Wayward Christian Soldiers

Wayward Christian Soldiers
Jan. 21st, 2006

(Critical Action is now posted on Weblog at: http://criticalactions-what-isyour-opinion.blogspot.com/)

If you have followed my writings of past you know my passionate, strong belief in separation of church and state. In the article printed herewith, Charles Marsh, professor of religion at University of Virginia, makes a good case to support my conviction. He has cautioned that the conservative evangelicals have amassed political power at the cost of integrity to the gospel message. His research reveals ministers who from the pulpit endorsed the Iraq war leading up to the Iraq invasion, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine. In addition, he refers to John Stott, ---http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/John+Stott ---- previously referred to in Critical Actions. In a related article, “Who Is John Stott”: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/30/opinion/30brooks.html?ex=1137906000&en=8ef6c8a5e19b28f2&ei=5070 David Brooks acclaims John Stott as the true evangelical leader and not Jerry Falwell.

This writing is not to suggest that the Iraq invasion was wrong or right, but bring to bear critical thinking about church and state.

Prior to the 2004 presidential election at a family setting, someone made the comment: “If a candidate’s religion was right then everything else would be ok.” Even though I believe that was a rhetorical (I hope.) statement, if really believed, and some people do, it would be a shortsighted avowal. To put religion as the definitive qualification for an office is in the narrowest of tunnel vision. However, as John Danforth, a Episcopalian minister and moderate Republican, has put it: “People of faith have the right, and perhaps the obligation, to bring their values to bear in politics, but not to approach politics with a certainty that they know God's truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through governmental action.” The article by John Danforth from which this quote is taken was published in CA on June 17th, 2005: http://criticalactions-what-isyour-opinion.blogspot.com/2006/01/i-didnt-say-it-but-moderate-republican.html

• Charles Marsh: What will it take for evangelicals in the United States to recognize our mistaken loyalty? We have increasingly isolated ourselves from the shared faith of the global Church, and there is no denying that our Faustian (meaning inserted: pertaining to or resembling or befitting Faust or Faustus especially in insatiably striving for worldly knowledge and power even at the price of spiritual values; "a Faustian pact with the Devil") bargain for access and power has undermined the credibility of our moral and evangelistic witness in the world. The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.

Those who know me, I trust, recognize that I take my Christian faith seriously by witness and good works. That’s a freedom that I cherish, and I believe it’s in need of protecting for all people. Religious freedom will not endure if religious egoists amass political power in government. Not to compare religions, but will we take a lesson from the experiences of Islam’s sect-religions of Muslim countries and their religious fanatics? Namely one leader, the Iranian defiant President Mahmound Ahmadinejad who has made known he soon expects the coming of the Mahdi, a messiah figure whose return will herald the end of the world. Pick one from our own, the obsessive Pat Robertson. Imagine him as our U. S. President! Surely our divisions in faith beliefs and growing fanaticisms, like theirs, will bring further upheaval in politics, governmental affairs, and put in danger our religious freedoms.

What’s your opinion?
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January 20, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Wayward Christian Soldiers
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/opinion/20marsh.html?th&emc=th

By CHARLES MARSH
Charlottesville, VA.
IN the past several years, American evangelicals, and I am one of them, have amassed greater political power than at any time in our history. But at what cost to our witness and the integrity of our message?
Recently, I took a few days to reread the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. That period, from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2003, is not one I will remember fondly. Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president's war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine.
Charles Stanley, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta, whose weekly sermons are seen by millions of television viewers, led the charge with particular fervor. "We should offer to serve the war effort in any way possible," said Mr. Stanley, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. "God battles with people who oppose him, who fight against him and his followers." In an article carried by the convention's Baptist Press news service, a missionary wrote that "American foreign policy and military might have opened an opportunity for the Gospel in the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob."
As if working from a slate of evangelical talking points, both Franklin Graham, the evangelist and son of Billy Graham, and Marvin Olasky, the editor of the conservative World magazine and a former advisor to President Bush on faith-based policy, echoed these sentiments, claiming that the American invasion of Iraq would create exciting new prospects for proselytizing Muslims. Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the hugely popular "Left Behind" series, spoke of Iraq as "a focal point of end-time events," whose special role in the earth's final days will become clear after invasion, conquest and reconstruction. For his part, Jerry Falwell boasted that "God is pro-war" in the title of an essay he wrote in 2004.
The war sermons rallied the evangelical congregations behind the invasion of Iraq. An astonishing 87 percent of all white evangelical Christians in the United States supported the president's decision in April 2003. Recent polls indicate that 68 percent of white evangelicals continue to support the war. But what surprised me, looking at these sermons nearly three years later, was how little attention they paid to actual Christian moral doctrine. Some tried to square the American invasion with Christian "just war" theory, but such efforts could never quite reckon with the criterion that force must only be used as a last resort. As a result, many ministers dismissed the theory as no longer relevant.
Some preachers tried to link Saddam Hussein with wicked King Nebuchadnezzar of Biblical fame, but these arguments depended on esoteric interpretations of the Old Testament book of II Kings and could not easily be reduced to the kinds of catchy phrases that are projected onto video screens in vast evangelical churches. The single common theme among the war sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God's will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.
Such sentiments are a far cry from those expressed in the Lausanne Covenant of 1974. More than 2,300 evangelical leaders from 150 countries signed that statement, the most significant milestone in the movement's history. Convened by Billy Graham and led by John Stott, the revered Anglican evangelical priest and writer, the signatories affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that "the church is the community of God's people rather than an institution, and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology."
On this page, David Brooks correctly noted that if evangelicals elected a pope, it would most likely be Mr. Stott, who is the author of more than 40 books on evangelical theology and Christian devotion. Unlike the Pope John Paul II, who said that invading Iraq would violate Catholic moral teaching and threaten "the fate of humanity," or even Pope Benedict XVI, who has said there were "not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq," Mr. Stott did not speak publicly on the war. But in a recent interview, he shared with me his abiding concerns.
"Privately, in the days preceding the invasion, I had hoped that no action would be taken without United Nations authorization," he told me. "I believed then and now that the American and British governments erred in proceeding without United Nations approval." Reverend Stott referred me to "War and Rumors of War, " a chapter from his 1999 book, "New Issues Facing Christians Today," as the best account of his position. In that essay he wrote that the Christian community's primary mission must be "to hunger for righteousness, to pursue peace, to forbear revenge, to love enemies, in other words, to be marked by the cross."
What will it take for evangelicals in the United States to recognize our mistaken loyalty? We have increasingly isolated ourselves from the shared faith of the global Church, and there is no denying that our Faustian bargain for access and power has undermined the credibility of our moral and evangelistic witness in the world. The Hebrew prophets might call us to repentance, but repentance is a tough demand for a people utterly convinced of their righteousness.
Charles Marsh, a professor of religion at the University of Virginia, is the author of "The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today."