A Response to Gene Brooks

A Response to Gene Brooks

Gene Brooks, a long-time friend, whom some of you know and whom all of you would respect. Gene and I often go "rounds" poking at each other. In his excellence, Gene recently made an "efficient" poke via a comment on one of my Blog entries which managed to be both humorous and challenging.

"Do you think the Republican party duped evangelical conservatives and co-opted them in order to get their own agendas accomplished or do you think the GOP is still the party of the Right?"

What a great question. One which deserves a more serious answer. I'm not a historian of cultural supporting trends among US parties. So, I'm just going to shoot from the hip and heart on this one.

Principle #1: 2-Sided Politics, Multi-Faceted Ethics

America does not run non a multi-party, parliamentary system. By intrinsic requirement (and, perhaps by design) our 2-party system aggregates a meld of many nuisances under a single "big tent". This reality of our dualistic political dual doesn't neatly align with the complexities inherent in navigating the "Twilight Labyrinth" of spiritual ethics. The Scriptures are replete with the tension between :

• Our limited, earth-bound preferences verses the higher ways of God
• Our discomfort at facing our ethical uncertainty in a world we intuitively know to be governed by eternal, unchanging principles
• Our zeal for enlightened "rulers" despite our daily experience with the universally fallen futility of the human heart
• Our time bound assumptions verses the perspectives of Eternity

In America, our role as "citizen" catches us in the web of these competing pulls. We find ourselves needing to cast votes for imperfect people who are part of an ethically mixed platform and that we must do so out of the context of the larger perspective of what governing coalition the aggregate of all votes for all offices will weave.

Principle #2: Evangelicals Aren't Always "Right"

While the GOP, the party of the "Right", is also currently associated with the majority of evangelicals, this is more a symptom of the aforementioned forcing of complex views into limited options than one party claiming to be the natural heir of faith voters.

• If most evangelicals tend to vote Republican, does that mean the GOP has always promised or must always govern in a manner favorable to those GOP-voting evangelicals (of whom most would consider me one)?
• If most evangelicals desire a certain governing focus, does that make the focus correct? While most evangelicals may be worried about a minutia of social policy, some are concerned about the wider arcs of social justice, adoption verse abortion, individual morality, bridging international, intercultural relationships, etc?

In light of Principle #1, Evangelicals must accept that they aren't always right (meaning, correct) as they, being of earth-bound and time-bound perspective, don't always see what is being orchestrated through the higher ways of God. Similarly, in our 2-party system, it must be accepted that some issues important to evangelicals are championed by members of the Democratic (non-right, left leaning) party.

Principle #3: Parting Party Ways

We tend to worry, fret, fight and focus on issue of importance to us in the context of the immediate voting cycle. But culture shifts, often imperceptibly, over the period of many such cycles. During the long course of these cyclical shifts, voting groups often come to sudden group consensus that they have parted ways with their past party to such an extent as to embrace much of the platform of the formerly opposing party. This is simply part of the self-correction cycle which our faith community and parties have danced numerous times in the past.

On Principle,

CBass