But with every occasion on which the Christian Right squanders its moral capital, every unjust war it supports, every foolish statement designed to provoke a war between Israel and her neighbors, every ham-handed attempt to keep Christians from taking the environment (and the survival of God’s Creation) seriously, that bulwark erodes just a little. Intelligent young people look at the movement which can sanction such irresponsibility, which touts the likes of Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Newt Gingrich, and George W. Bush, and turn away in disgust. Like the Catholics of Spain who associate the Church with Franco’s secret police, they shudder and look for something else—a worldview which is not so manifestly juvenile and irrational.
.......The only hope of resisting the partisans of secular intolerance is to clean up the Christian Right (Catholic and Protestant), to purge it of jingoism, anti-intellectualism, and end-of-the world nihilism, then to break up its shotgun wedding to the hacks who run the conservative movement. The Christian Right must become less “Right” and much more Christian, reassert its intellectual and moral independence of partisan politics, and insist on applying its principles consistently. Pastors must stop endorsing torture, public Catholics must choose their pope above their president, and all of us must remember that the real war is not between the Democratic and Republican parties, but between the Church and the World.....
To the Republicans, Evangelicals are one of many constituencies who will be appeased only as much as necessary to advance the real agenda. It would be nice if Evangelicals had a similarly hard-nosed stance toward the party. Neither party is fully consistent with Christian teaching. Hanging a partisan banner on the cross will end badly.
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