Barack Obama's evangelicals close the God gap in Presidential race
Here is an excerpt, featuring comments from Red Letter Christian spokesmen Jim Wallis and Tony Camolo, that I found interesting:
Obama's call for change and renewal, itself a standard evangelical theme, has resonated. “I visit a lot of evangelical colleges and what I see is Obama stickers and Obama T-shirts all over the campuses,” says Campolo. “His is a voice that can inspire.” Although Hillary Clinton lacks the same capacity to excite, Campolo believes that many younger evangelicals consider her an acceptable alternative.I think that young evangelicals are a bit tired of the evangelical rhetoric that their parents (KB included) embraced.. maybe we older types should embrace this younger rhetoric.. yes rhetoric for now.. until we see something actually done all of Obama's ideas fall into that category.. but maybe it will be more than that.. of course he has to influence those of us that are still politically-right-leaning.. or not :)
Both Wallis and Campolo are quick to distance themselves from the “Christian left”. Progressive evangelicals are hardly liberal on issues like abortion, but are anxious to “move away from endless symbolic legal debates which never change anything,” as Wallis puts it. He advocates instead practical methods of making abortion rarer, such as better support for low-income women. And he says that “the sanctity of life is a broader, deepers concern that includes Darfur, that includes the 30,000 children who will die today from hunger and disease.”
This attitude, says Campolo, is in tune with a younger generation of evangelicals. “Young people have a broader agenda and are interested in poverty and environmental issues. Gay marriage and abortion are at the bottom of the list. They are conservative on them but they have have gay friends and don't want to start a crusade against them.”
One has to take Campolo's blusterings with a grain of salt if one takes them at all. The more I read of his work, the more I'm convinced that he's not bound to the Word of God, either written or incarnate.
ReplyDeleteHe puts up a good front and tells interesting stories, though. He's mesmerizing, but his underlying theology won't stand up to scrutiny. Like many popular preachers (and he is a preacher rather than a theologian), he wings it a lot and presents his opinions as the Word of God. One literally cannot read two pages of his together without finding some outrageous misunderstanding or misrepresentation of what the Bible says. That's not someone who's trustworthy or reliable.
So what he alleges about alleged evangelicals' alleged beliefs--it's all very dubious.
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