For that amount of money you ought to be good – no, make that great

It’s hard for me to get excited about the field exploits of professional athletes. Anyone who makes even the lowest salary among them, should be able to do what they do. In amateur athletics, it’s another story. I still can’t get past the thousands who show up at victory parades who can’t even afford the ticket prices to see their “heroes” perform. The word “sucker” comes to mind.

Great moments in evangelical youth ministry

Yes, that’s right folks. Evangelicals know just how to use a sanctuary.

I am struggling not to be a single-issue voter

Us more moderate evangelical types are in a “frantic panic” to let the world know that we vote on more issues than abortion. We aren’t narrow-minded, we scream out to the cameras and journalists.  We see the wider implications of being pro-life, that it means more than just being anti-abortion. It includes justice for the poor and an abiding concern for the oppressed and the left behind. Gosh, even a few of us sign on to the “other side” and shed our fundamentalist cover. We are tired of being aligned with the fighters, the angry picketers, the hatemongers, and the frenzied fringe.

My roots are in the Republican party. Many of its historic positions are my own. But I voted for neither Bush as president. I told my sons that a vote for a Bush would be a vote for war. I could feel it. And sure enough, that is where we went. I remain convinced that the Bushes did the easy thing – shoot a bullet. I wanted more sophisticated thinking and a calmer, more deliberate temperament. I wanted a leader who would spend as much time and money on Americans as he would on reconstructing other nations. I wanted a leader who would invest in those directions that would prosper the people, not drain them. I wanted a leader whose approach would not be “we’re bigger and stronger and can do pretty much what we want.” I wanted a leader who would honor capitalism but build a “culture of concern” – who would not make a career out of attacking the haves but build a sincere consensus that all of us matter.

Now it is time to choose again. The same old ghosts rise from the underworld. The names have changed, but the game is the same. As even an older man now, I remain convinced that the trap is still there – the spectre of power and braggadocia in contrast to service and focused attention given to all of our citizens.

But for all my effort to move away from political bullies, I still can’t get past the issue of abortion and make it only one of my voting factors. To pull the lever for a person who will let a child get scraped from the womb and not seek and pledge resources to combat this violence is a pill I am finding hard to swallow. If a human being can’t see the moral wrong in this, then I wonder what else they don’t see.

I think we all know that evangelicalism has no real moral backbone. It will do most anything to keep in the favor of its host culture. There is hardly a position it will not change or a direction it will not reverse as long as it has a shot at popularity. Roman Catholicism almost alone keeps the battle lines clear on the issue of abortion.

But can I make this the defining issue of what candidate I will vote for? I think I might not. Anyway, the answer to our nation’s moral delinquency is not the President – it is a revived and morally renewed church that is of such influence that the nation itself will find abortion too dark to abide. (Yes, I know the same can be said about murder and other captial crimes). The President is not our Pope.

The topic should not fade away. It should always be on the table. It should be preached about, written about, shouted about in season and out of season. When political parties meet, the evangelicals should always bring this up, argue about it, insist on it, vote on it and use leverage to build a consensus against war on the children. But I am of the mind that just because a candidate for President is formally anti-abortion, he or she does not therefore get my vote and remain unaccountable for their other positions.