Stan Moody:
As an evangelical pastor and formerly an elected Maine State Representative, I’ve had more than a little difficulty in reconciling the nearly vehement commitment of my fellow-evangelical Christians to the Republican Party and, by virtue thereof, to former president, Donald Trump. We are led to believe it to be a vitally necessary and Godly-inspired fight against evil.
Evangelicals, the most self-conscious wing of the American Christian Church, profess a belief in salvation through Christ as rescue from a universally shared state of rebellion against God. Having found redemption ourselves, should that not encourage compassion for others seemingly prospering under their own power without God?
History Repeating Itself:
Over the past 100 years, we have experienced theocratic political triumphs at least twice – once through Prohibition and now through the Pro-Life movement. Prohibition against alcohol gave birth to organized crime, while the Dodd decision overturning Roe v. Wade has all the earmarks of prosecuting doctors and their patients for elective abortion procedures for any reason. Yet, following the Dodd decision, abortions in the first year rose 37% in states bordering ban states [1].
Have we Evangelicals rejected the person and work of Jesus that focused on love of neighbor? As a state representative, I came out publicly and strongly in favor of equal civil rights for the LGBT community in Maine. The next thing I knew, an organization calling itself the Christian Civic League of Maine had publicly branded me as a pro-abortion, pro-homosexual minister. Who is our neighbor, if not the disenfranchised person unlike ourselves?
How Did We Get Here?
Apart from an obvious unbridled fear of families being inundated by a sin-wave, what is driving this faithless, anti-Christian condemnation of other? A few possibilities come to mind:
·Coming out of the Second Great Awakening of the 19th Century was a doctrine that defined the reign of God as varying epochs of Kingdom life. Premillennial Dispensationalism renders the present Christian age as transitional and secondary to the redemption of God’s favorite peoples, national Israel. The present Christian remnant is to be raptured into Heaven at the beginning of a “Great Tribulation” while the rest of the world suffers, culminating in the Second Coming of Christ. “We’re outa here!”
The evangelical Invitation System, made popular by Billy Graham and others, defined salvation as repeating a Sinner’s Prayer for the primary purpose of escaping the fires of Hell. It was sold as an exercise entirely of one’s free will in response to fear. As a result, it has become common to believe that redemption can be force-fed by law to the general public – break them down and save them! We have tired of waiting for God!
Shuttled aside by this history of self-styled grace has been Jesus’ inaugurated Gospel of the Kingdom of God. The replacement theology for the Gospel of the Kingdom has largely devolved into salvation of one’s soul primarily as a future hope with dependence on the American Dream of prosperity and success for one’s immediate comfort. Service of God and mammon indeed!
Love of neighbor has been reduced to “tough love”, justifying subjection of marginalized communities to shunning and abuse.
·
Beginning with the Moral Majority of the ‘80s and on to the current Church Growth Movement, Evangelicals have learned to measure the rightness of both our standing with God and our politics through numbers of adherents. As the local church declines, however, believers become increasingly desperate to affirm that rightness through majority rule rather than living through the “fruits of the Spirit”.
·
As white evangelicals defer the Christian doctrine of the sovereignty of God to a select moral code leading to “righteousness”, we are finding ourselves faced with the prospect of warring against one another over politics, in which we falsely claim we have no interest other than its weaponization.
Tired of Waiting for God to Act:
Is this hatred of America? No; I suspect not! It may be fear of the American political ideal of government of the people, by the people, and for the people run amok. The emerging antidote is the building of political power to force conformity with select biblical standards, thus seeking immediate comforts and remedies outside the patience-driven option of awaiting divine intervention. Death to self, the mark of the true Christ-lover, is the antithesis of worldly hope.
There is a lot of anger out there directed at folks in authority (“draining the swamp”) who are intent on performing their jobs but have become targets – scapegoats of an American Dream that has failed to lift the rest of us up. If this nation-hope continues, we are in for rough times ahead, regardless of which political party survives the 2024 election. Is God really in command within the evangelical community?
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