Blue Dog Evangelicals: an Endangered Species

Stan Moody:

I’ve been bouncing between God and Caesar my entire life. Somewhere along the way, I discovered that God, through the person and work of Jesus Christ, had crafted an alternative to party politics – the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. I became a Blue Dog Evangelical, subscribing to a Gospel that was pivotal to Jesus but had long since been thrown out with the holy water. My present view is that while white evangelical Christians may lately have won the “stay the course” battle, we have surrendered the power of unmerited righteousness. Next?

In January 2002, as a newly-elected Maine State Representative, I cast the only Republican vote in either the House or the Senate for a non-binding resolution, asking President Bush to exhaust all means of diplomacy before invading Iraq. OK! Let’s try the other side of the political aisle! You might say that I moved from RINO (Republican in Name Only) to Blue Dog Democrat, a fiscal moderate in liberal clothing. 

How Can a Professing Christian Justify Hating Anyone?

As my rock-ribbed white evangelical Facebook friends gleefully applaud the current dismantling of the US representative republic, I find myself clinging more fiercely to the abandoned doctrine of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The few of us Blue Dog Evangelicals remaining are repeatedly asking the question, “How can a professing Christian justify hating anyone?”. The answer may be all too simple: “We have become spiritually-ignorant, Yellow Dog Republicans!”.

Translation: We Evangelicals are locked into a feckless faith in cheap grace and married to a political system that feeds selectively from a smorgasbord of OPS – Other People’s Sins. Ironically, Evangelicalism has become far less holy than its despised forerunner, Roman Catholicism, that at the very least demands that Christian lives must reflect the love/sacrifice precepts of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5-7).  

How did we get there?

Worship of the Family:

The unholy merger of God and Caesar began with “family values,” a subtle shift away from the inclusive Kingdom of God toward legalistic pop-Christianity. The downward trend continued with the treasured Gospel being displaced by “Seeker Religion,” whereby hordes of middle-class families gathered in homogenous community to celebrate our lust for the American Dream of prosperity and success as God’s gift to a faithful people.

Churches, their property tax burden assumed by a silent majority of nonbelievers and non-sectarian voters, thumbed their collective noses at our divergent communities by endorsing political candidates and organizing referenda drives.  Efforts by government to prosecute abuse of the 1st Amendment privilege of freedom of religion have been met with cries of discrimination against church and family.

The popular radio program, “Focus on the Family” might better have been poised as “Focus on Jesus, and watch the family take on new meaning!”

Building Heaven on Earth without Heaven’s Help: 

To these newly-minted champions of Christian legalism, proselytizing of new converts has degenerated from divine transformation into aggressive conversion tactics sought to be canonized into law. If there are more loving ways to skin a proselyte, they seem to have been buried with a preoccupation with polling data, giving new life to the long-since buried Moral Majority movement. 

In many respects, this latest white evangelical incursion into the affairs of God and State can be thought of as a futile attempt to build Heaven on earth without Heaven’s help, thank you very much. As current political efforts to Christianize America fall further into futility, is it possible that the confessing Christian church may be forced to return to its counter-cultural roots, relying on faith to build its witness to neighbor? Now, that would be a novel faith-based initiative!

In the meantime, what are we few remaining Blue Dog Evangelicals to do? What occurs to me is to seek to put aside fear and anxiety over the sinful effects of loyal party membership and reclaim with thanksgiving our citizenship in the Kingdom of God now. We’re going to need help, however!

Philippians 4:5-8 comes to mind:

Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. “The Lord is near.”

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

Pardon this Blue Dog Evangelical while I painfully regroup into a contingency of seekers after the present, dynamic, triumphant Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt 6:33).