Political right wing has seduced, silenced part of church




For months I have been an interested observer of the interaction of two important social realities: the political establishment and the American church. A relationship between the two is slowly but surely becoming a tragic reality, potentially to the great detriment of the American people.
A divided church will confuse and dishearten the people.
On the one hand, it is most disheartening to watch one section of the church vigorously seek a partnership with the power of government, a relationship the scriptures themselves time and again have warned the faith community against.
The framers of the Constitution precisely warned and legislated against this type of union. The stricture of noninterference has been broken again and again in our history, but rarely has an open attempt of either the political or religious sphere brought honor to both.
The breadth and depth of this movement toward partnership has not been seen in America since the 1850s and ’60s, and we should all be clear about what that cost us. Currently, we have a devil’s brew boiling in which a major portion of the religious and political establishments is attempting to use the other for nefarious ends.
Regardless of what either thinks, this match is not born in heaven.
The portion of the church wooing after political power has received a handful of straw in return. Primarily on the issues of abortion and gay rights—and now “right to die” issues—the church has received political support from the elected political right. In doing so the church gleefully pats itself on its back as faithful and courageous. In fact, it is neither.
The church that has crawled under the sheets with the political right wing is paying the price of losing contact with the whole gospel.
Church leaders thrilled by a phone call from the president—or enthralled by the offer of a place in the back room as legislation is formed on certain “moral issues”—have been seduced. The price paid by the political right wing has been a mere pittance. It turns out the church is a cheap date.
Along with all the breast thumping about putting gay and lesbian people in their proper place, we don’t hear a peep from the right-wing mega-church brothers and sisters about:
> The rising tide of poverty in Texas for thousands of women and children.
> Slowly disappearing access to health care.
> The inexorable, hideous redistribution of wealth to the already wealthy.
> The most vicious prison system in the nation, finely tuned against people of color and with the highest death penalty population in the nation.
Could there be a direct relationship between punitive social policy toward women of color and their poverty, for which the only option is an abortion on demand?
At this gut level our religious brothers and sisters who have climbed in bed with the current government have nothing to say. They already have their reward.
When will it occur to them that silence is precisely what they have been paid for?
Eventually, the question that must be faced against the background of our whole civilization is “Has it been worth it?”
I sincerely fear that as the most gifted of societies, we are nevertheless gradually, fecklessly drifting into a new Dark Age—an age in which power and force will be the main currencies, an age in which the sweet differences between us will not be claimed as gifts from God and built upon.
All the devil has to do is silence our true us and make us irrelevant—or even worse, seduce us to his side, making us think that his way is the way to life, truth and righteousness.