Evangelicals Should Look to the Left
Posted: November 16th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Averel Wilson
The notion that Pat Robertson would endorse Rudy Giuliani as the candidate of choice really has me scratching my head. (Much of what Pat Robertson does and says has that effect on me…) But once you strip away those “little issues” around his being pro-choice and supportive of gay rights, as well as having gone through two marriages before landing in the current one, what’s left about Giuliani that is so appealing to evangelicals? Why is there this urgency to elect any GOP candidate, regardless of his views?
Let’s think about what other issues form the platform of Giuliani’s (and most GOP candidates’) campaign. Well, there is the obvious one of fighting the “War on Terror”, for which Giuliani gets extra points from all those photo ops in the wake of 9/11. And his relations with the NRA have warmed a bit since his declaring his candidacy, so that’s another notch in his belt. But how are these stances consistent with evangelical views? Don’t they both seem a little bellicose and potentially violent for this pocket of good Christians? Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has said about Giuliani: “I cannot vote for someone who believes that it’s all right to stop a beating heart.” I suppose he’s referring to that troublesome pro-choice stance, but there’s a lot of heartbeat-stopping going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in our inner cities where guns are so accessible. Perhaps a Democrat could keep more heartbeats going?
So, aside from Land, if evangelicals can get past Giuliani’s position on these contentious social issues, why are they not tempted to vote for a Democrat? Here are some candidates who are trying to limit the bloodshed in Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to rein in the use of guns, undertaking the enormously difficult effort of trying to provide healthcare for everyone. Don’t these goals sound more in keeping with a Christian agenda?
In a recent Op Ed piece by Kathleen Parker in the San Francisco Chronicle, she poses a very good question: “…if terror trumps bioethics, and Hillary puts terror in evangelical hearts, what does religious conviction mean? Is religion primarily a matter of virtue - or of pragmatism?” I think it’s pragmatism - but a blind pragmatism, which doesn’t examine the real impact of having another Republican in the White House. Evangelicals might want to think about all heartbeats, not just ebryonic ones.
