What Happened to the “Red Letter Christians?”

Both the Christian Right and the Christian
Left are making the same interpretive error of legalism, one tending

toward the Old Testament law and the other toward New Testament
ethics.

Last spring, evangelist Tony
Compolo announced the formation of a Speaker's Bureau of so-called
"Red Letter Christians." The objective was to assemble a
distinguished number of writers and speakers who have become alarmed
over the "merger" of the Christian Right with the Republican
Party.

Red Letter Christians (RLC's) are
Christians who focus on the words of Jesus to promote social and
economic justice, distancing themselves from wedge issues that tend
to consume enormous time and energy and detract from the true mission
of the church. By the appearance of the Speaker's Bureau, the
members are decidedly progressive in their politics.

On the way to the Forum, an eerie
silence ensued from the myriad of RLC Internet blog sites that sprung
up, the last postings occurring around September, 2006. With the
election of the Democratic majority in Congress, RLC's seem to be
regrouping.

Key Democratic presidential
hopefuls do have religious gurus on staff to recapture what they call
the "ground of faith," a deflective phrase to regain lost
Catholic and evangelical voters. However, RLC's have been more
reactive to the drubbing of thoughtful Americans by the Christian
Right than they have been to reforming the church.

I
have written extensively on the unholy alliance between the Christian
Right and the American Dream ethic of prosperity and success
(McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry and
Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship).
I am not, however, a Red Letter Christian. Having recently
repented of owning and operating for twenty-five years a small New
England chain of pop-Christian bookstores, and having served in the
Maine House of Representatives both as a Republican and a Democrat, I
do not claim to be a progressive Christian in the RLC sense. Here's
why:

The difference hinges on the
authority of Scripture. Both the Christian Right and the Christian
Left are making the same interpretive error of legalism, one tending
toward the Old Testament law and the other toward New Testament
ethics. Whether it is the Old or the New, you cannot extract
Scripture or portions of Scripture without doing violence to the
whole.

The overarching theme of the Bible
is the tendency of humans to cling to the letter, rather than the
spirit, of Scripture. The very essence of the Christ event was the
clear and unmistakable message that the prophets and the law were
being fulfilled. Christians are said to believe that the spirit of
the law has been restored in the person and work of Christ, to be
lived out by citizens of the announced Kingdom of God.

The red lettered words of Christ,
therefore, are meaningless without the Old Testament history of the
law. Likewise, the mandates of the Old Testament law are meaningless
to a Christian without the example of its overarching spirit
demonstrated by Christ. The linking text happens to be red lettered
— the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus explained to his disciples
the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. He said
it in terms of, "You have heard it said…but I say…"

Under both the Old and New
Covenants, the message is the same — "Love God and want for your
neighbor the best of what you want for yourself, especially if that
neighbor is your enemy." That stands as a warning against wanting
for ourselves what our neighbor has. Cars, houses, oil, money and
power, these all are examples of the effects of desiring what our
neighbor has, both as individuals and as nations.

The Christian Right has given
definition to the Republican Party's worship of money and power as
evidence of God's blessing. The Christian Left, however, cannot do
likewise with the Democratic agenda of social welfare, an affirmation
of Christian principles minus religious zeal. As such, the
Republicans ultimately will evict the Christian Right, while the
Democrats will simply use the RLC's.

As an Evangelical pastor and
theologian, I believe that the church needs a good shakeup in order
to become a voice of truth in our culture. As the church has
surrendered its soul to politics, America finds itself adrift both
politically and spiritually.

Marginalizing
certain behaviors or legislating certain social benefits has nothing
to do with love, either of God or of
neighbor. A red letter definition of love is, "No greater love has
a man than this, that he lay down his life (or his desires) for a
friend."

Christians, both Right and Left,
would do well to remember that.