12/07/2016
In First Thing’s Erasmus Lecture, Russell Moore speaks of the ways that the Religious Right has become too political and that Evangelical religious conservatism needs to return to a gospel centered message to be effective in the 21st Century. He argues that a major problem for evangelicals in the 2016 election is that evangelicals preach moral formation and family values but supported someone who does not reflect those values and that this may undermine the moral credibility of evangelicals. While acknowledging that many evangelicals voted “held their nose and voted for Trump,” many leaders of the Religious Right publicly defended and normalized Trump and his behavior, even after the Access Hollywood tape. Moreover, some Christian leaders described the unrepentant Trump as a Christian which contradicts the gospel message itself.
Moore argues that there are two religious rights. The political religious right that will do things to maintain political power and a gospel oriented religious right that maintains its orthodoxy, ministers to the disadvantaged, planting churches across the US and world, and protects and promote life and marriage along with racial reconciliation and creation care. Moore argues that we need the latter type religious conservatism that has the evangelical fervor of the past but grounds it more deeply in a bible-centered theology. This new approach does not see “a culture way but the culture as a mission field of the spiritually wounded” which calls us to reach out to others in humility and to serve their spiritual and other needs (e.g., pro-life means caring for needs of women in crisis with emotional support, child care, job training, adoption services and a Gospel that frees us from guilt and shame).
Too often, we have thought that Christians have been spiritually grounded but just need to be politically mobilized. Instead, we need to do a better job of spiritually and theologically grounding members of the Church so that the Bible shapes their political engagement. This approach also means that we need to work with those we may theologically disagree but who have similar convictions. We also need to better police ideas like “wealth and health gospel” that offer cheap grace and undermine the true gospel message. We need to avoid using biblical verses for political purposes when the verse means something other than the political message (e.g., II Chronicles 7:14 refers to God’s people not the US). We need to apply biblical principles free of regional culture because the Bible speaks to all cultures as we realize we are a true multi-ethnic church and act that way. We need intentional communities that shape its people rather than people shaped by the culture (tv, movies, talk radio, etc.).This perspective sees religious liberty not as a defensive move to protect our communities but a means of creating a free society where religious communities are free to serve and persuade and promote their positive vision of the good life.
Saving the religious right means saving the correct religious right. A religious right based in the gospel that offers hope to the world is better than a politically compromised religious right that sees salvation in politics rather than God.
The religious right turns out to be the people the religious right warned us about. The damage is . . . .
