War of the Word

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s?

It was this rhetorical/hypothetical question from Barack Obama’s 2006 keynote at “Call to Renewal” that recently raised the ire of James Dobson, prompting the Focus on the Family founder to state, “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology … He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

Now a Texas pastor has launched a site defending Obama, in what is simply one more skirmish in an escalating battle between the Christian Left and the Christian Right. The weapon of choice should not surprise us, because it’s been the most divisive and inflammatory document in history–burned, banned and bastardized for every purpose under the sun except that for which it was given.

… by televangelists to pimp their wares, by believers to bludgeon sin from unbelievers, by unbelievers to bludgeon good works from believers, by politicians to justify their self-serving positions, by skeptics to mock, by zealots to manipulate, by salesmen to advertise. … The list goes on.

In his 2006 speech, Obama was legitimately questioning the Christian Right’s virtually unchallenged alignment of political conservatism with biblical orthodoxy. This understandably stung those who have historically conflated weighty biblical issues such as the sanctity of life with political issues on which scripture is silent, such as lower taxes. Simultaneously, they have devalued other biblical issues such as stewardship of creation, dismissing such concerns as “liberal”.

As a result, the Christian Right is facing the reality of a president who does not share their values but shares their scriptures and is unafraid to wield them in a more sophisticated and convincing way than they have of late. They set up the battlefield and wrote the rules of engagement, and now they may lose the very thing that seems to have been a priority for them for so long–and that which they were willing to use scripture to attain: political power.

The result could be something rather poetic: They’ll get a president who believes in the protection of the disadvantaged, but will fail to protect life in the womb; who will leverage the power of government to help the poor, but who gave less than 1 percent of his substantial personal income to charity before his decision to run for president; who claims a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but who thinks good Muslims and Buddhists will probably get into heaven too.

Simply put, they’ll get a president who applies scripture selectively, just as they have for the last 30 years.