The church and the politics of hate

Posted by admin on Feb 6, 2008 in Issues & Ideas | 0 comments

The Christian church has long meddled in the affairs of state and government. Unfortunately, this meddling has often been without love and grace; at best, it has been detached, at worst, hateful. It’s time to change. The church doesn’t belong in politics, legislating morality. The church needs to love.

Mike Huckabee – Baptist minister, close friend of conservative powerbroker James Dobson and candidate for the U.S. presidency – recently made comments saying that same sex marriage could be compared to pedophilia and bestiality. This led the interviewer to ask him if his goal was to “bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible.”

The Human Rights Campaign came out strong against Huckabee’s comments, saying that Huckabee’s comments were “offensive” and “out of the mainstream of American thought.” Unfortunately, this kind of hate-fueled, Christian diatribe is becoming more and more vocal. It’s not just Huckabee; the church is getting involved in politics like never before. Take the recent rallies in Iowa against gay marriage, with groups like the Christian Alliance sponsoring “prayer walks” at the forefront of the political hubbub.

The issue at hand is Iowa’s current ban against gay marriage, which the Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional last year. Shortly after the ban was struck down, two Iowa State University gay students got married. The Supreme Court then reversed its ruling; it’s now set to rule on whether or not to support its previous position. Churches across the nation immediately began pushing for reinstating the ban. Conservative groups are calling this current fight a battle of “truth versus lies.” Several lawmakers and senators have reacted strongly, calling the church-driven pressure “intimidation,” and even arguing that the Christian political activity is compromising the entire judiciary system.

The question here is not the legitimacy of gay marriage, although the Supreme Court has officially stated that it has yet to “hear any convincing argument as to how [same sex marriage damages society]” and that “…as far as this court can tell, [these bans] operate only to harm same-sex couples and their children.” Rather, the important issue is what the current reaction to the situation says about the current state of the Christian church.
Christians are admonished to be lights in the world, welcoming the unbelieving into a community of love and acceptance where they can meet Jesus through His earthly followers. This doesn’t mean the church needs to support behavior it doesn’t condone. It also doesn’t mean the Christian community should be forcing its beliefs on the secular world, and spreading hate speech like Huckabee’s recent quotes.

For the longest time, the church has come out politically strong against those it sees as sinners. Gays, already rejected by much of the rest of the world, hardly find a safe and welcoming community in Christianity. Rather, Christians have often been the most hateful toward gays. The same goes for the abortion debate; read recent headlines and you’ll see stories about screaming Christian protesters preaching at frightened single mothers, or – even worse, but thankfully not the standard – bombing abortion clinics. Heck, even those harmless tree huggers have faced enormous political pressure from conservative Christianity.
In the New Testament, the fundamentalists – in an effort to protect their conservative, family values – wanted to stone an adulteress. Jesus came to her defense and told them to drop their stones while telling her to get her life in order. That, if anything, should be a guide to how we respond.

You don’t need to support gays or pay for an abortion, but the church shouldn’t be at the forefront of politics. That is not the church that Jesus would want to see. We’re here to change lives, not legislate morality.