After Moore Election, Christianity Today Editor Swings and Misses

After Moore Election, Christianity Today Editor Swings and Misses December 18, 2017

Last week Mark Galli, editor in chief of Christianity Today, published an editorial titled The Biggest Loser in the Alabama Election. “It’s not Republicans or Democrats,” Galli explained, “but Christian witness.” Galli began as follows:

No matter the outcome of today’s special election in Alabama for a coveted US Senate seat, there is already one loser: Christian faith. When it comes to either matters of life and death or personal commitments of the human heart, no one will believe a word we say, perhaps for a generation. Christianity’s integrity is severely tarnished.

The race between Republican candidate Roy Moore and Democratic candidate Doug Jones has only put an exclamation point on a problem that has been festering for a year and a half—ever since a core of strident conservative Christians began to cheer for Donald Trump without qualification and a chorus of other believers decried that support as immoral.

Can you see the problem?

The Christian leaders who have excused, ignored, or justified his unscrupulous behavior and his indecent rhetoric have only given credence to their critics who accuse them of hypocrisy. Meanwhile the easy willingness of moderate and progressive Christians to cast aspersions on their conservative brothers and sisters has made many wonder about our claim that Jesus Christ can bring diverse people together as no other can.

Ah. There it is.

Moderate and progressive Christians’ condemnation of conservative Christians for their bigotry, lack of compassion, and rancid hypocrisy are somehow just as much a problem for Christianity as conservative evangelicals’ bigotry, lack of compassion, and rancid hypocrisy.

I’ve seen this sort of equivocation before. Too often, those evangelicals who call for accountability within their congregations—who demand that sexual or domestic abusers be held accountable for their crimes, for example—are treated as just as much a problem as those who have committed these crimes. They are, after all, sewing discord and disunity.

You can read Galli’s editorial in full; it doesn’t get any better.

Galli writes as follows:

From moderate and liberal brothers and sisters, conservatives have received swift and decisive condemnation. They call these conservatives idolaters for seeking after political power. They call them homophobes for wanting Christian bakers to legally follow their conscience. They call them racists and Islamophobes for wanting secure borders. These moderates and liberal evangelicals are so disturbed by the political beliefs of their brothers and sisters that many say they don’t even want to be associated with them anymore; they seem to view these brothers and sisters in Christ as tax collectors and sinners.

In general, we have witnessed few Christians among these critics taking the time and effort to understand the views of their conservative fellow believers or to delve into the social and political realities they might be coming from.

Galli objects only to conservative evangelicals’ willingness to vote sinners into office; he nowhere objects to their bigotry and racism (he refers to it only in passing, arguing that it is marginal and not present among “the mass of evangelicals” who voted for Trump). Galli calls on moderate and progressive Christians to listen to conservatives and try to understand their views.

What Galli seems not to understand is that moderate and progressive Christians are not upset simply by conservative Christians’ willingness to vote for an immoral man like Trump. The problem goes far deeper—it enters the realm of core values—and it is Galli who comes across as not listening.

Take Galli’s comments about moderate and progressive Christians treating conservative Christians “as tax collectors and sinners,” for example. What does Galli mean by this, exactly? Jesus ate with the tax collectors and sinners. Jesus ministered to the outcasts of society—the tax collectors and sinners. That Jesus ate with them angered the pharisees, the religious leaders of his day. There is no way to make this reference make sense in the context of Galli’s editorial.

Perhaps Galli miswrote. Perhaps he meant to reference Matthew 18, in which Jesus tells his disciples to treat an unrepentant sinner among them as “a Gentile and a tax collector.” This reference would certainly make more sense. Yet even here Galli misunderstands. The differences between moderate and progressive Christians and their “conservative brethren” are neither small nor unimportant.

This fall, conservatives chose to discontinue funds for the Children’s Health Insurance Plan, which insures nine million poor and low income children nationwide. Furthermore Trump was not the only Republican, in 2016, to campaign on a platform of xenophobia against immigrants. And then there are the calls for increasing police brutality, and opposition to reform in our criminal justice system. And then there are those who defended Moore full steam ahead, in face of the allegations against him.

If some moderate and progressive Christians choose to treat conservative Christians as Gentiles and tax collectors (which I assume is what Galli meant), is it any wonder?

And there is something else as well. Galli wrote of “the easy willingness of moderate and progressive Christians to cast aspersions on their conservative brothers and sisters” and worried that this willingness “has made many wonder about our claim that Jesus Christ can bring diverse people together as no other can.” The irony is so intense it almost burns. I grew up in a conservative evangelical home. We did not believe that moderate or progressive Christians were saved. Not in the least!

Where are Galli’s calls for conservative Christians to listen to their moderate and progressive brethren? There are none. Where are his calls for conservative Christians to stop casting aspersions on their moderate and progressive brethren? To accept them as fellow Christians and brothers in Christ? These calls are wholly absent. It is moderate and progressive Christians and moderate and progressive Christians alone Galli takes to task for being divisive.

Finally, it’s nice and all that Galli is in a position where he feels he can bridge some sort of gap, but what of my lesbian friend who served in the children’s and family ministry at a United Church of Christ congregation while raising her child with her wife? Conservative Christians don’t simply view her as a Gentile and a tax collector, they view her as perverted—and worse. They certainly don’t view her as united with them in Christ. Perhaps Galli should try walking a mile in her shoes. He might have reason to question his one-sided accusations of divisiveness.

Galli concludes his editorial as follows:

What events of the last year and a half have shown once again is that when Christians immerse themselves in politics as Christians, for what they determine are Christian causes, touting their version of biblical morality in the public square—they will sooner or later (and often sooner) begin to compromise the very principles they champion and do so to such a degree that it blemishes the very faith they are most anxious to promote. And one of the biggest blemishes—for it is an open refutation of Jesus’ prayer that we be one—is when we start divorcing one another over politics. Jesus said it is our unity in him that will, more than anything, help the world see “that you [Father] have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23). No wonder few believe much of anything we say anymore.

That is not why no one believes what Christians say anymore.

Over the past decade I’ve heard people give a lot of reasons for leaving Christianity, but I’ve never heard anyone say they left because moderate and progressive Christians call conservative Christians racists and bigots, and that is—believe it or not—what Galli is claiming here. Remember, Galli nowhere in his post takes conservative Christians to task for divisive behavior; instead, he pins factionalism solely on moderate and progressive Christians who just don’t understand that conservatives are calling for a wall across the border not because of racism but because they care about their country.

I feel like I’ve fallen into the upside down.

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