The Party of Death

With Roe v. Wade day coming up, it is a time for bloggers everywhere to be weighing in with some thoughts about abortion.  Unfortunately, I already did that, purely by coincidence, two days ago, reflecting on some of the occasional unsavory excesses of the pro-life movement (for a chilling reminder, though, of the moral gravity of abortion in America, it's worth reading Al Mohler's post today, “Abortion is as American as Apple Pie”).

The greatest problem with evangelical politics today, however, is not that it is too pro-life but that it is not pro-life enough.  This is hardly a novel observation, having become a slogan of sorts for more leftward-leaning evangelicals, who would like to see a Christlike commitment to peace become part of Christian politics in America.  But the extent of the Christian Right's myopia has become glaringly obvious in this election cycle, which has been summed up for me (no doubt unfairly) in two memorable moments: (1) The cheers of a debate crowd when a moderator asked Rick Perry about the 234 death-row inmates he had executed as governor of Texas (which I blogged about last October), and (2) The crescendoing boos of a debate crowd (made up of my fellow Bible Belt South Carolinians) when Ron Paul said earlier this week, "Maybe we ought to consider a Golden Rule in foreign policy: we shouldn't do to other countries what we don't want to have them do to us."  

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Three More Reasons to Ditch the GOP

Unbearable as the experience often is, I can't resist peeking in on news related to the Republican presidential nomination race from time to time, and each time, it seems, I find another damning testimony which reveals how tenuous the connection between the GOP and anything recognizably Christian is becoming.  Perhaps it is now not so much the party of the "Christian Right" as the "Cold-Hearted Pelagian Right."  Here are three examples I've saved from the stories of the past couple weeks:

The new media favourite of the race, Herman Cain, whose chief qualification for governing the most powerful nation on earth seems to be that he ran a pizza chain once, had this to say about the recent Wall Street protests: "Don't blame Wall Street.  Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself. . . . It is not a person's fault because they succeeded. It is a person's fault if they failed. And so this is why I don't understand these demonstrations and what is it that they're looking for."  

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The Problem with Palin

As the race for the Republican presidential nomination starts heating up (as it well should--after all, we're within 17 months of Election Day now!), a lot of focus continues to fall on Sarah Palin, who continues to tantalize constituents and the media by positioning herself as a candidate but equivocating on whether she will actually declare as one.  And, as they have been doing ever since 2008, many conservative Christians seem to be fawning over her, or at the very least eyeing her candidacy with interest.  This has always deeply disturbed me, and although it seems highly unlikely that she could ever actually win (though stranger things have happened), I wanted to finally try to put the reason why into a nutshell, in case she does declare her candidacy and I find myself compelled to comment.

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