One of the ways to resist what Donald Trump and congressional Republicans want to do to the country is to tell the truth about them.
I realize they have made it clear that facts don’t matter to them, but in the larger scheme of things they still matter. The one thing progressives cannot give up on is the power of knowledge.
One way to use knowledge is to expose individuals and groups when they say one thing and do another, none more deserving of that description than evangelical Christians who have identified Christianity with the Republican Party.
As a result, they have done what no responsible people of faith should ever do – politicize moral issues.
The evangelical campaign to get Congress to defund Planned Parenthood (PP), the primary healthcare provider to low income women, is a case in point.
Because PP provides abortion services, evangelicals want to destroy the entire organization.
Never mind that federal law prevents PP from using government funding for abortion services, or that 100% of federal funds go to services such as physical examinations and cancer screenings.
Evangelicals don’t care about that. The only thing that matters is that PP provides abortion services, even it they are for low income women whose lives would be put at risk if those services were not available.
They justify their attitude by insisting that these women can get healthcare from other places that don’t do abortions, but that is patently false. In thousands of rural communities across the country PP is the only clinic available.
But here is another pertinent fact evangelicals want to ignore.
Of all the women in America who have had an abortion, 70% self-identify as “Christian” and 23% of those self-identify as evangelical (survey by the Christian Research form, LifeWay, co-sponsored by Care Net, a pregnancy center support organization).
Obviously many evangelical women and their families are ignoring their prattling preachers who rail against abortion on Sunday mornings.
Why? Because sometimes the circumstances women are in make abortion the only viable alternative. It is not more moral for evangelicals to prevent them from having that choice (as Roe v. Wade says), and certainly not to condemn them for making it.
But evangelical leaders are doing both because they have an all or nothing, my way or no way, attitude about controversial moral issues like abortion. They believe they alone know what is right.
This kind of attitude is precisely why they politicize moral issues. Compromise is too reasonable. They would rather fight than find common ground in a nation that protects and accommodates opposing views.
It is no wonder that evangelical women who have abortions also report that they keep it a secret from their churches, which says far more about their congregations than them.
Because of the harm they do, and the self-righteousness they embody, I believe partisan evangelicals have forfeited their right to call themselves “Christian.”
Genuine Christians don’t bless political parties, don’t assign goodness to politicians, don’t make public statements that it is God’s will to vote a particular way.
Instead, they maintain a prophetic distance from all politicians and political parties, giving support and offering criticism of policies and laws based on the biblical imperative “to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before God’ (Micah 6:8).
But evangelicals will have none of this. They prefer to play partisan politics with the critical issues our nation faces.
As such, they represent a pseudo-Christianity the nation doesn’t need and ought to reject.
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