Sunshine is back today after a protracted absence and it is particularly welcome, even as a good, slow, soaking rain over a number of days was welcome earlier in the week.
The New York Times today contains two stories on the declining influence of the religious right in politics: one is in the column of Frank Rich and the other is in the magazine and is written by David D. Kirkpatrick. I found both to be instructive in what is going on in religion and politics in the United States today.
I am still an advocate of the position of Jim Wallis and the Sojourners, which is that there is more to the teachings of Christ than an opposition to abortion, gay marriage, and evolution. And that there is a conflict in the crusade to preserve life when it applies only to the unborn and not to opposing war, capital punishment, and being indifferent to the health care of children, the struggle of people in this nation and the world to be free from want when there is plenty for all. I could go on about the inconsistencies of the personal-piety wing of Christianity.
In the NYT Magazine's story, "The Evangelical Crackup," these remarks by the Rev. Gene Carlson, a well-credentialed conservative of Wichita, Kansas spoke to me:
“ 'There is this sense that the personal Gospel is what evangelicals believe and the social Gospel is what liberal Christians believe,' Carlson said, 'and, you know, there is only one Gospel that has both social and personal dimensions to it.' He once felt lonely among evangelicals for taking that approach, he told me. 'Now it is a growing phenomenon,' he said."
God, I hope so. How I hope so. The death grip of the neocons and the Roves on the religious "right" has nearly killed us all and may do so yet. I pray not.
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