Focus on Excommunication?

Does James Dobson really get to excommunicate people?

Focus on the Family chief James Dobson has dismissed the potential candidacy of former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson because the guy supposedly isn’t Christian.

“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

Nevermind the protests of Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo:

“Thompson is indeed a Christian,” he said. “He was baptized into the Church of Christ.”

That doesn’t really matter to Dobson, whose spokesman affirmed the remark and claimed that true Christians are only those who are evangelical and “talk openly about [their] faith.”

In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.”

“We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians,” Schneeberger added.

I know nothing of Fred Thompson’s religious habits.  Maybe he’s a church-goer, maybe he’s not.  But I’m pretty sure James Dobson doesn’t get to decide whether or not Thompson’s a Christian.

Either way, Dobson couldn’t possibly be serious that he wants a committed evangelical Christian to get the Republican nomination.  If he were, he wouldn’t be pushing the candidacy of Newt Gingrich, the thrice-married adulterer who told his first wife he wanted a divorce when she was in the hospital battling cancer, refused to pay her alimony or child support when she got out of the hospital, and informed his second wife they were through just eight months after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Yeah, this is the “committed Christian” we should have in the White House. 

I’m not sure who’s more disgraceful, the immoral politicians or the religious “leaders” who serve as their apologists.