Why weren't *good* Christians picketing Jerry Falwell and shouting down Pat Robertson?

Well, for starters, the "good" Christians like to think of themselves as broad-minded and tolerant, and have taken a loooooong time to begin to realize how scary some of these people are. When one has been taught not to judge, to be inclusive and respectful of differences, and to refrain from rudeness and prejudice and name-calling and insults, it doesn't come all that easily to learn to stand up and say, "No. I do NOT respect your faith. In fact, I think it is a blasphemous heresy, a hideous parody of genuine Christianity. The Jesus you claim is not the Jesus I know." Or, "I think you have been duped, by a slick, fast-talking evangelist who is using your tithes to pay for his Cadillac and diamond cufflinks--and by a bunch of utterly cynical politicians who just want your votes so they can screw you economically and send your kids to be blown to bits in Iraq."

This is not how we were raised to act. We were taught to be polite and respectful, like Garrison Keillor's Lutherans.

Jim Wallis and Co. have begun to help us find a more prophetic voice--but still with laborious politeness and non-partisanship ("God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It"). You're right--we are waiting for a leader, and at the moment I don't see the right person anywhere that I know of. The "good" Christians are way too "nice," and too splintered and dispirited by our own institutional histories and issues, and we don't know how to play the game.

They're perfectly willing to distort, lie, and character-assassinate. I don't want to descend to anything like their level, and they keep running circles around us. Nice guys finish last.

Is that the evangelicals will just sit on their butts on election day because no party really cares what their group of bigotry fanatics care about. I'm hoping that one day they will be regulated to the staus of the KKK, legally able to exist but discounted by the majority, laughed at and basically sitting around useless.

I'm solidly waiting for the day when being anti-abortion or anti-gay or evolution is nonsense just makes people point and laugh at you except for the few nutbags who were raised into the hate just like when David whatshisface goes on Howard Stern to be the butt of everyone's jokes.

Anybody who's seen 'Days of Thunder' remembers Tommy Cruise illustrating the racing principle of 'drafting' on future-wife Nicole Kidman's inner thigh. For those who didn't, drafting is a technique in racing that deals with resistance. To reach its top speed, a stock car will use the maximum power of its top gear to overcome fight the drag of wind resistance. Drafting is when a second car follows right behind the lead car, making that car absorb all of the wind resistance with it's top gear. This allows the drafting car to run as fast as the lead car without using all of it's available power. This in turn, allows the trailing car to floor it, using his reserve power to 'slingshot' past the lead car at a strategic point in the race.

I thought of this when Kuo asserted that church leaders are essentially star-struck by their association with power, and that they are politically naive in believing that politicians are on their side. The drafting metaphor allows one to picture how the Republicans saw the fundamentalist right as a constituency. Their motive was money and power and they used 'compassionate conservatism' as a kind of Trojan Horse (mixing metaphors is bad) in the arena of public opinion, to infiltrate the evangelical cause of spiritual salvation through political action. So leading up to election time you can see the evangelical leaders revving up to full speed with the Republicans following close behind, nipping their ankles with promises of faith based initiative and scripture-inspired legislation. The Republicans let the religious leaders take the brunt of resistance from the media and the left as they cruised on with their agenda. And then, just when it was sure that a new era of spiritual government would be built form the alliance of evangelicals and conservatives, the Bush team floored the engine and slingshotted ahead, leaving the evangelical cause in the dust.

Let's take a look at the comments of some of the Christians posting here.

"As a Christian myself I am sad that political 'use' of the Christian right has made so many potential allies (people I want to work with on poverty or whatever) think that Christianity = hypocrisy."

-- Thinking

"I'm also a Christian, the politically liberal variety (yes, we do exist), and I hate how the actions and beliefs of right-wing Republican Christians have led to a false image of how the rest of us operate."

-- Moniwash

"He looked at me and said 'Now the Republicans...they're the Christians, right?' As both a lifelong Christian (although not an evangelical) and Democrat I was totally taken aback."

-- WEP

Gosh Thinking, Moniwash, and WEP. How could people believe those icky extremists represent *good* Christians, such as yourselves? Could it be because you let them? Could it be because the whiff of school prayer and faith-based initiatives and other theocratic nonsense was in the air and lulled you into silence and complicity?

No? Then where were the *good* Christian voices? Where were the howls of protest as the *bad* Christians slowly took over our country during the last 25 years? Why weren't *good* Christians picketing Jerry Falwell and shouting down Pat Robertson? Even the most extreme, hateful Christians were left to their own devices. I saw little if any dissent from *good*, or, if you prefer, *moderate* Christians. What I saw was a lot of smugness and glee as Christians of all stripes took control of our politics and lawmaking to force their beliefs on all of us.

Spare me the pleas that you were speaking out but the MSM wouldn't listen, or that your were bullied off the pulpit by the extremists. You sold your souls to a bunch of false prophets for power, and now you want to feign innocence and ignorance and dismay.

And finally, there's this additional howler from WEP...

"The abortion and gay rights issues are particular hot buttons for a lot of people and as a result a great many very well intentioned people end up getting hoodwinked into casting a vote for candidates..."

Which "well intentioned people" would those be, WEP, that respond in lockstep to the "hot buttons" of abortion and gay rights? The homophobes and anti-choicers? The ones who want to deny that ALL Americans should have full access to civil rights? The ones who were blowing up abortion clinics and gay bars and assassinating health care workers until 9/11 made terrorism unfashionable? Not the best group to point to when you're trying to make the case for *moderate* Christians.