Reflections on an Election

I know that in this post-election environment that the papers, TV shows, blogs and neighborhood barbershops are a buzz with what went right and what went wrong.  I didn't even want to walk into those waters but there is some type of microcosm playing out here that has lessons written within.

I joined Facebook a couple of years ago to see photos of my grandson.  I don't make a lot of use of it.  In the very beginning I was amazed how it could conjurer up so many lost friends like some type of seance of the living.  That's its gift. You make a connection to one friend and then the web is spun from that friend to other old friends on and on trice removed.

So, my Facebook "family" is made up of many friends from my evangelical days . . . and many friends that I never knew in Christian context as well as my real family.  Of course these friends can't see each other's posts unless the two of them are also friends.

But I watched how this played out over the last few weeks as a simply observer.  I am often surprised (and I shouldn't be) how my old Christian friends are still in the same place I was a couple of decades ago . . . still fighting the culture wars and seeing that the Republican party is by default . . . God's party.

So I will make a clarification before I jump into this.  As Leonard Cohen said, "I'm neither left or right . . . I just want to be home tonight."  Politically speaking, and if you are very honest about it, you could support virtually any position from a "Christian perspective."  I remember a high school philosophy teacher Mr. Murphy (yes, oddly they had a philosophy course in high school in Appalachia) who use to badger the students because they were deep in the Bible belt (the county school still had a mandatory Bible class) and he was a self-proclaimed atheists.  He almost lost his job when he stated that the political system which was most aligned with the teachings of Jesus was communism.  Think about it, he said this in 1973 . . .  right in the middle of the Cold War . . . so you can why he was "canned."

But factually, he was right.  Now, of course we are not talking about the Soviet-style communism where you were spied upon and imprisoned for thinking differently than the way allowed. But the point was true on an economic justice side of things

Right now in American, evangelicalism has embraced a narrative that is woven right into the fabric of the Republican platform.  I, being the cynic that I am, have a sense that this was planned this way.  Years ago in a smokey room in Washington, so I presume, some Carl Rove-types suggested that the evangelicals were leaning in their direction, but to really capture them, they need to either add evangelical agenda to their own . . . or . . . convince the evangelicals that the Republican platform is what God wants.

So I watched as my old evangelical friends assumed that all good Christians would vote for Romney.  I stay out of most of these discussions.  A dear old Air Force Christian friend did comment that he was going to vote for Obama.  Carl (my friend not Rove) is a breath of fresh air among my old evangelical friends for two reasons. Paramount is the fact that he lived in Germany, on the local economy, for about a decade.  He also went through a very humbling experience a few years ago as a Christian.

But then I watched as his Christian friends attacked him.  I don't know any of them as my circle and this circle of Carl's only touches at one point . . . and that is with Carl.  But I had to come to his defense. I simply said that Carl was someone that seemed to create a Christianity that is "Jesus + 0."  I added that Carl, I think due to his living abroad, has been able to separate the the Christ wheat from the "American-Evangelical-Republican" chaff.  I think his friends quickly despised me in the same way that most of my Christian friends do.

I was also struck with an interview with Franklin Graham on election eve.  He made the statement (and please forgive my paraphrase) that we are at a serious crossroads. That if Obama is elected then all of America is going to be in despair and God will allow America to fail.  He hinted at an apocalyptic end in the near future.

The interviewer, to play devil's advocate, said, "You listed Mormonism as a cult on your web page. So you are willing to vote for a Mormon now?"

I was expecting Franklin to be at least pragmatic and say something like this, "Well, we do believe that Mormonism is a cult. But, because Governor Romney supports our agenda, such as banning same-sex marriage, fighting the Muslims throughout the world (the new Crusade) and banning abortion we are willing to support him despite of his religious beliefs."

But what Franklin said, and this was profound, "Oh, I didn't know that Mormonism was listed as a cult on my web page.  You know, I have people writing much of the material on that page.  As soon as I discovered that it was there . . . I immediately deleted it."

So what does this mean?  Do the evangelicals now accept Mormonism as just another facet of Biblical Christianity?  That is a titanic shift in thinking! But I think they are willing to make that compromise for the sake of the evangelical culture.

This is getting long and I must end. But I haven't gotten to my main point yet, so I will be back for a part II.  In this day  of not only tolerance but relativism, my words could easily (even though so far they have been tangential at best) twisted to  make me a Mormon hater.  I won't go there.  I have many dear friends who are Mormons. I go to Mormon doctor.  I respect all people. Some of my best friends are Muslims. Yet, I can love them, respect them, but still hold to the fundamentals of original Christianity and reject their doctrines as false.

I didn't vote for Romney but it had nothing to do with his Mormonism.  It had more to do with his racism against Arabs, saber rattling in a world that has war-fatigue and supporting economic injustices.  But Obama wasn't an easy choice either and I ended up voting for a libertarian for the first time in my life.