{"id":1576,"date":"2004-11-01T08:32:12","date_gmt":"2004-11-01T12:32:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/11\/01\/the-reformation-returns\/"},"modified":"2004-11-01T08:32:12","modified_gmt":"2004-11-01T12:32:12","slug":"the-reformation-returns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/11\/01\/the-reformation-returns\/","title":{"rendered":"The Reformation returns"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

From the Times yesterday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I see it as a spiritual divide between true believers and seculars,”
\nsaid Neil E. Kulp, pastor of First Baptist Church, echoing comments
\nmade in dozens of other interviews….<\/p>\n

At a prayer meeting here Wednesday night, Mr. Kulp led a dozen parishioners in thinly veiled prayers for President Bush’s
\nre-election. He prayed that God might do “whatever it takes on Election
\nDay,” including keeping some voters away while “bringing certain people
\nto the polls.” One parishioner prayed that members of other churches,
\nsynagogues and houses of worship turn out as well. “Lord,” another
\nprayed, “for Mr. Kerry, I don’t know whether he knows you or not. I
\npray he would know that being in a relationship with you is more
\nimportant than being president.”…\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, I doubt that.  The tone indicates that he’s pretty sure that
\nKerry doesn’t know God.  At least, not in “a personal relationship
\nwith the Lord Jesus Christ.”<\/p>\n

What’s fascinating to me is that there are so many of these people who
\nthink of their spiritual life as a war.  It’s us against them,
\nChristians against pagans, “believers versus seculars.”  They are
\ngoing beyond by themselves trying to restrain people from going to the
\npolls — they ask for the Almighty to do the work for them.  Not
\ncontent with using the material to keep people from the polls (by
\nwhatever means that might take), they ask for ultimate weapon: God’s
\ndirect intervention in a partisan election.  This is more than
\nsimply scaring black people from voting.  This is *God* scaring
\nblack people from voting.<\/p>\n

Let God do your dirty work.<\/p>\n

\nEarlier this month, the evangelical group Focus on the Family released
\n“a must-read election message” signed by its influential founder, James
\nC. Dobson, and more than 80 prominent evangelical Protestants arguing
\nthat the Bible teaches lessons about proper government, including not
\nonly opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage but also support for
\npre-emptive military action against suspected terrorists and looser
\nenvironmental regulations….\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, of course.  I remember reading those in the
\ngospels.  Right in there with “kill the infidels”, “slander your
\nenemies”, and “hate every sinner you meet –except yourself, of course.”<\/p>\n

\n

At the 1,200-member Bethany United Methodist Church here, Jim
\nBrashear, the senior pastor, said his congregation resolutely opposes
\nabortion, and prays each week for both the president and the military.
\nSocial-issue-heavy voter guides from the Pennsylvania Family Institute
\nare stacked in piles throughout the church, and on Sunday Mr. Brashear
\nplans to tell parishioners that Mr. Bush won Florida by fewer votes
\nthan his church holds.<\/p>\n

Still, some conservatives balk at the idea
\nthat there is only one way for believers to vote. Mr. Brashear said a
\nunion member recently confided his worries that a Christian should not
\nvote for Mr. Kerry.<\/p>\n

“I told him I don’t believe that,” Mr. Brashear said. “He was really struggling.”\n <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But I can see how he might think that it would be wrong to vote for
\na certain candidate in that environment.  in the church I grew up
\nin, I was told directly that you could not be a Christian and vote
\nDemocratic, since the Democrats’ positions were anti-God.  The
\nonly such positions that I can recall were school prayer and
\nabortion.  No mention of poverty, capital punishment, or equal
\njustice.\n<\/p>\n

The reason I note that this is the Reformation redux is that the
\nProtestant Reformation ripped Europe asunder in the name of religon for
\n200 years.  Yes, the reformers were likely right in that the Roman
\nCatholic church needed to remove much of its encrustation, but they
\nalso erred in extremity themselves.  Some swung to an outlying
\nposition on the need for complete doctrinal agreement on all matters,
\nno matter the size.  They defamed (for centuries to follow) the
\nRoman church, claiming it to be the “whore of Babylon” noted in
\nRevelations (which is ironic, since they would then be the bastard
\nchildren of that whore).  They engaged in purges and oppositional
\npolitics and military action, and in combination with their former
\nbrethren and sistren in the Roman church, they spent 150 years ravaging
\nthe politics and landscape of all of Europe’s countries.\n<\/p>\n

And the sort of thinking exemplified by the Christians in this
\narticle seems all to reminiscent.  Perhaps not the same in
\nquantity as the Reformers, but a similar quality seems to be there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Times yesterday. “I see it as a spiritual divide between true believers and seculars,” said Neil E. Kulp, pastor of First Baptist Church, echoing comments made in dozens of other interviews…. At a prayer meeting here Wednesday night, Mr. Kulp led a dozen parishioners in thinly veiled prayers for President Bush’s re-election. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-pq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}