My thanks to David Wayne for stopping by last night and leaving a couple of comments. It gave me the chance to see his blog, Jollyblogger, which I'd heard references to but not previously seen. Mr. Wayne is pastor of an evangelical church in Maryland and his blog is really pretty interesting. One post that particularly caught my eye concerned an op-ed piece by David Brooks urging that John Stott be pushed to the front as the public face of evangelical Christianity rather than the likes of Jerry Falwell. Brooks' article has gotten a lot of attention from the left side of the blogosphere and much of the reaction, as Mr. Wayne points out, has been of the "a nice bigot is no better than a mean one" variety. An understandable position, of course, but I agree with Wayne's point that not all evangelical Christians have the kind of highly politicized faith that the most prominent evangelical leaders do.
It's probably important to point out, as someone who speaks pretty loudly from the other side of the cultural battle lines on gay marriage, that it is not the faith of evangelicals or their moral views that I oppose, it is only the imposition of them legally that I oppose. I have no problem with the evangelical Christian who believes that homosexuality is a sin and that gay marriage is not something that their faith should sanction. Even if gay marriage should be legalized, as I hope it is, I would fervently defend the right of each church to refuse to perform gay marriages, to continue to preach that they think it is wrong, and so forth. I make a strong separation from the legal incidents of marriage and the religious incidents of marriage. And while I strongly believe that we should give the same legal protections of civil marriage to gay couples as we do to straight couples, it is up to each church or denomination to decide for themselves whether it is something they can support as a part of their faith.
Longtime readers of this blog know that I take great delight in hammering the many imbecilities of people like Falwell. But I also think it's important to recognize that there are a lot of Christians who think Falwell is an idiot too and who cringe when they see him speaking ostensibly on their behalf. We shouldn't lull ourselves into thinking that by defeating the claims made by Falwell or Robertson, who, though powerful in their influence politically, are essentially carnival barkers on the religious midway, we have vanquished Christianity itself.
Back in my atheist days (I am now a deist), I was asked to write an article for American Atheist magazine. I turned it down because, despite the fact that my views were generally the same as theirs, I did not want to be associated with the organization founded by Madilyn Murray O'Hair, someone I found pretty much revolting. Yet for decades she was the public face of atheism. I cringed every time I saw her, and I know many Christians who feel the same way about the likes of Robertson, Falwell, Dobson and others. There is more to Christianity, even in the evangelical and fundamentalist branches of it, than the political machinations of these frauds. For every Josh McDowell, there is also a Luke Timothy Johnson; for every Jim Bakker, there is an Alvin Plantinga. These men may not be right (in my view, they are not), but their views should be taken far more seriously than their less respectable but more popular counterparts in the Christian media.
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