but who do you think said THIS one for the record?

"We have a message of redeeming grace through a crucified and risen Lord," this prominent preacher said. "NOWHERE are we told to reform the EXTERNALS. We are not told to wage a war against bootleggers, liquor stores, gamblers, murderers, prostitutes, racketeers, prejudiced persons or institutions, or any other existing evil as such. The gospel does not clean up the OUTSIDE but rather regenerates the INSIDE."

Have you got a guess? Who said that? "Don't try to legislate the nation's morals; don't try to reform the externals"? That was none other than the Rev. Jerry Falwell, speaking out during the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and quoted in a book entitled To the Right.
Well, talk about the world turned upside down! Teddy Kennedy, the pro-life champion, and Jerry Falwell telling the government to stay out of the morality business.

Now, why do we pick these two paradigm-shifting examples? First of all, to help all of us realize that when it comes to matters of religion and politics — when to march and when not to, how the church should organize or not organize politically — these are hard, hard issues. The abortion issue is agonizingly tough. I know we have radio listeners on both sides. We have staff members here on both sides. The pro-life cause used to have Senator Edward M. Kennedy on its side. People wrestle with their consciences and do the best they can, sometimes changing their minds after hearing from many constituents, or after a lot of prayer. Sometimes people go to battle, and sometimes they retreat. And all of us on the sidelines need to be sympathetic to the people who are being shot at from all sides.

The book we've been studying this week, entitled Blinded By Might, comes to us from two men who got hit by a U-turn. Ed Dobson and Cal Thomas were extremely active in religio-political causes. They thought that marching and picketing and organizing voter drives was THE best way to shape America and solve moral corruption. And . . . then both of these men LEFT the Moral Majority, and are now preaching a gospel of . . . well, gospel. "Only the gospel can transform lives. Only the power of Jesus in a young woman's life can stop promiscuity and a need for an abortion." That's what they're saying now.

In a way, the seismic platform shifts of these four men is the dilemma we want to consider today. Because a preacher like Ed Dobson gets up in the pulpit on Sunday morning and preaches a message from God. His congregation believes and assumes that he has spent time praying over that message, digging through the Holy Bible to find divine truth. And from the pulpit, he shares it. This is the mandate; this is what a Christian minister of the gospel is called to do.

Now, what if he also addresses political issues? The automatic assumption in the pews is that those words also, in a sense, come from God. That those positions are God's positions. Which . . . might very well be the case. When Christian preachers speak out against child abuse and racism and abortion, they often ARE telling students of the Word what the Word really says. But the blurring of roles happens when the implication goes forth that God has a political platform and that God has a political agenda and that God even has a chosen political party. You might remember a number of years ago when a presidential candidate — who actually made it to the White House — accused the party on the other side of the aisle of leaving three little letters out of their platform. And those three letters, he charged, were: "G - O - D." Which, by implication, meant that HIS party was now maybe God's party too.

"It is difficult for the average layperson to distinguish," these two men write, "between whether the preacher is speaking for HIMSELF or GOD, whether the preacher is a Catholic bishop or a Pentecostal evangelist."

And when the preacher arrives at the point of saying, "This is how you should vote," the reality is that a congregation hears it as: "This is how GOD says I should vote." Here's a bit more from Dobson and Thomas:

"In some cases, our political opponents will even be fellow believers who need to be respected as such, even though we may seriously disagree in political matters. This is perhaps THE most difficult issue of all for Christians in politics. We are all so quick to believe that ‘God is on our side' that we tend to see our political opponents as God-hating, Christ-denying hypocrites."

Now friend, I do believe in what Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey recently described as a "Christian worldview." Meaning that my Christian faith ought to impact everything about me, right down to how I drive my car and recycle my trash. AND how I vote. But that DOESN'T mean that there is a "(quote) Christian position" on every single political issue there is in this world. And I have received in the mail religious voter guides that seemed to imply that there WAS.

These authors talked with U.S. Representative Tony Hall, who serves his Ohio constituency as a very born-again Christian. He is ardently pro-life, enthusiastically supportive of a number of Christian causes, like fighting pornography. He also happens to be a lifelong member of the Democratic Party. And he said to Thomas and Dobson: "You know, I looked to and fro [in the Bible] for what Jesus said about capital gains and could not find it." Earlier in the book, the two men write this:

"They [politically active Christians] are implying that there is a proper Christian position on nearly EVERY political issue. They are implying that disagreement with their political positions is, in fact, disagreement with Jesus."

Actually, though, there's an even greater concern. A Christian sitting at church hears all of this political rhetoric — and sometimes he or she SHOULD hear Bible truth about certain moral threats — and says, "That is what Christians believe about such-and-such. This LIST is the Christian position." On the other hand, once the faith and "The List" are so linked in our minds, people ALSO begin to think that once they subscribe to the list, they obviously must be Christians. If "A" gets you "B," then "B" gets you "A." In those back-of-the-book interviews, former senator from Oregon Mark Hatfield gives this exact warning:

"People outside the faith get the wrong message. They think, ‘Well, if I believe in these political issues because they say this is the ‘Christian' agenda, then I'm a Christian. And that to me is miscommunication. That is not biblical. The question is, WHO DO YOU SAY CHRIST IS? – not who agrees about abortion or school prayer."

So friend, here's where we find ourselves on the fifth of July, as we put away our flags. Let's lower our voices and remember that other people are good Christians too. The beliefs of other voters are just as sincere as your own. Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian Coalition, and who has probably made a few mistakes in this arena too, writes in his book Active Faith:

"Politics is a contact sport. But after the game is over, I always help my opponent up off the turf. . . . I kneel on the field with other players of both teams and ask for God's blessings. That is the proper perspective of faith in politics — not that I am right and you are wrong, or that I have all the answers and you are an enemy of God, but that we are both flawed human beings in an imperfect world in search of the truth who are asking for His guidance in the struggle."

That's a good model for all of us, isn't it? And regardless of how you voted last November, remember that your Christian faith doesn't depend on the color of the ballot they hand you, but on how you've answered that question: "Who do you say Christ is?"