Before writing further, I want to take just a moment to let my readers know that I myself am an Evangelical Christian. I believe wholeheartedly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I trust the Bible to be my companion on my journey through this life and on to the next. I accept the sacrifice of Christ on the cross as the payment for my own sins and trust Jesus to be my savior and guide.
I applaud all who are proclaiming Christ's name and going out to serve those in need of redemption, those who hunger, those who need health care, and those who have been stranded by a society hellbent towards material gain. Having said all this, it pains me to see the growing Fundamentalist drift within Evangelicalism.
Those who advised George W. Bush were keenly aware of the large number of potential Evangelical Christians who would be voting in the presidential contests. These keen political consultants played up the social concerns of millions of Americans (i.e. gay marriage, gun control, abortion) to narrowly bring Bush victory in both 2000 and 2004. Karl Rove famously pushed Bush towards this base of "Right-Wing Christianity" and gambled that an inside straight would be the winning card.
As we now move from the era of Bush and Rove, the current Republican nominee is not as steeped in this religious right world. John McCain is more of a traditional Republican who increasingly has realized that without a large turnout of conservative Evangelicals, his chances of winning the White House will diminish. From keeping his distance from this group in the early months of 2000, McCain has reached out to prominent preachers such as Pat Robertson, John Hagee, and Rod Parsley in an effort to stir up the churched masses and get them excited about his campaign.
Unfortunately for McCain, the world has changed so much in just eight short years. The use of the internet as a tool to unmask almost anyone is being perfected everyday. Senator Obama learned this the hard way when the buzz over his own Pastor, Jeremiah Wright, became overwhelming and almost derailed his fine tuned presidential journey. Those on the left began to pay closer attention to those clerics who were publicly endorsing McCain; finding sound bites and video clips of these men which did not seem to fit neatly with more moderate mainstream Christian views.
So the question before us is what exactly did these religious McCain backers say and why would they hold to these beliefs. Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, and Hagee all have seen the hand of God in man-made and natural disasters such as 9-11, the Northridge, California earthquake, and the flooding of New Orleans. These views have been widely reported before but in the charged atmosphere of this election have finally gotten much needed scrutiny. More obscure concepts such as Parsley's total abhorrence of Islam and Hagee's idea that God used the twentieth century's number one villain, Adolf Hitler, for His own purposes, have shocked many to the point where McCain had no choice but to disassociate himself with these two men.
With this background, the stage is set for our third entry in this series where we will look to the reasons that such strange utterances are being proclaimed by leaders in the Evangelical community. None of us should be afraid of uncovering the Truth. God is truth and light and if we let falsehood become widespread it can only bring hurt to the very people that Jesus came to help.
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