A couple of weeks ago the Christian Coalition of American forced the retirement of their president-elect because he was spreading a different message then their current beliefs. "I wanted to expand the issues from only moral ones -- such as opposing abortion and redefining marriage -- to include compassion issues such as poverty, justice, and creation care” said outgoing president-elect Rev. Joel C. Hunter (1).
This of course did not make much news due to the fact that the story of outgoing National Association of Evangelicals, an umbrella group representing more than 45,000 churches with 30 million members, founder Ted Haggard has rightfully stolen the spotlight. For those of you who have lived in a cave over the last month, Haggard was caught buying methamphetamine from a gay prostitute (2) and was forced to resign.
All of this comes on the heals of a events such as the Jesus Camp movie wherein an Evangelical summer camp does an Americanized version of what al Quada and other radical religious organizations have been doing for a couple decades. The only difference is that one is teaching their children to use guns; the other is pushing theirs to get elected so that they can command those armed with guns (3). Now one of those has more power, influence, and potential for causing massive casualties – and I’m sure you can guess which one that is.
The other Evangelical story over the last month was the inappropriate actions of Florida Representative Mark Foley with underage male House interns. Representative Foley supported the interests of the Christian Coalition of
Now I know that there will be some Evangelicals out there who do not believe that the actions of a few predominate leaders truly represent the mindset or beliefs of the collective – but to this I would argue. When you have a leadership that you support who acts as these have, you have empowered them in whatever actions they do. Therefore, you are directly responsibly for their actions and also at fault of the events that have unfolded in the name of your alliance.
So my question is this: Is the collective Evangelical organizations in
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/11/28/christian.coalition/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/03/haggard.allegations/index.html
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