As someone who has been under Mr. Poling's spiritual leadership and attended New Hope, it grieves me to see him join the fray of Christian mudslinging. We Christians are the BEST at shooting our own troops like James Dobson.
Please, Jason, stay out of politics and focus on growing your Rob Bell knockoff church. (oops, there I go lashing out.) Thank God for grace.

Why is it that western christianity cannot come to grips with people of color? Why is racism so pravalent in the church? Why are people of color projected as not knowing GOD? Why have those who imposed their will on people of color have capitalized on a lie that people of color were animals and did not have GOD? Didn't the church sancion slavery and the killing of the native people in Africa, Austraila, the Carribean. I don't belive in any Jesus. This was the name of the first slave ship carring it's black gold to England.

Mr. Poling: I would assume you're an ear tickling, the unity of the church is more important that doctrine Pastor. The new "evangelical" norm. You probably read the MESSAGE bible also like some of those welcoming, soft cotton candy gospel pastors above. You probably have never read any of Charles Spurgeon, AW Pink, John Wesley, John MacArthur or Erwin Lutzer's commentaries on the state of the church. I would think not....such a sad state....grieves my soul.

Like George W, McCain was a cradle member of the Episcopal Church, which was essentially the default religion of Republicans until they started embracing Southern-style Baptism. I doubt McCain really believes any of that Fundamentalist crap to which he's kowtowing for political reasons.

The South was wrong about civil rights; and they're wrong about Fundamentalism, and if the South doesn't want to join the modern world, the rest of the country will just have to go on without them.

It's O.K. for evangelicals to blog "______ doesn't speak for me" ad infinitum, but the true is that it doesn't really DO anything to those mentioned above. I am a gay man who is a bleeding heart liberal - and I am very, very proud of it. So when I see people castigating televangelists in blogs, I must ask, fine, what are you DOING about it? I'll admit, I do a lot of mudslinging on my own blog, but I'm writing a book that I hope will encourage people to become "lions" when it comes to (please don't be offended) Christofascists like Parsley and Hagee.

Why is it so necessary to be aggressive in the "culture war?" Simply because between now and the day religious intolerance ends, someone will be killed, someone will be "bashed" someone will lose a family member.

Make no mistake, Parsley and Dobson are dangerous. I realize that I'm now ranting. You see, I lived through the entire AIDS epidemic here in San Francisco and I saw the results of Robertson's and Falwell's rotten rhetoric.

It shouldn't happen to anyone.
But it will.

Thanks for reading.
Dan Vojir
dan-vojir@sbcglobal.net

Good article. However, McCain who has never joined the church that he has attended for many years now and is ill-equipped to have such a "Sister Souljah" moment. Obama can articulate his deep and abiding faith. McCain comes across as having a faith of either necessity or convenience.

But where would McCain hide his poor crippled first wife standing up there with those "other" evangelicals?

You know what really bothers me is the way that people cast off the work of Jesse Jackson -- man who has stood up and stood for Civil Rights in this country for almost half a century.

If McCain were to make some sort of Souljah stand as suggested, the silent hurrahs would far outnumber the wounded squeals. And he would go a long way toward erasing the distasteful pander image he has so carefully polished in the last two years. Returning to Straight Talk for real would be the best thing he could do for his entire campaign.

You DO flatter yourself.

James Dobson should keep his political opinions to himself, but Rev. Poling need not?

Doing so could restore his image as an independent maverick willing to buck the traditional power brokers of his party. However, would another reversal on this issue eradicate whatever remains of his credibility?

Well said, particularly about Dobson keeping his focus on the family. My only objection would be mentioning Rob Bell as somebody worth listening too--don't let the your reaction against Pharisee-ism swing to heresy and universalism.

McCain is doing as well as he can with evangelicals right now. Why in the world would he involve himself in a spat that the evangelical leader is picking with his (McCain's) opponent? Your advice is exactly the wrong thing for McCain to do.

Dissing Dobson for no good reason would be worse for McCain than any gain he would realize from such a stunt.

So, your problem with what Dr. Dobson says is???

It would have been helpful if you would have at least generally listed some of the things he has said that causes you - an evangelical pastor - to desire to distance yourself from him and his ministry.

Is it the stance against abortion? Because that would certainly be appropriate. Anyone who reads scripture can not help but come away with a strong conviction that Jesus himself would favor the murder of the unborn in the interest of convenience.

Or, maybe his stance for traditional marriage? Again, how could Dobson - who has obviously read the scripture a few times - ever come to the radical conclusion that marriage was to be exclusively between a man and a woman...much less advocate such nonsense?

As a pastor, I am sure your not in disagreement with his "focus on the family." So, what is it that you are against?

I agree that we should not necessarily accept everything a leader says, or ignore the spirit in which they say it. But, do we not at least owe it men like Dobson (who have the guts to use their platform to speak out to the moral issues facing our generation)a duty to clarify our exact point of disagreement?

Dr. Dobson didn't start out yesterday. He has served the body of Christ for over 40 years as a voice of encouragement to families and as a crusader against forces in our culture that threaten to destroy it.

In our quest to engage the culture, we should be careful to not so quickly throw men like Dobson under the bus.

I'd love to see this happen, but then I support Obama.

First, as someone else pointed out, many people think all evangelicals are the same and this could be painted as McCain throwing them all under the bus. And second, this could very easily be seen as flip-flopping, and rightly so. First McCain has no interest in evangelicals, then he courts them in the primary, speaks at Fallwell's university... only to go back to denouncing them. It makes him look like he'll say anything he needs to in order to get the votes. Which is pretty much what he's been doing.

I think McCain has built his coffin, and now he's got to lie in it and just hope nobody closes it and starts shoveling dirt onto it.

It would be interesting see how McCain truly feels about the evangelican pastors he is trying to court!

Bravo. I think Christians such as Rev. Warren and (it sounds like) Rev. Poling are a lot closer to what the One they follow had in mind than modern-day Pharisees like Dobson and Hagee.

This was a nice article, and it is great to see people like Poling standing up to Dobson and his ilk w/r/t their political views. But the real problem with Dobson is not that he doesn't speak for the majority of evangelicals, but rather the very nature of dogmatic theology based on ancient text. Indeed, his own remarks reveal the problem: he accuses Obama of "deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview" because Obama (correctly) points out that the bible, and in particular the old testament, promote some antiquated (to the say the least) notions about such things as slavery and shellfish. But what is this "traditional understanding of the Bible" that Dobson is talking about? Is it Dobson's own? Is there some group of religious scholars out there deciding which biblical readings are now no longer part of the "traditional understanding" and should be ignored?

Clearly, a book on morality that was written over a thousand years ago needs "updating," and therein lies the weakness of Christianity (and other text-based religions): who gets to do the updating and on what basis? Poling, too, as an evangelical, confronts this problem in criticizing Dobson; that is, what makes his more moderate views more correct, more reflective of the evangelical community? Is it just that he thinks more people agree with him? Isn't that the same argument that Dobson uses when his representative Tom Minnery claims that "Dr. Dobson is speaking for millions of evangelicals because his understanding of the Bible is thoroughly evangelical" (and, ironically, the same argument that Dobson attacks when he calls Obama's majoritarian view of the constitution "fruitcake").

Karl Marx may have been a poor economist, but he was right on when he called religion the opiate of the masses. It's a shame, then, that in the U.S. we don't give the political views of religious leaders the same shrift that we would give to other drug pushers.

http://www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com/

What McCain needs is a sister Lieberman moment.

Lieberman (I-Israel) guiding McCain around. and the Washington Posts constant Obama bashing...

will not reassure those who want to be cut free from Israel's constant and growing georging at the trough of American taxpayers...or the warmongering and genocide Israel keeps
American involved in.

More and more talk about it. Now here, of course.

I don't think that's a very good idea at all; because what McCain's detractors then spin is that the evangelicals are ALL of one mind and that he hs thrown them ALL under the bus.

No, I think it would be good to have McCain meet and support Christian leaders who are NOT of that extreme and intolerant or hypocritical brand: Billy Graham would be a valuable meeting. Fr John Neuhas, from First Things, or Fr Albacete. Peggy Noonan would be someone to approach and learn from, I believe.

Your counsel is not wise here, or prudent. It would be spun in a way as to cause the gladness of the secularists and the alienation of yet more evangelicals who really need to start getting an education ....and grow up.

absolutely on point. but completely unrealistic. McCain is not the least likely candidate to pull this off, but he's still light years away from having the insight or the courage to stand up and make a distinction between Rick Warren and Rod Parsley and see where the chips fall. but it's sure nice to dream every now and then!

Sadly, the noisome evangelicals have tainted the rest. Not only have Roberston, Falwell, Hagee discredited themselves, but they have effectively collected the rest under their umbrella and everyone gets lumped together, a funny sort of reverse stereotype that puts them in the 'other' category this year. (I wonder how that feels?)

Why couldn't this pile of supposed 'good' evangelicals manage to take a vocal and principled stand against the hate that these people spew before now, a convenient election year in which they have no clear champion?

Smells like a rationalization to me. For the most part, I am content to continue stereotypying the lot as homophobic, xenophobic, science-phobic, fantasy worshiping lunatics hell bent on stuffing their personal moral codes down the throats of their unwilling co-citizens. I truly hope their era is gone for good. The sooner the poison of superstition is dissipated, the healthier we shall all feel.

Amen. Well said.

Wonderful column. I hope John McCain can tell James Dobson how he truly feels. True evangelicals bring the good news through our actions and interactions with others.

Mainstream protestants like me do not want James Dobson and his ilk saying they speak for us - because they don't.

Wonderful column. I hope John McCain can tell James Dobson how he truly feels. True evangelicals bring the good news through through our actions and interactions with others. Mainstream protestants like me do not want James Dobson and his ilk saying they speak for us - because they don't.