Evangelicals Jump Into Immigration Debate

There have been occasions in the past when evangelical leaders have jumped into political arguments, and not always wisely.  For instance, the time a bunch of prominent evangelical leaders decided to take a stand on global warming, something none of them knew anything about.

Today there's another effort by evangelical leaders, this time on the issue of immigration reform.  It's somewhat of a mixed bag of good and bad:

Calling for a “just, rational” effort on immigration reform that begins with secure borders then proceeds with a comprehensive plan to citizenship for illegal immigrants, leaders of the nation’s largest evangelical organizations released a letter Tuesday they hope will jump-start the debate on immigration.

The letter is notable in part for calling Arizona’s new law on immigration misguided while blaming the federal government for not defending the state’s dangerous border with Mexico, which is mired in a violent drug war.

“We must first secure our borders before we can implement a broader just assimilation immigration policy,’’ states the letter, signed by a group that includes Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy wing, and Mathew Staver, dean of the Liberty University School of Law.

“Secure borders are not closed borders,” the letter adds. “We must return to a rational immigration policy that acknowledges that we are both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. It is our obligation to provide a just solution to those people who are currently undocumented under the present policy.

“That solution is neither amnesty nor mass deportation. A just, rational policy would put otherwise law-abiding undocumented persons on one of three paths: one path leads to pursuing earned legal citizenship or legal residency, one leads to acquiring legal guest-worker status, and one leads back across the border including a swift process for the deportation of undocumented felons.”

Calling the Arizona law "misguided" is just plain ignorant. The Arizona law is nearly a mirror of current Federal law that's been on the books since 1940. Arizona, unlike the Federal government, decided to enforce it.  Self-defense is not "misguided".

Otherwise, their letter has some merit. The first priority must be controlling the border. Without that any efforts at reform are meaningless, and any possibility of an amnesty or other program giving a shortcut to legal status would just open the floodgates of an uncontrolled border.

Evangelical leaders certainly have the right to add their voice to the debate.  I just wish they didn't follow the politically-correct line by bashing Arizona.

A Coming Evangelical Collapse?

Michael Spencer, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, thinks evangelicalism is due for a major collapse:

Oneida, Ky. - We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

There's more to this article such as Spencer's thoughts on What Will Be Left and Is All of This a Bad Thing. You can read it here.

I've certainly seen lots of dying mainstream denominational churches, but have also seen lots of growing, thriving independent evangelical congregations. I'm not sure things are as bleak as Spencer says, but we are already seeing signs that political intolerance of evangelical positions is growing. Just look at the aftermath of Proposition 8 and the attacks on the Mormon Church and Rick Warren.

Those who have paid any attention to end times prophecy probably won't be surprised by any of this. I've heard predictions like this since I was a teenager in the 60's.

We'll see how it all shakes out.

Obama Proposes Buying Off Evangelicals

Barack Obama thinks the way to the hearts of evangelicals is through their social program wallets:

CHICAGO (AP) - Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans that would expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and - in a move sure to cause controversy - support their ability to hire and fire based on faith.

While this might be attractive to liberal evangelicals, conservatives like me aren't impressed. I don't think the government has any right to be throwing money at these things, money that's not theirs in the first place. You can bet that much of this spending will be aimed at organizations that meet a certain political goal more than a social goal.

If we let people keep more of their own money there would be more giving to social organizations and fewer people would need government handouts.

UPDATE: The AP report is barely out and they're already backtracking:

The Obama campaign says the AP's first report this morning that Obama supports "their [faith-based organizations'] ability to hire and fire based on faith" is incorrect. In fact, Obama's plan, they say, would prevent organizations from discriminating based on faith.

Note: The second version of AP story says Obama would support "some ability to hire and fire based on faith."

The change is of one word, from "their" to "some."

But the campaign says the second version is still inaccurate.

Huh??

Obama's Cross

Remember when people got all upset because Mike Huckabee supposedly had a cross in his Christmas video? So where's the outrage over this?

Obama is going full out in Kentucky to try and kill the rumors that he's really a closet Muslim and try and appeal to evangelicals (despite receiving the endorsement from a major pro-abortion group).

Sorry, not buying it.

Religious Right Leaning Towards Democrats?

CNN has a story that I'm highly skeptical of:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For decades, evangelicals have been seen as solid supporters of the Republican Party. That could be changing.

The religious right, a cornerstone of the so-called Reagan revolution -- the battle over abortion law, and gay marriage -- wants a change.

At least some evangelicals do.

A group of influential Christian leaders are declaring they are tired of divisive politics, tired of watching fights over some issues trump all the good they could be doing.

"Our proposal in [our] manifesto is to join forces with all those who support a civil public square. ... a vision of public life in which people of all faiths -- which, of course, means no faith -- are free to enter and engage public life on the basis of their faith," said evangelical leader Os Guinness.

For Democrats, the timing is good. The party has been pushing to overcome the "faith gap," that many feel has hurt them with church-going voters.

Candidates are appearing in more religious settings, and conversations.

"What I try to do is as best I can be an instrument of His will," Sen. Barack Obama has said.

"I obviously was fortunate to be able to rely on and be grounded in my faith which has been anchor for me throughout my entire life," Sen. Hillary Clinton has said.

Mara Vanderslice of Common Good Strategies is part of that effort.

"I think the biggest thing that we've done wrong is sort of say that we just want a separation of church and state and only speak about religion in terms of separation," Vanderslice said.

Evangelicals are now leading public support for many issues dear to Democrats: global campaigns against AIDS, hunger and poverty.

No one has done more to combat AIDS, hunger and poverty on a global scale than George W. Bush and the Republican Congress that approved his measures. Not Bill Clinton, not Nancy Pelosi, and not any Dem-lead Congress. For this article to suggest that Dems have cornered the market on compassion is just nonsense.

In any group of people, including evangelicals, you'll be able to find people on the left end of the political scale and those are the only evangelicals that will be giving a serious look at Democrats. Anyone in the evangelical community who really believes in the sanctity of life can't possibly even consider Obama for president.