Was the 'Religious Right' Wrong?

Last week I was in Orlando for a Bible conference. After it was over, I hung out for an afternoon with some family members who live in the area. One of them brought a box of books that were free for the taking. I sifted through them and found one entitled Is God on America's Side? It was published during the 2008 election season. The author was Erwin Lutzer (Senior Pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago), with contributions from other evangelical leaders such as Philip Graham Ryken, James MacDonald, Kay Arthur, Jim Cymbala, R.C. Sproul and others.

In answering the question "Is God on America's Side?", Lutzer lays out seven principles from Scripture:

God can both bless and curse a nation.
God judges nations based on the amount of light and opportunity they are given.
God sometimes uses exceedingly evil nations to judge those that are less evil.
When God judges a nation, the righteous suffer with the wicked.
God's judgments take various forms.
In judgment, God's target is often His own people, not just the pagans among them.
God sometimes reverses intended judgments.

Any one of these principles would make for a good blog discussion. But something that was said under principle #6 got me to thinking, and I thought it would be good for TruthWalk readers to consider as well. In presenting his case that the evangelical church is experiencing God's judgment, Lutzer says that one sign of this is that "the church has increased visibility but diminishing influence." In expounding this point he writes,

The so-called Religious Right had great plans to reverse the moral trends of our nation. We are told that we have helped elect presidents and have impacted public policy and even the selection of judges. But by identifying these gains as those won by the "Religious Right," namely, Christians who are in cahoots with a particular party, we have made this nation believe that the church is a political base rather than the dispenser of the Gospel. Any gains we have made (mixed at best) came about at the price of the loss of the Gospel in the wider culture. We have cheapened Christ before a watching world.

Unfortunately, Christianity, in the minds of millions of Americans, is right-wing politics. I believe we are under judgment because we have cast about for a solution to our nation's problems and thought that it lay with political muscle and even with a specific political party. By becoming publicly partisan and implying that one party is more "Christian," we have clouded the issues of what Christianity really is. Religion is being redefined as politics; the flag has replaced the cross. And we are feeling the negative repercussions.

Today evangelicals are in the news not because of the Gospel but because of their political support or endorsements. The scenario of various religious leaders endorsing one political candidate or another is truly deserving of tears. Some Christian leaders have formed coalitions to "take America back." They want to "put God back" into our political, legal, and educational institutions.... In identifying ourselves with a political party and battling for civil religion, we have lost our identification with Jesus Christ.

Some pastors share Lutzer's concern and have taken practical measures to buck against this evangelical trend. Mark Dever, the Senior Pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in D.C., had the American flag removed from the sanctuary - not because he is anti-American but because he knows that the kingdom of God is bigger than America. It includes people of every ethnicity.

Ligon Duncan, another prominent evangelical leader who serves as Senior Minister of First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, Mississippi, takes a similar stance in a very personal way. On his facebook profile, where it says "Political Views," Ligon writes: "I have them, but prefer to keep them to myself for the sake of the Gospel."

Does this suggest that these pastors do not care about America's moral condition? No, certainly not. They as much as anybody support a biblical morality. They long for righteousness to prevail here in America (and throughout the world). But they rightly believe that the solution is not to be found in political pressure or intimidation but rather through Gospel witness.

Our goal as believers should not be to moralize America but rather to see individual people transformed by the power of the Gospel. Morality in and of itself does nothing to procure God's favor. The Pharisees of Jesus' day proved that. Morality does nothing to save a person; it does nothing to save a nation. In a sermon entitled The Deadly Dangers of Moralism, John MacArthur reminds us as Christians, "We are not a kingdom of politicians. We are a kingdom of priests. And what is a priest? He's a reconciler. We bring people to God through Christ."

The Christian influence in America is eroding. The only way to regain it in a manner that is truly effective and God-honoring is through the faithful proclamation of the Gospel. That is where our time, energy, and other resources ought to be invested. Political activism can never accomplish what the preaching of the cross alone can do, which is to bring people to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Consider what I say, and may the Lord give you understanding in all things" (2 Tim. 2:7).