Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows
19 May 2006
In Chuck Colson’s book Kingdoms in Conflict, Colson draws from his experience as the former “hatchet man” of the Nixon White House to warn Christians of a couple of political activism’s most perilous pitfalls. First, the politically active Christian must not become a crusader; that is, someone attempting to legislate his faith on society by force. Second, the politically active Christian must not become a Magi; that is, someone politicians use to further their own political ambitions and agendas. Colson bases this latter example on King Herod’s attempt to use the Magi to eliminate the newborn Jesus’ threat to his throne (Matthew 2:1-15).
Although a few so-called Christians may wish to adopt Islam’s evangelistic methods; namely, forcing conversions at the point of the sword, real Christians realize how wrong and futile it is to attempt to force men into the faith. After all, if God won’t force men to believe, how can we? While the number of “Christian” crusaders may be minuscule at best, I’m afraid that there is no lack of Magi in today’s church. Everywhere you turn today you can see Christians being taken advantage of by politicians and their political parties.
A good case in point is abortion. Though Christians have fervently and unwaveringly supported pro-life candidates for years, abortion has continued largely unabated. Despite all the political rhetoric, as well as the resounding “Amen” it has garnered from the Christian corner, the sad reality is: 1.5 million unborn children are still being exterminated every year in this country.
I could easily cite other examples; such as, the unwillingness of traditional marriage championing politicians to support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, but the point of this piece is not to point out the obvious—we’ve been duped by politicians and used as mere pawns in their political games. Any lamebrain should be able to figure that out. Instead, what I want to do with this piece is pullback the covers and show Christians the strange bedfellows that politics makes.
After courting “values voters” to the altar on Election Day in 2004, Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political strategist, left the “values voters” there, insisting that their role in Bush’s reelection was not paramount. The last thing Rove wanted the country to believe was that his boss was beholden to Christians for his reelection. Now, a Bush supporting conservative columnist, George Will, is pooh-poohing the whole idea of “values voters.”
According to Will, it is “arrogant” and “insulting to everyone else” for Christians to claim that they have “cornered the market on moral seriousness.” All voters, in Will’s eyes, are values voters, since all voters vote their personal values. Will argues that John Sununu’s opposition to a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is rooted in the New Hampshire senator’s “value of cultural federalism.” Thus, Sununu is a “values voter.”
Subscribing to George Will’s faulty line of reasoning does not make everyone a “values voter”; rather, it does away with values. It replaces moral absolutes, like the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of human life, with personal opinions and expediency. I’m afraid the die is cast along with a country’s ballots when its polls are filled with George Will’s kind of “values voters.”
Adding insult to injury, Debi Ghate, vice president of academic programs at the Ayn Rand Institute—a conservative educational organization that believes reason is the only absolute and that all religion is without rational basis—recently condemned Christians for complaining about the blasphemous movie, “The Da Vinci Code.” According to Ms. Ghate, Christians have no right to complain because we are undeserving of respect. “Christianity is,” as Ms. Ghate reminds us Voltaire, “the great Enlightenment thinker,” once said, “the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”
How scary is it as a Christian to wake up some morning and find yourself in bed with the likes of Karl Rove, George Will and Debi Ghate. Yet, such are the strange bedfellows politics makes. Political spinmeisters determined to distance themselves from us, conservative columnists who condemn us as arrogant and intolerant for insisting that moral absolutes take precedence over personal opinions, and diehard objectivists who ridicule our faith as undeserving of respect, these are the strange bedfellows of today’s politically active Christian Magi. It’s enough to make one get under the bed. Don’t you think?
Don Walton
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