The American Spectator : George Shultz's New Evangelical Left Friends

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George Shultz's New Evangelical Left Friends

By Mark Tooley on 7.17.09 @ 6:07AM

Nuclear disarmament advocates make common cause -- or is Reagan's former secretary of state being used?

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Wigg-Stevenson has positioned Two Futures as centrist and theologically orthodox, even including a statement of faith. But the evangelical endorsers are almost entirely on the political left. Several are pacifists and oppose ALL weaponry. One, Shane Claiborne, portrays the U.S. as ancient Rome incarnate and the Biblical Beast. Richard Cizik lost his job last as an evangelical lobbyist after touting same-sex unions on National Public Radio and now works for Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation.

The 88-year-old Shultz, who is Episcopalian, is probably unaware of such distinctions among evangelicals. Recently while in Rome with Mikhail Gorbachev, Shultz approvingly recalled evangelicals approaching him with support. "It's interesting what comes out of the woodwork when it's known what we're working on," he enthused. Shultz might be a little surprised by evangelicals like Jonathan Merritt, a Baptist environmental activist, who hailed the Two Futures nuclear disarmament plan, saying, "As Christians, our decisions must be made on morality, not plausibility."

Shultz instead probably remembers Reagan's concerns about plausibility. "We all know how to make nuclear weapons," Reagan told Gorbachev at Reykjavik. "Even if we all agree that we are never going to use them, down the way there could be another Hitler who could end up with nuclear weapons." Reagan, in defending missile defense, added: "We went through World War II and nobody used poison gas -- but we all kept our gas masks."

Two Futures and its Evangelical Left supporters are not too interested in gas masks. Shultz may need to get better acquainted with his new religious allies.

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topics:
Nuclear Weapons, Ronald Reagan, Missile Defense, Evangelicals

About the Author

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (16) | Leave a comment

Tim| 7.17.09 @ 8:33AM

"The generation of Evangelicals currently coming into maturity, however, will decreasingly understand itself in contradistinction to more progressive politics, as the previous generation has largely done."

I don't know any honest people who talk like that.

Steve| 7.17.09 @ 10:18AM

Let me translate, Tim. In the past, Evangelicals understood that progressive politics is a religion all unto itself, one in opposition to the Evangelical understanding of Christianity; the current generation of Evangelicals is being effectively suborned by progressive politics, giving way to new Evangelical understanding of Christianity.

I thought Mr. Tooley was remarkably pithy, absolutely not dishonest.

The larger question, of course, is: are the current Evangelicals simply trodding the path walked by stylish lefties since the days of the Transcendentalists: that is, the path out of Christianity altogether? My guess is that hey probably are.

Liberal Reader| 7.17.09 @ 11:29AM

I certainly understand people who argue that a nuclear free world is a kind of pipe-dream that could be dangerous to American security, and I largely agree.

However, when thinking in the longest possible terms, that is, the survival of human civilization over the next few hundred years, nuclear weapons MUST be considered a permanent threat.

For now, let's face it: we're getting because of one not-too dependable situation. The people who tend to have control of nuclear weapons are highly successful within their respective societies, and they are highly educated. People such as this are often morally dependable.

This state of affairs cannot last forever. We've not had a terrorist nuclear strike or an accidental launch or detonation because of something a little more comprehensible than good luck but something less than predictable and reliable.

Eventually, these things will fall into the wrong hands unless they are done away with. Perhaps not entirely. But the huge stocks available in the world, particularly in the former Soviet Union, represent a continuing threat to human civilization and even to the survival of the human race. The faith-based approach has stood us in good stead, but it won't forever.

pete the mediocre| 7.17.09 @ 4:13PM

The presence of nuclear weapons with the threat of MAD has kept Europe from instigating WWIII for the past 64 years. We may not like the danger posed from nukes, but I'm not ready to give up the protection they provide.

Dai Alanye| 7.17.09 @ 9:10PM

I am in favor of universal disarmament, nuclear and conventional.

But you go first, please.

bluecollarbytes| 7.17.09 @ 9:50PM

How does one go about burying technologies? And who enforces it, and with what? 'well uh you guys signed these agreements. Snot fair you should go ahead and develop more nukes. Better stop. We mean it.'

jordan 6 rings| 7.17.09 @ 10:42PM

Your article is very interesting, I have introduced a lot of friends look at this article, the content of the articles there will be a lot of attractive people to appreciate, I have to thank you such an article.

دردشه| 7.18.09 @ 7:34AM

I am very interested in it, could you please tell me some more imformation? Thank you

David Neff| 7.18.09 @ 4:51PM

I base my opposition to nuclear weapons on the classic Christian just war criteria. That's conservative, folks. How that be tagged as "left"?

Pentecostal Pimp| 7.20.09 @ 7:13PM

A proud flag waving pimp who has even pimped out my granmother.

Land of the Free and the Brave, I use religion to sell almost anything including Homosexual Congress men, and Peadophiles in the White house. We are the new Sodom, hell on earth, we live to kill and invade Arab countries to kill their babies to keep the population down.

Todd Johnson| 7.21.09 @ 1:40PM

Dear Mr. Tooley,

I couldn't agree with you more. Dr. Schultz, that poor simple man--having served as US Secretary of Labor, Secretary of the Treasury, and Secretary of State after having held professorships at U of Chicago and MIT --is probably being taken advantage of by Wigg-Stevenson and his cohort of "evangelical left" boogeymen who you seem to think are hiding in every closet. Speaking of closets, you were right to bring up the relationship between Two Futures and admitted homo tolerator, Richard Cizik. Since the NAE has a lock on defining what it means to be an "evangelical" and the NAE fired Cizik, then clearly Cizik must be another leftist *pseudo* evangelical seeking to undermine the true remnant . . . of which you are fortunately a member. Simply by association, Two Futures is discredited.

I don't know if anyone has informed you, Mr. Tooley, but the cold war ended a couple decades ago. Just to locate the event historically, that was *after* Vietnam and *before* Desert Storm--perhaps around the time you and your CIA buddies were perfecting the finer points of water boarding. Skinny jeans may be back, sir, but Raegan is dead and Gorbachev is continually attempting to establish democratic political parties in Russia. Move on you clown. Everybody else has.

Finally, let me just say that, aside from being a paranoid wahoo, you are also an awful writer. Now lest I be held to the same standard of judgement I levy on you, here, I'd like to draw a genre distinction. What I'm writing is a personal attack on you, because I think you're an arrogant pea-brained asshole. The standards for such writing are, shall we say, somewhat fluid. You, on the other hand, were supposed to be writing an informative article wherein you might rightly be expected to state and then argue a thesis for the sake of "proving" it out to your readers. Instead, you managed to insult George Schultz's intelligence, decry Wigg-Stevenson, an ordained and remarkably orthodox Southern Baptist minister, as a scheming leftist, congratulate the NAE for their reprehensible behavior in firing Richard Cizik (also shedding light on your own implicit homophobia), and generally just make an ass of yourself. If it was your intention to reason your way to a conclusion, you did not do so. For future articles you might want to try that. I will include a sample syllogism below and you may copy and paste it for your next article. Don't forget to change the premises and conclusion, though, or you'll wind up looking even *less* educated and *more* inarticulate than you do now. By the way, thank you for contributing this piece of journalistic brilliance for our collective enlightenment. It's truly a gem.

Syllogism: 1) The IRD is an institution comprised entirely of misguided soapbox preachers too enamored of their own "God and Country" narrative to have any idea what "biblical and historical Christian teachings" might really look like.
2) You are, quite appropriately, the head of the IRD.
3) You are the ultimate misguided soapbox preacher.

In my opinion, you should quit your job, get off your soapbox, go back to school, learn how broad and diverse "biblical and historical Christian teachings" really are, and try to serve some positive function in society. Perhaps you could be George Schultz's paperweight. Just a thought.

XO,

Todd

George| 5.10.11 @ 7:50PM

Wow thank for writing this article, it was really interesting! I think we need to talk about new things like this more often. I hope you keep writing like this.