{"id":665,"date":"2008-08-24T21:56:40","date_gmt":"2008-08-25T01:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/godandculture.wordpress.com\/?p=665"},"modified":"2008-08-24T21:56:40","modified_gmt":"2008-08-25T01:56:40","slug":"donald-millers-naivete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/donald-millers-naivete","title":{"rendered":"Donald Miller’s Naivete"},"content":{"rendered":"

In May of 2007 the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, identified \u201cyounger evangelicals\u201d as one demographic the Democrats are courting to help them win the White House this coming November.<\/a> Encouraging the Democrats to put aside its historic aversion to religion and \u201creach out\u201d to evangelicals, Dean told an audience of party loyalists,<\/p>\n

\u201c[In the evangelical movement, young people are changing America — and they’re changing the evangelical movement. People don’t want to go to church anymore … and come out feeling bad because they happen to know somebody who’s gay. People want to go to church because they know what they can do about poverty, about Darfur, about the environment.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Funny. I always thought people were drawn to worship by a transcendent power greater than themselves and their causes.<\/p>\n

At any rate, to solidify their commitment to reach out to these younger evangelicals, the Democrats first invited the young evangelical editor of the hip and cool younger evangelical magazine Relevant<\/a> to give the invocation before one of the sessions of their convention in Denver. Cameron Strang<\/a> readily accepted the invitation, but then had second thoughts.\u00a0 On his blog Strang explained why he intially jumped at the offer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I saw my participation as a tangible way to show that this generation of values voters doesn\u2019t necessarily need to draw political battle lines the way previous generations have, and that we can work through areas of disagreement toward common goals\u2014fighting systemic poverty; defending innocent lives lost to pre-emptive war, sex trafficking, torture, genocide, slavery and preventable disease; protecting the environment; and proactively working to reduce the number of abortions each year (not only through legislation, prevention and education, but by financial support for pregnant women and overhauling the adoption system\u2014things are messed up when an abortion is $500 and an adoption is $25,000).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But then he had second thoughts:<\/p>\n

Through RELEVANT<\/em> I reach a demographic that has strong faith, morals and passion, but disagreements politically. It wouldn\u2019t be wise for me to be seen as picking a political side, when I\u2019ve consistently said both sides are right in some areas and wrong in some areas. (And truth be told, I haven\u2019t yet made up my mind about who I\u2019m going to vote for this November. There are a lot of specifics I\u2019d like to hear the candidates talk about before my decision will be made.)<\/p>\n

During this political process, my desire is to keep an open dialogue with both campaigns and talk about the issues that matter to my generation of Christians. If my praying on opening night at the DNC would be perceived as showing favoritism or incorrectly labeling me as endorsing one candidate over the other\u2014rather than being the bridge-building gesture which I intended it to be\u2014then I needed to rethink the decision.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Strang suggested that Blue Like Jazz author Donald Miller be asked to do the invocation, which he also has readily agreed to do. Over the weekend Miller did an interview with Christianity Today <\/a>about delivering the invocation at the DNC.\u00a0This interview\u00a0gives ample evidence of why the future of evangelicalism is a non-Biblical, and even non-Christian one, with emergent leaders like Miller at the forefront.<\/p>\n

Here I offer just four broad areas of concern raised by Donald Miller’s responses in the CT interview:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Miller is inconsistent.<\/strong> Early in the interview he says that America is no longer a Christian nation. Later he says that America represents God to the world. Which is it?<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 In his view, because America is no longer a Christian nation, Christians should view the question of gay marriage as a strictly “rights” issue<\/strong> and leave the word of God out of the equation:<\/p>\n

“In terms of gay marriage, I see it as a constitutional issue. Until we become a theocracy, I think that judges should look at it from a constitutional issue. Whether I think homosexuality\u2019s wrong, personally? America is not God\u2019s country. It\u2019s not considered a Christian nation anymore. You have to look at everybody, not just Christians and say, what are the rights of these people based on this constitution.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When we start saying that people who commit immoral acts are a protected class with constitutional rights we are at the bottom of the slippery slope. This is anything but a biblical position.\u00a0<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Miller feels used by the Republican Party but doesn’t recognize the ways in which the Democrat Party is using him and the so-called “younger evangelicals”<\/strong> to build a base for votes. He says he is drawn to the Democrat Party because of their commitment to “the sanctity of human life.” He has to ignore the abortion issue altogether to conclude that the Democrat Party is committed to the sanctity of human life. I know what he is trying to say. He is trying to say Republicans TALK about the sanctity of life but yet do nothing to improve the lives of the already living. This is a straw man that doesn’t stand up.<\/p>\n

Miller repeats the Democrat lie that there has been no change on the abortion front in spite of having a pro-life president and a pro-life majority in Congress:<\/p>\n

The issue of abortion is a very sensitive one and it\u2019s an important issue. I look at from a perspective of, what\u2019s the best that we can do. As we elect a Republican House and Senate, and as we elect Republican leadership in the executive branch, we see very little changes on that issue. We\u2019re electing someone who agrees with us on abortion, being sort of a tragedy in our country, and yet can\u2019t get anything done.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Either Miller is woefully misguided or intentionally lying. The pro-choice Alan Guttmacher Institute offers stats<\/a> that totally contradict the notion that Republicans have failed to “get anything done” on the abortion issue.<\/p>\n

Miller says,<\/p>\n

“I really felt like the Republican Party was taking advantage of the evangelical community by throwing us abortion and gay marriage, really not giving the heart of Christ more thought.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the Democrats are giving the heart of Christ more thought how?<\/p>\n

Miller says,<\/p>\n

“I felt like it was the party of the extremely wealthy and they needed this conservative base in order to get a majority and so they pandered to us.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the Democrat Party is NOT dominated by wealthy people? The Democrat Party\u00a0is not merely pandering to young evangelicals for political expediency? Miller sees no evil in the Democrat Party.<\/p>\n

4. His logic about Barack Obama’s call to improve the worldwide reputation of Christianity is just goofy<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

“What we have is Christianity being represented by what is perceived as arrogance, bullying, an inability to negotiate peace, an inability to listen. People assume that Christianity is that way. You ask yourself, what sort of person might God rise up to heal the wounds that have been created by that kind of positioning in the world. You would think a very intelligent minority, who came not out of wealth, who\u2019s not only power position in Washington, D.C., a man who\u2019s more thoughtful in his answers and less bullyish, not as simple of a thinker, even as reality is not simple, a man who has spent part of his upbringing overseas and has connections with Kenya, that\u2019s the guy. A name like Barack Obama, you just kind of go, that would be the guy that God would choose to heal some of the wounds that we\u2019ve caused in the world.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If America is NOT a Christian nation, as Miller claims earlier in the interview, how is it consistent to claim that the world somehow confuses America’s foreign policy with Christianity?<\/p>\n

Miller then posits that because Barack is in a minority, not a simple thinker, has connections to Kenya, and is named ‘Barack,’ therefore he has all of the qualities to “heal the wounds” America has created in the world. That’s just silliness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In May of 2007 the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, identified \u201cyounger evangelicals\u201d as one demographic the Democrats are courting to help them win the White House this coming November. Encouraging the Democrats to put aside its … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,337,361,363],"class_list":["post-665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-blue-like-jazz","tag-dnc","tag-donald-miller"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}