At this point it looks to me like the
contender has altered his economic and military promises to more or
less fall in lockstep with the President. The result, if polls are
any indication, suggests the coveted “swing” voters want someone
who will stay the course, so long as that someone is not the current
President.
I don't understand.
I have to wonder: if the contender has
undergone such a radical conversion in his economic and
interventionist world views, what is to prevent him from kneeling
before Billy Graham and reciting the Sinner's Prayer? Would this not
net him a landslide win?
Ah, but as his personal Lord and Savior
truly spoke: what doth it profit a man to win the election, but lose
his soul? Or something to that effect.
Or maybe nothing to that effect. The
candidate did, in fact, meet with Billy Graham and his son Franklin.
And they prayed.
Although photographed and talked about, little has
been revealed of this meeting, except that the 94-year-old “spiritual advisor” to US
presidents of either party, came out of the room urging Americans “to
vote for candidates who will support the biblical definition of
marriage.” No mention was made of the prayer's content, so we must
assume Romney remains a professing Mormon. The clear take-away is, hey Evangelicals, do
not vote for the (professing Christian) President, please and thank
you.
This is only worth commenting on for
three reasons: 1) Back in
the '70s Graham sat down in Richard Nixon's oval office and engaged in a bit of mutual
Jew-baiting, while the tape rolled on. Graham has since confessed remorse, and declared himself determined to steer clear of public political allegiances. 2)
The only
time Billy broke faith
with this fast on political grandstanding was when, in his concern for
the legacy he was leaving behind for his grandchildren, he stood
before George W. Bush and declared that God was not at all ambivalent
about nations who claim his blessing but torture their prisoners of
war, and that waterboarding could not be considered anything but
torture, so stop, for the love of God and America, please please
stop.
Oh, hold on: wrong
guy. Godless atheist Christopher Hitchens was the one who stood up
and said torture was wrong, that America should stop because it was
taking a toll on its very character — its “soul,” if you will.
Regardless,
reason 3) is still
pertinent, and gives us, just maybe, a little ray of hope: Billy Graham, the “World Evangelist” from North
Carolina and the closest thing the Evangelicals of the USA have to a
Pope, no longer declares Mormonism a “cult.”
Cult, schmult, you
say. Who cares?
Well,
Graham and his flock of Evangelicals care — or they did for many
decades. Billy's website stated up until very recently that, “a
cult is any group which teaches doctrines or beliefs that
deviate from the biblical message of the Christian faith. It is very
important that we recognize cults and avoid any involvement with
them. Cults often teach some Christian truth mixed with error, which
may be difficult to detect . . . Some of these groups are Jehovah’s
Witnesses, Mormons, the Unification Church, Unitarians, Spiritists,
Scientologists, and others.” According to this site, “That page
went missing sometime between Graham's meeting with Romney last
Thursday and the start this week.”
Here is where I see that ray of hope. I
may be wrong — I've been confused by Graham's words before — but
bear with me. It seems Graham recognizes that some “cults” have
“Christian” values which Graham holds exceedingly dear — shared
values, if you will.
Does
he muse any further on that? If — if — Christian
values are fundamentally concerned with the so-called traditional family, with unity of worship, with a vibrant faith community that unites to
first address the complete needs of its flock and then the industry
of its host nation, I would have to say that, at a superficial
glance, the Mormons are doing a much better job of it than are the
Evangelicals. Might Graham wonder how this can be, if the Mormons
read fraudulant scripture and place their faith in Satanic lies that condemn
them to Hell, while Graham's flock is blessed with God's revealed
salvivic truth?
Maybe
at the advanced age of 94 he's rethinking a lifetime of
presuppositions which he has, for the most part, kept silent about.
If so, there's still time for him to reconsider what the Bible does
not have to say about a democratic state's definition and recognition of marriage — or if it even has any business concerning
itself with those issues to begin with.
As for
the rest of you Evangelicals now falling in step behind the Mormon,
you know what this innocent bit of equivocating on your part means,
don't you? That's right: you're the Mainstream now, baby! As a
Moderate Christian feeling the heat on the lower slopes, let me be
the first to welcome you to the fold.
We
might not agree on much — we might not agree on anything. But we've
got a catchy anthem everybody can sing along to.
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