Subject: (2 of 3) One Lord, one faith, one voice?. Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 11:34:40 From: oclc-fs@oclc.org (First Search Mail) To: ------------------------------------------------------------ PLEASE DO NOT REPLY OR SEND MESSAGES TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. ------------------------------------------------------------ create justice and help the poor and reach out to people in the Third World. They saw government as the primary instrument for addressing social problems. I'm now worried about the other extreme that suggests that the church alone can get the job done. And I hear this emerging ideology that suggests that government should not be involved at all in trying to achieve social good. The Bible is very clear about those who are in positions of political power using government to help the poor--Psalm 72, Amos 5, Jeremiah 22, Ezekiel 34, Daniel 4. Has the church become too politicized both on the Right and the Left? Campolo: I think the general public has the sense that evangelicals want to take over the government and impose Christian values on the rest of this pluralistic society. When you say we just want to have our voice heard, and we don't want to be discriminated against as Christians have been in the past, I think you're on target. But there's a growing cynicism among those of us in the Call for Renewal. We pick up the "Contract with the American Family" (booklet) and read on page 18: "The Christian Coalition's top legislative priority since 1993 has been tax relief for America's hard working families." Now, I'm wondering. Are you guys pro-life? Or are you guys simply Republicans looking for tax relief? Reed: When Bill Clinton came to office in 1993, we announced that our number-one priority was to reduce the crushing tax burden on the American family. Now, was that because that was the most important issue in the hierarchy of our values? No. It was because we recognized that this was an issue that we cared about and that President Clinton also cared about, and we felt we could get some movement. And so we proposed a $500-per-child tax credit, which President Clinton has vetoed twice. Now, I wouldn't argue that there's a biblical mandate for lower taxes on the family, but I will say that the crushing tax burden on Americans has been hurtful of the family. I think there are a lot of women who have been driven out of the home into the work force, not because they wanted to be, but because they had to support the family. And one of the reasons for that has been the tax burden. Campolo: Mainline churches are now bearing the consequences of making the Democratic party agenda the message from the pulpit all during the sixties and seventies. The reactions were severe. Now the evangelical church stands in the same danger of making the agenda of the Republican party the message from the pulpit. George Bernard Shaw once said, "God created us in his image, and we decided to return the favor." And as I hear Jesus being proclaimed from one end of this country to the other, he is increasingly coming across as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Republican; and that's what scares me. I find increasingly the rhetoric of "welfare mothers" in political dialogue. And that, to me, has racist overtones. America has learned to talk in code. "Willie Horton" had a meaning to it, and "welfare mothers" has a meaning to it. I don't like hearing those kinds of words on religious television. Ralph, you've spoken to this eloquently in your book, that within the Religious Right there is rhetoric emerging that has to be stilled and dealt with. You have done well to speak out against that in saying that unless we evangelicals start talking right, we are going to lose much more than we will ever gain in this political process. Another fear I have is that, for the first time, Christians are beginning to taste political power. And power has a very corrupting influence on people. I am concerned that whenever Christians operate from a position of power rather than from a position of servanthood, they betray the gospel and become something other than what Christ wants them to be. How to hold power and express love simultaneously is beyond my understanding and imagination, and that's why I'm scared whenever we come to politics. I'm afraid of what we'll do with power, and I'm afraid of what it will do to us. Colson: There is a risk that the gospel will be held hostage by a political party, that we are so anxious to get our views across that we'll compromise and hedge and end up being in their pocket, or being perceived as being in their pocket. I think the grave danger is that once you create a Christian political movement you almost are doomed, Left or Right, to associate the gospel with a particular political agenda. And in our culture, with the press so heavily secularized, the Christian agenda gets submerged and the political agenda looms large. The so-called New Religious Right is the bogeyman of American political life. And it is a tragedy, because there are moral issues that compel us as Christians to be in the debate. We not only deserve a place at the table, we have historically provided the moral consensus that allows limited government to exist, not just as individuals, but as a Christian political movement. Wilberforce had an openly Christian political movement to bring an end to slavery. And to me, abortion is a moral equivalent of slavery today. And so Christians belong in there with a Christian banner flying. The fact that I'm a Christian and am trying to bring my views to bear in the political marketplace does not mean that my views are illegitimate because they are motivated by deeply held moral concerns. The other side has got a moral agenda of its own--it's simply not recognized as such. All legislation is going to be morally based and have moral implications and affect moral behavior. My grave fear is that after a disillusioning 1996--which I think is going to be inevitably very disillusioning to Christians--that they will be drawn to the notion that we should retreat from the political process, disengage, not stain ourselves with the sin of the world, but go back to building up our churches and be the resident aliens that we always are in every society. I fear that as Christians we'll withdraw from the political arena and no longer argue those moral issues. Then the cultural decay in America simply hastens, and the church loses its effectiveness. Reed: Have Christians become too politicized? I think the answer is no. Christ numbered among his disciples Matthew, who was a tax collector for the Romans and considered a traitor to the cause of Zionism, and Simon the Zealot, who was a member of a terrorist political party devoted to the violent overthrow of the empire. I find it hard to believe that there weren't some fairly fractious political debates going on around those campfires when Christ was alone with his disciples after they had fed people and sent them out. I am pleased that groups like the Call for Renewal and other groups on the Left have begun to become energized. Because the truth of the matter is, I don't want people to equate the church with the Christian Coalition. That would be wrong. I don't share the same fear that Chuck does about the reaction to the 1996 election, and let me tell you why. The momentum in a conservative, religious, and moral direction of our politics is so overwhelming that no matter what happens in the presidential election level, the Republicans are likely to retain control of both houses of Congress and perhaps build on those majorities. And no matter what happens at the congressional level, my sense is that what happened in 1992 and 1994 will be repeated, and that is that you'll see huge gains by religious conservatives in school boards, city councils, state legislatures, county commissions, and other local offices. And so I don't think they'll withdraw. I think there will be some disappointment no matter what happens. But underneath, where people live, there will continue to be significant and historic gains by this community that are irreversible. Campolo: I think we are becoming too politicized. An example of this is found in the voter guides being put out by the Christian Coalition. These guides do not tell us as much about the Christian values of the candidates as much as they tell us how Republican they are. As a case in point, Tony Hall, a Democrat, who almost everyone agrees is one of the finest Christians in Congress, gets a 31 percent rating in the coalition's voter guide. This in spite of the fact that he got a 100 percent rating by both the Family Research Council and the National Right to Life Council. His only sin seems to be that he strongly supports appropriations to help the poor in Third World countries. But the coalition gives Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) a 100 percent rating in spite of the fact she endorses the militia movement. Colson: I think Tony has raised a very good question, and it points to a fundamental problem with trying to create a broadbased political movement and call it Christian. I would endorse Tony Hall any chance I get. I think it is terrible for us to us to turn our back on an evangelical brother who is with us on the issues. Don't we have to ask the fundamental question, What is government's role? Tony cites all the Old Testament passages--and I like to use them whenever they fit my own criminal justice agenda. But I do it with an awareness of my own hypocrisy because I don't believe in theocracy, which is what Israel was in the Old Testament. I'm not a reconstructionist or a theonomist. And so when I look at those passages, all I can do is reflect on the character of God. I think a Christian needs to look at government and say what is government's role in a pluralistic environment in a New Testament perspective. And it isn't, as Muggeridge said, to abandon any interest in government, but rather it is to see that government performs the fundamental function, which is clear in the Bible: to restrain sin, promote justice, and preserve order. God obviously passionately cares about the poor and the suffering. But I don't think God designed the kind of utopian system that this country embraced in the sixties and seventies that we've now found to be completely bankrupt. And for some now to embrace the utopianism of the Right would be an equal catastrophe. I think it was our friend at Boston University, Glenn Loury, who said he's seen utopianism of the Right, and it is not any prettier than the utopianism of the Left. GAY RIGHTS AND THE SUPREME COURTThis year the Supreme Court in Romer v. Evans struck down Colorado's attempt to stop antidiscrimination laws based on so-called sexual discrimination. It suggests that any opposition to these laws was based on "animus." How does each of you feel about the implications of the Romer decision? Colson: Romer v. Evans is the unraveling of the rule of law in America. It is the end of connecting the law to any objective standard or natural law to which man-made law must be responsible. The decision is so shocking that it is hard for me, having taken my doctorate in constitutional law, even to talk about it. Justice Kennedy said that the action of the Colorado voters raised the inevitable inference of animus and reflected bias motivated by their religious convictions. He did that without a single finding of fact on the record. As a matter of fact, the findings on the record were precisely the reverse. Governor Romer said that they were not motivated by religious bias or by any antihomosexual beliefs but simply that they did not want to extend civil-rights protection to sexual classification. They don't want to make whether you get civilrights protection a question of who you sleep with at night. Romer v. Evans makes it impossible for the Supreme Court not to approve same-sex marriages in the sense that any time you would vote to prohibit them you have raised the inference of animus. Liberty, as defined in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, means everybody is entitled to find for him- or herself the mystery and meaning of life. And so it is very hard to legislate public policy when that becomes the standard of the Court. It also means, if you take Romer v. Evans, if you take Compassion in Dying v. Washington, if you take Casey v. Planned Parenthood and wrap them together, that sodomy will be considered a constitutionally protected liberty, and laws against it will be unconstitutional. And if there are no laws against sodomy, polygamy has to go next. No laws against sodomy, polygamy--probably no laws against incest--can survive this avalanche, and then there is no compelling state interest in banning same sex marriage. The only thing that could possibly stop them is a constitutional amendment. If I were looking for a good issue in the Congress right now, I'd be talking about a constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between a man and a woman; because normal legislation will be dispensed with the back of Justice Kennedy's hand. This is the biggest shift in the culture war yet. This is the mother of all battles, and it has been decided six to three. There is no appeal. I care less about the Colorado statute than I care about the legal reasoning that struck it down, because it will make the formulation of any public policy based on moral values impossible in the future. Reed: Clearly, I disagree with the Romer decision. I think it was wrongly decided. I agree with Chuck. It was probably the most specious and threadbare legal reasoning that I've read in a Supreme Court decision since Lee v. Weisman, which was equally absurd. The Court has, through judicial fiat, said that no state, no municipality, no government can prevent the extension of civil-rights protection based on a sexual preference. I have no rights as a heterosexual. If my boss calls me in tomorrow and says, "I really don't want you around any more because you're a heterosexual," I have no legal recourse under the civil-rights statutes. Now, if he dismisses me because of the color of my skin, my ethnicity, my gender, I do. And my opposition to the granting of civil-rights protection based on one's sexual proclivity is that it is a Pandora's box. Does a sadomasochist, a polygamist, or an adulterer have the same rights? Campolo: What you have stated shows the bankruptcy of politics in many respects, because that Supreme Court decision that you correctly say has such far-reaching effects is by a Supreme Court in which the opinion was written by a conservative Republican appointee. But I think Chuck is a bit alarmist when he sees the gay civil-rights movement in these severe terms. The American family is in serious trouble. Divorce rates are at astronomical levels. Desertion rates are scaring everybody to death. But the problem with the American family is not due to gays wanting to live together in committed relationships. I'm not endorsing this, but the gays want to get married. It is the heterosexuals who want to get divorced. We're beating up on gays for what is, in fact, a problem in America in general. There's something wrong with a society when one of two people who have lived together for 25 years can be prohibited from being at the other's deathbed because the family says he or she has no rights. I am worried that there are referendums all across this country that are aimed at limiting what I consider to be the legitimate rights of gays. And I worry that we end up looking to the world as a group of gay-bashing, insensitive people who are the enemies of the gay community. We are not. You are not. On the other hand, when we talk about family values, I find very little being said about what is going on in our own churches with the acceptance of divorce and the acceptance of the breakdown of the family. I find that ministers are lowering their voices on this issue as they try to raise their budgets. It's frightening. Colson: I'm talking about the Court decision. It didn't matter that the issue was homosexuality. My concern lies in the fact that the Court legislated in the way that suggests that the very act of legislating restrictions on someone's sexual behavior raises an inference of animus--that it's automatically bias. Heterosexuals living outside of marriage are denied spousal benefits in the Disney Company. Homosexuals living outside marriage get them. So there is a favoritism toward homosexuals. Court decisions have brought the culture war to a screeching halt, because there will not be another case that can be won in the Supreme Court with the present state of the law in Romer v. Evans. That was why Scalia wrote his blistering dissent and read it from the bench. Scalia recognized that the game is over. The door is closed in the Supreme Court. And that raises profound questions for the viability of Christian political movements and about same-sex marriage and its impact on the sanctity of the family. And it raises profound questions about how you respond, because only a constitutional amendment or open defiance of the Supreme Court is going to stop the steamroller that is heading for us. PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTIONSRecently President Clinton vetoed the partial-birth abortion act. Sen. Patrick Moynihahn said that this was tantamount to a policy that would lead to infanticide. Is this a sobering decision or not? Campolo: I was very upset by the President's veto. I called Chuck and talked to him about it. It is interesting that on this issue a significant proportion of the pro-choice people were upset. There were a lot of pro-choice people who would argue that early stages of pregnancy are different from this late stage. I'm not going to go into the ontological arguments about all of this, but there is a kind of gut reaction across the country that these late-term abortions are wrong. This may have been a rather disastrous decision on the part of the President in terms of his re-election. I think he's going to find a tremendous mobilization among people who otherwise might have supported his prochoice stance, particularly the Roman Catholic community. Colson: I think the partial-birth abortion ban act is a crossroads for evangelicals and conservative Catholics in this country. If the issue had never been raised, one could not say that this country endorses infanticide. Once the issue to outlaw it was raised, the President vetoed it. If that veto is not overridden, then this country has taken an action tantamount to approving infanticide. The Holy See spoke to that in an unprecedented statement. I've been unhappy that evangelicals haven't spoken with equal vigor. One cardinal in the Roman Catholic church talks about this being a basis for civil disobedience. Christians have reached a point where we have to ask ourselves, Can we give the kind of support that has been the backbone of civil religion in America to a government that sanctions infanticide? I think the biggest question that the Christian movement will have to wrestle with in the light of Romer v. Evans--the door being shut in the Supreme Court--and a nation embracing infanticide is whether we can lend moral legitimacy to this government. Reed: I don't think you can blame the religious conservative community for its involvement in the only pro-life party in America today when one of the two political parties countenances an act that the Catholic bishops have properly equated with infanticide. UNITY AND ACCOUNTABILITYLet's pretend for a moment that each of you attends the same church. Would you be able to make it clear to others that your faith is more important than your politics? Reed: I am concerned about the quality of our witness and how we speak to the world about each other. To have Christians on the Left referring to conservative brothers and sisters in Christ as extremists or radicals is very destructive, even if we're worshiping together. There have been some on the Religious Left that have been critical of our involvement in the church-burnings issue, suggesting that our motives were impure, which I find extraordinary. This doesn't really bother me very much on a political level, but it bothers me a great deal as a Christian. The Religious Left seems to have as its sole function releasing a bunch of white papers criticizing us as an organization and as a community. I don't see that as a strong witness. And it's really not politically effective, because you become viewed as a sourfaced critic of someone else who's building and changing things. I would say the same thing of people on the Right. In my book (Active Faith, Free Press, 1996) I issue a call for civility. And I had some of my dear friends in the conservative community who were very upset about it. But I'm glad I said it. Campolo: I think the three of us have to make a commitment to hold our brothers and sisters who are associated with us accountable. I don't expect you to be the one to come over and say to the members of the Call for Renewal, "You're making some statements that are out of line." That becomes my responsibility. And I would hope that the same would be the case for you--that we become committed in the name of Jesus Christ to holding people accountable to speak the truth in love, as the Scripture says. So that the kind of rhetoric that could ruin our witness from one end of this country to the other doesn't take place. Colson: If we were in the same church, could I be in fellowship with both of these guys? The answer is yes. You forget that I was discipled by Harold Hughes. He was a liberal Democrat then. He's even crustier and saltier about it now than he ever was. I can love them without saying I'll vote for them. I think out of this discussion we are left with a couple of questions that need to be dealt with by the Christian world. One of them is whether Christians will, in disillusionment, give up on the political arena. The second question is whether Christians can bear allegiance to a government that sanctions infanticide and may soon undermine the first institution God created, the family. The third--and I think both of these guys are shying away from it--is agreeing that there are a lot of legitimate negotiable political issues that Ralph Reed, as a conservative Republican, and Tony Campolo, as a liberal Democrat, can be involved in. But when you hang the Christian label on them you divide the body of Christ, and you run the grave risk that you're going to bring the gospel hostage to the fortunes of one political party, Left or Right. God wants justice. The biblical word in Hebrew is tsedekah, which means righteousness. And so our job is to bring righteousness to bear in all of public life. That may sometimes cut against the Republican grain and other times cut against the Democratic grain, but we're free to do that. And we should fight hard not to allow the media to stereotype us. I'd go to some lengths to reassert the independence of the gospel and not ever let it become hostage to either political party. What Christians ought to be doing is striving to find those nonnegotiable issues, fundamental biblical questions that are not Left ------------------------------------------------------------ Thanks for using FirstSearch. This e-mail account is only for distribution of FirstSearch documents. Please contact your librarian with comments or concerns. ------------------------------------------------------------