Alter Call: Conservative Columnist Calls On Religious Right Politicos To Quit While They’re Behind
Thomas has seen the Religious Right from the inside, and he knows it’s a caricature of what the Christian faith ought to be.
Poor Cal Thomas.
The nationally syndicated conservative pundit is a plaintive voice crying out in the evangelical wilderness. Thomas doggedly keeps calling on Religious Right politicos to repent, and they just keep saying no.
In a column I read this morning in The Washington Times, Thomas rails against the Religious Right’s sadly misguided political power trip and pleads with evangelical Christians to turn to other means to spread their influence.
“Thirty years of trying to use government to stop abortion, preserve opposite-sex marriage, improve television and movie content and transform culture into the conservative evangelical image has failed,” Thomas asserts. “The question now becomes: Should conservative Christians redouble their efforts, contributing more millions to radio and TV preachers and activists, or would they be wise to try something else?”
As he often done in the past, Thomas opts for “something else.”
“If results are what conservative evangelicals want,” Thomas insists, “they already have a model. It is contained in the life and commands of Jesus of Nazareth. Suppose millions of conservative evangelicals engaged in an old and proven type of radical behavior. Suppose they followed the admonition of Jesus to ‘love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison and care for widows and orphans,’ not as ends, as so many liberals do by using government, but as a means of demonstrating God’s love for the whole person in order that people might seek Him?”
Concludes Thomas, “Evangelicals are at a junction. They can take the path that will lead them to more futility and ineffective attempts to reform culture through government, or they can embrace the far more powerful methods outlined by the One they claim to follow. By following His example, they will decrease, but He will increase. They will get no credit, but they will see results. If conservative evangelicals choose obscurity and seek to glorify God, they will get much of what they hope for, but can never achieve, in and through politics.”
Wow. What a novel idea! Evangelical Christians seeking to spread their faith by example rather than government coercion! Let’s call it an idea of biblical proportions.
Thomas is well qualified to say the things he’s saying. He worked with the late Jerry Falwell to get the Moral Majority up and running 30 years ago. Thomas quickly soured on the venture. He has seen the Religious Right from the inside, and he knows it’s a caricature of what the Christian faith ought to be.
Unfortunately, I’m not holding out much hope that Thomas’ sermon will bear much fruit. He’s made this appeal many times, and the Religious Right political machines just keep rolling along.
I expect they will continue to do so this year. But, hey, Cal, keep preaching! Your prophetic words just might some day help bring down the mansions built on sand by men like Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Alan Sears and Donald Wildmon.