Churches mixing in politics make Faustian bargain
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking-news-story.asp?submitdate=20041122151925Charles C. Haynes
Gannett News Service
Monday, November 22, 2004
“My pastor kept asking us to pray for George Bush to win,” a Georgia
woman told me last week, “and most folks seemed to go along with it.
So I just kept quiet and secretly prayed for the other side.”
She’s not alone. A majority of frequent churchgoers may have voted for
President Bush (if surveys are right), but a large minority voted for
Sen. John Kerry. Not all Christians — not even all evangelicals — are
born-again Republicans.
But the word “Christian” (not unlike the word “moral”) is
increasingly tied in the news media to the word “Republican,” thanks
to the successful alliance between Karl Rove and leaders of the
religious right. (In one pre-election news account, a minister
described comforting a parishioner who anxiously asked if he could
remain a Christian and vote for Kerry.)
Growing numbers of Christians are alarmed by the hijacking of their
faith. In a recent editorial, Robert Parham of the moderate Baptist
Center for Ethics vowed to “take on the religious right more
forcefully — critiquing its false religion and anointment of the GOP
as God’s Only Party.”
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