Political Pastor: “They said they were tired of hearing about abortion 52 weeks a year&#
- Posted by: Todd
- Posted on: Mon, October 29, 2007
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- (19) comments so far
Here’s more from the NY Times article:
Fox, who is 47, said he saw some impatient shuffling in the pews, but he was stunned that the church’s lay leaders had turned on him. “They said they were tired of hearing about abortion 52 weeks a year, hearing about all this political stuff!” he told me on a recent Sunday afternoon. “And these were deacons of the church!”
These days, Fox has taken his fire and brimstone in search of a new pulpit. He rented space at the Johnny Western Theater at the Wild West World amusement park until it folded. Now he preaches at a Best Western hotel. “I don’t mind telling you that I paid a price for the political stands I took,” Fox said. “The pendulum in the Christian world has swung back to the moderate point of view. The real battle now is among evangelicals.”
Fox is not the only conservative Christian to feel the heat of those battles, even in — of all places — Wichita. Within three months of his departure, the two other most influential conservative Christian pastors in the city had left their pulpits as well. And in the silence left by their voices, a new generation of pastors distinctly suspicious of the Republican Party — some as likely to lean left as right — is beginning to speak up.
Just three years ago, the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement could almost see the Promised Land. White evangelical Protestants looked like perhaps the most potent voting bloc in America. They turned out for President George W. Bush in record numbers, supporting him for re-election by a ratio of four to one. Republican strategists predicted that religious traditionalists would help bring about an era of dominance for their party. Spokesmen for the Christian conservative movement warned of the wrath of “values voters.” James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, was poised to play kingmaker in 2008, at least in the Republican primary. And thanks to President Bush, the Supreme Court appeared just one vote away from answering the prayers of evangelical activists by overturning Roe v. Wade.
Today the movement shows signs of coming apart beneath its leaders. It is not merely that none of the 2008 Republican front-runners come close to measuring up to President Bush in the eyes of the evangelical faithful, although it would be hard to find a cast of characters more ill fit for those shoes: a lapsed-Catholic big-city mayor; a Massachusetts Mormon; a church-skipping Hollywood character actor; and a political renegade known for crossing swords with the Rev. Pat Robertson and the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Nor is the problem simply that the Democratic presidential front-runners — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards — sound like a bunch of tent-revival Bible thumpers compared with the Republicans.
The 2008 election is just the latest stress on a system of fault lines that go much deeper. The phenomenon of theologically conservative Christians plunging into political activism on the right is, historically speaking, something of an anomaly. Most evangelicals shrugged off abortion as a Catholic issue until after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But in the wake of the ban on public-school prayer, the sexual revolution and the exodus to the suburbs that filled the new megachurches, protecting the unborn became the rallying cry of a new movement to uphold the traditional family. Now another confluence of factors is threatening to tear the movement apart. The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.
The founding generation of leaders like Falwell and Dobson, who first guided evangelicals into Republican politics 30 years ago, is passing from the scene. Falwell died in the spring. Paul Weyrich, 65, the indefatigable organizer who helped build Falwell’s Moral Majority and much of the rest of the movement, is confined to a wheelchair after losing his legs because of complications from a fall. Dobson, who is 71 and still vigorous, is already planning for a succession at Focus on the Family; it is expected to tack toward the less political family advice that is its bread and butter.
The engineers of the momentous 1980s takeover that expunged political and theological moderates from the Southern Baptist Convention are retiring or dying off, too. And in September, when I called a spokesman for the ailing Presbyterian televangelist D. James Kennedy, another pillar of the Christian conservative movement, I learned that Kennedy had “gone home to the Lord” at 2 a.m. that morning.
Meanwhile, a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus’ teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.
So… what do you think?
A fascinating article in the New York Times over the weekend called "The Evangelical Crackup". It discusses how the discussion of politics and moral and political issues are changing in the church. One case in point... Pastor Terry Fox, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita. Fox was widely known for taking political stands; and he had quite a following with phrases like: "We are the religious right. One, we are religious. And two, we are right." Well, in August, Fox was pressured out of his pulpit. The quote above is his: "They [the deacon board] said they were tired of hearing about abortion 52 weeks a year... and these were deacons of the church!" The board of deacons, on their side, told him that his activism was 'getting in the way of the Gospel'.
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Peter Hamm on Tue, October 30, 2007
Bart,
Well said.
I would praise her compassion FIRST, but we also don’t have the whole story necessarily. If it happened as you say, the pastor acted like a jerk, if you’ll pardon me… But I don’t know if there was other circumstances either…
And by the way… it was 78 dollars for goodness sake! Is that worth losing a great volunteer over? I say no.
Deaubry on Tue, October 30, 2007
i could write a book on the nasties i have seen in church, but what would that accomplish. because there is still a lot of good too. is it a sin to write about things like that . the good , bad, and ugly.?because god said to forgive. and i sure do, but sometimes i cant help but think about the injustise that innocent people has suffered IN CHURCH.
Deaubry on Tue, October 30, 2007
i think a pastor that preaches on abortion every time they are in the pulpit, should just get another sermon, thats like preaching the salvation message to a church full of christians every week,
Wendi on Tue, October 30, 2007
Leonard – I know that you would never tell your congregation what the “Christian” political action is in relation to a biblical truth; the “Christian” candidate to vote for, the “Christian” political activity to become involved in. Many other pastors do, as do many lobby groups that call themselves Christian ministries.
I just watched a news piece about how Fred Thompson has “angered the Christian Conservatives” by advising a pro-choice group. The media views Christianity as a political movement, and pastors like Fox have earned us that reputation, and I’m saddened (sometimes angered) by this. Not angry at the media, angry at the Christians who have painted us all with their brush.
Wendi
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