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McCain appears to be getting serious about Veep selection and Romney is high atop the list. (What?  No Huckabee? NO SURPRISE.)  So the punditry is full of evaluations.  Here is Jonathan Martin’s and here’s a bit of a WSJ survey of commentary.  The words “religion” and “Mormon” appear nowhere in any of this?  I don’t think there was a single evaluation of Romney’s chances for the #1 slot that did not mention it.

(Lowell interjects:  Well, Jonathan Martin does mention it in passing among the “cons” of selecting Romney:

Yet for all his energy, Romney demonstrated trouble connecting with voters during the primary. His Mormonism was plainly a problem among some religious conservatives.

So the punditry is not ignoring The Question just yet.)

Questions:  Is this because the Veep slot just is not that serious? Did the primary campaign create an inoculation effect?  Would it not have been a serious issue in the primary absent Huckabee?  Will we hear from Evangelical leaders over the weekend?  Will anyone make something out of the proximate location of McCain’s weekend place to the Jello Belt?

If Romney is selected, more questions: Will The Question arise at a serious level?  Who will raise it?  There is little love between McCain and Evangelicals, though there appears to be resigned toleration at this point.  Would this cause Evangelicals to sit this one out?  How could Romney best be deployed in the campaign?  What will we hear first “Mormon” or “black liberation theology”?  Who will be the first to charge a potential Mormon assassination plot to gain the presidency? (Oh, it will happen somewhere in the deep ugly bowels of the Internet . . . .)

It could be an interesting long weekend.  We’ll post if something breaks, otherwise, enjoy the weekend.  We have turned off comment screening so our faithful readers can contemplate these questions and many more.

Oh Yeah…

There were a couple of interesting religion and politics articles yesterday.  This one on the California Supreme Court gay marriage decision and this one on an IRS ruling.
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I have mentioned on several occasions what may come as a shock to some - there is a whole world out there of “God-bloggers.” These are people that write about religion all the time. The “Godblogosphere” can be broken down, much like the church, into denominational/philosophical segments. There is a large Roman Catholic contingent, a fascinating Orthodox contingent, a Protestant contingent - there is even a Mormon contingent, but like most things religious in the nation, the biggest players are the Evangelicals, who cut across many of the other lines I have just drawn.

Two of the biggest players in the evangelical portion of the Godblogosphere are “Evangelical Outpost” (this is Joe Carter of Family Research Council and Huckabee campaign fame, at least to regular readers of this blog) and “Pyromaniacs,” a group blog led by Phil Johnson, who runs the broadcast arm of John MacArthur’s ministry.

These two are debating about Evangelical political action.

It started when Phil said:

Personally, I think the tendency to seek legislative remedies for every social ill is one of the absolute worst tendencies of contemporary secular society, and it disturbs me greatly to see Christians more or less follow that pattern blindly.

We need to remember that political clout has nothing whatsoever to do with spiritual power.

These statements drew enough reaction that Phil expanded his comments in a new post:

I thank God for Christians whose vocation is to serve faithfully in our government—from people like my third son (who is a police officer) to those elected officials who are devoted Christians. I also have no objection to Christian bloggers who deal with political subjects. I read some of those blogs myself, and I often benefit from their insights.

But let’s be clear, here: The church as a body has no calling to organize and protest in the political realm. Moreover, government service and political campaigning are different vocations from the calling of a pastor. It’s well-nigh impossible to be a good pastor full time if you also fancy yourself a political lobbyist.

Phil’s expanded comments drew a number of factual corrections from Joe Carter. Joe makes a number of points, but his essential thesis is:

Contrary to what many secularists claim–and many Christians believe–we evangelicals are not all that politically involved. Sure, like most Americans we talk a lot about politics, especially in an election season. But the claim that we are involved in actual political activities–lobbying, organizing, campaigning, etc.–would be difficult to support with actual evidence.

In some cases these two are arguing past each other. Phil is primarily a pastor and he is making pastoral points. Joe, on the other hand, a guy whose job it is is to get as many Evangelicals politically active as possible, is frustrated by something that is a fact of life with almost any demographic group.

It is difficult to know where to put a stake into all of this and start to comment. While Joe is right in some of the factual corrections he makes about Phil’s post, he almost entirely misses Phil’s primary point which is a terribly important one, and one that I agree with fully.

There are some important points that have not come up in all of this. I would love to see a word association poll about Evangelicals. I am willing to bet that on a national basis, most people would associate first and foremost “conservative politics” with the word “evangelical.” (In Utah, the primary association is likely to be highly uncomplimentary, but I think that is somewhat understandable.)

In point of fact, the African-American church (as we have seen vividly in recent weeks - word association - “civil rights”) and Evangelicals are virtually the only religious groups that undertake direct political activism of any sort, or to any extent in the U.S. The remaining groups, an admitted minority, take a view very similar to that we looked at from Roman Catholic Bishop Charles Chaput yesterday:

It is the job of Catholic laypeople to change the thinking of their political party and their political leaders with the tools of their Catholic faith. But it is the job of priests to give people those tools—to form Catholic laypeople to think and act as disciples of Jesus Christ, in a manner guided by the teaching of the Church. Just as Catholic laypeople should be the leaven of Jesus Christ in the public square, so we priests need to be the leaven of Jesus Christ in lives of our people. [Emphasis added.]

Simply put, the church’s job is to shape people who then do politics.

It should also be mentioned that there are two ways to end abortion. One is to overturn Roe v. Wade. The other is to sufficiently evangelize the country so that demand for abortion simply ceases. And the fact of the matter is, as long as a majority of Americans want abortion in some form, Roe v. Wade will stand. Thus doing evangelism, which is the only effective way I can think of to reduce the demand for abortion, is necessary for political effectiveness to ever exist when it comes to the specific issue they discuss. This is not an either/or, but a both/and question.

This also creates a very strange situation with regards to “other” religions. If, as an Evangelical, my goal is to end abortion, then I should want even Mormon conversions because Mormons abhor abortion as much as we do. A conversion to Mormonism will lessen the demand for abortion and, perhaps, depending on the individual, create another politically active voice against the same. But of course when I view this in purely religious terms, from my viewpoint, a Mormon conversion is a “soul lost” (although God has a lot of time left to redeem us), as I am sure Mormons feel vice versa.

The separation of church and state makes both institutions better. It helps the church concentrate on its task, which is changing people and their desires, which are often expressed politically. It helps the state best represent the nation as a whole without the inherent oppression created by the sanctioned state churches of Europe.

This is why there is a division of labor in the church. If you are a layperson who does politics, do it well, and be willing to make alliances with the other. If your ministry is spiritual, then by all means compete, hard, with the other. For most Evangelicals, and certainly for Mormons who lack a clergy, each individual plays each role some of the time. We just need to remember when we have each hat on, and understand that in a nation like America one does not wear both hats at the same time..

If we don’t we will become the very thing this nation was founded, in part, to escape.

Lowell adds: I am reluctant to add anything, because I think John’s post is superb and I agree fully.  I will simply point out that this is the Mormon view of the world and religion as well.  As a former President of the Church, Ezra Taft Benson (who also was Secretary of Agriculture in the Eisenhower Administration) said:

The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature.

It is hard to find any daylight at all between President Benson’s teaching and Bishop Chaput’s statement.
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The words from a favorite Christmas carol seem especially appropriate for this season and this blog:

What Sweeter Music

What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this day,
That sees December turned to May.

Why does the chilling winter’s morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
‘Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To heaven, and the under-earth.

We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart.

Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who’s our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.

What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

A blessed Christmas to all.

Lowell Brown and John Schroeder

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We received this comment from reader Randy:  

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This morning I am reading a sermon by John Watson entitled "OPTIMISM."  A bit about Rev. Watson:

John Watson, widely known under his pen name of “Ian Maclaren,” was born at Manningtree, Essex, England, in 1850. For many years he was pastor of Free St. Matthew’s Church, Glasgow. He died in America in 1907. He enjoyed unusual popularity, both as a preacher and as a lecturer.

The sermon begins with Rev. Watson proclaiming the optimistic attitude of many of the early Christian leaders, leaders appreciated by creedal and Mormon alike, Paul the Apostle and Augustine, and then comes this remarkable passage:

They might be losing, but their commander was winning. The cross might be surrounded with the smoke of battle, it was being carried forward to victory.

 

They were right in this conviction, but do not let us make any mistake about the nature of this triumph, else we shall be caught by delusions, and in the end be discouraged. It will not be ecclesiastical, and by that one means that no single church, either the Church of Rome, or the Church of England, or the Church of Scotland will ever embrace the whole human race, or even its English-speaking province. One can not study church history since the Reformation, or examine the condition of the various religious denominations today without being convinced that there will always be diversity of organization, and any person who imagines the Church of the East making her humble submission to Rome, or the various Protestant bodies of the Anglo-Saxon race trooping in their multitude to surrender their orders to the Anglican Church has really lost touch with the possibilities of life. Nor will the triumph be theological in the sense that all men will come to hold the same dogma whether it be that of Rome or Geneva. There will always be many schools of thought within the kingdom of God just as there will be many nations. Neither one Church nor one creed will swallow up the others and dominate the world. He who cherishes that idea is the victim of an optimism which is unreasonable and undesirable. The kingdom of God will come not through organization but through inspiration. Its sign will not be the domination of a Church, but the regeneration of humanity. When man shall be brother to man the world over, and war shall no longer drench cornfields with blood: when women are everywhere honored, and children are protected: when cities are full of health and holiness, and when the burden of misery has been lifted from the poor, then the world shall know Christ has not died in vain, and His vision shall be fulfilled.

Just a thought for the day…

Technorati Tags: sermon, thoughts, John Watson, ecclesiastical power, victory

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