Evangelical Christians seeking power
"Rather than being a voice of conscience speaking truth to power without coveting it, the religious right and many of its leaders simply want power. In yielding to this temptation they have betrayed their calling." [→ READ ]
Tony Robinson writes well on why reinstituting Christendom is a profoundly bad idea (boldface mine):
Why do I maintain something is amiss with the way that some evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, their leaders and organizations are participating in U.S. politics? The short answer: They are playing the game by the rules of politics and not by the insights and convictions of religious faith. Instead of speaking truth to power, they are trying to take power. …
Today many on the religious right are trying to reinstitute something that has been tried and that failed, namely, “Christendom.” …
Neither the great moral prophets of the Old Testament tradition nor Jesus himself envisioned such a fusion of religion and politics. … The prophets stood as voices of conscience calling the powers that be to account. They did not try to become those powers. …
Likewise Jesus spoke to political power, but he did not try to become one. He rejected a role as a political messiah. …
[The religious right has] changed the public perception of Christianity from a noble faith with a concern for all people and accountable to the sacred, to simply another interest group not essentially different from big unions, various powerful PACs or the lobbies of big business.
I think that, to coopt comedian Steven Wright’s turn of phrase, since the extreme religious right is not part of the solution [prescribed by Jesus and the prophets], they’re part of the precipitate.
And that precipitate is radioactive.
![[Creative Commons logo]](/images/ccLogo.gif){kind=small}