Awash in Evil

I have to give credit to James Dobson, at least he, unlike the Republicans, can admit that the radical right has lost.

Leading evangelicals have admitted that their association with George W. Bush has not only hurt the cause of social conservatives but contributed to the failure of the key objectives of their 30-year struggle.

James Dobson, 72, who resigned recently as head of Focus on the Family – one of the largest Christian groups in the country – and once denounced the Harry Potter books as witchcraft, acknowledged the dramatic reverse for the religious Right in a farewell speech to staff.

“We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action,” he said.

“We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.”

New Rules:

1. It is evil to read Harry Potter.
2. It is evil to watch Sponge Bob Square Pants.
3. It is evil to watch the Teletubbies.
4. It is evil for a woman to want a career outside of the home.
5. It is evil for homosexuals to want the same rights as everyone else.
6. It is evil to not discriminate against homosexuals.
7. It is evil to sell condoms or use them.
8. It is evil to teach science and evolution.

Oh, I could go on and on. The reason why the religious right lost is that they started off their “culture war” with a false premise. They believed they represented all of Christianity, and all of morality, and that their adversaries were immoral nonreligious heathens. They pretended that the only thing Christians cared about was abortion, gays, and sex. Forget social justice, forget poverty, forget forgiveness, forget compassion, forget the death penalty. If the religious right truly wanted to win the “culture war,” it would have been a broad based effort focused on all the tenets of morality.

For example, where were the religious rights efforts to curtail divorce and greed? Christianity takes a strong stand against both, if I am not mistaken. This “culture war” was lost at the outset because the leaders of the religious right, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, married themselves to the Republican Party as a means to win this supposed war, and in so doing, there were certain Christian issues that could not be addressed. Greed is a staple of the Republican philosophy. Of capitalism. Surely, in the midst of the Cold War, we in America could not survive a war on Greed. But abortion, you betcha. Divorce? It is easier to find a politician that is divorced than it is to find one who has not been. The “savior” Ronald Reagan was divorced. So was John McCain. And Newt Gingrich.

The religious right’s mistake was to make the war political. To take a party’s side, and to denounce all Democrats as evil. That is why they lost. But just because they lost their war, it does not follow that we are awash in evil. It comes down to choice. The presence of options in this country does not mean you are forced to choose the “evil” option. You have heard of the free will that God gave us, right? Since they have always likened homosexuality to a choice, and homosexuality as evil, then the Christian who wants to be moral and righteous can easily escape evil, can they not? They can choose not to be gay! (Of course, we intelligent people know it is genetic, but forget that for now). A dirty and vulgar program is on TV? Well, God invented multiple channels and the remote control for a reason: for the righteous to choose not to watch the offending material. No one is forcing any Christian to read Harry Potter. No one is forcing any Christian to watch Spongebob.

And that leads me to the second reason the culture war failed: because the religious right acted like no one ever had a choice. That no one had free will. And thus, in order to prevent evil, whole books must be banned. Whole television shows must be yanked off air.

Sincere Christians leaders will do their followers much more of a service if they acknowledge the presence of choice in our lives. If you want to go to heaven, and live a moral life according to Christian principles, then there are a number of choices that you can make, and that some in the world will make different choices than you.