Townhall.com | Will Hall | Aug. 28, 2008
I have held my tongue for some time while folks like Jim Wallis (Sojourners), Mara Vanderslice (Matthew 25 Network) and Brian McLaren (emerging church movement) -– all religious and political liberals — have manipulated a compliant secular media and some of the religious press to shill talking points for them.
The message varies in slight ways from story to story but basically asserts “the left” cares more for the poor than does “the right.” A companion assertion stated as fact is that evangelicals are “fractured” and that there is an emerging progressive group of evangelicals “discovering” there are other issues “just as important” as protecting the unborn and defending the biblical definition of marriage. Then a tired liberal political agenda is reframed in the language of faith.
It’s not just political chicanery or religious wrangling, but simply fraud — a form of wishful thinking that if repeated enough times, de facto becomes the truth.
Let me clarify that liberal-leaning namesakes of famous evangelicals may have “just discovered” the biblical notions of “stewardship of God’s creation” and “providing for the needy and hurting.” However, for true conservatives these have been long time ministry efforts.
For the record, the Southern Baptist Convention has been advocating for careful stewardship of God’s creation for nearly 40 years, passing five resolutions (1970, 1974, 1990, 2006, 2007) urging personal responsibility in reducing pollution but also cautioning against extremism that would suggest God’s creation is fragile or that would lead to worship of the creation instead of the Creator.
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