The American Spectator : Religious Left Despised Ronald Reagan

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A Further Perspective

Religious Left Despised Ronald Reagan

By Mark Tooley on 2.4.11 @ 6:08AM

A nice reminder of a no-holds-barred detestation.

Jim Wallis’ Evangelical Left Sojourners has helpfully reminded us, amid all the hagiography about Ronald Reagan on the centennial of his birth, that the Religious Left despised him. Some Religious Leftists doubtless still do.

Sojourners magazine editor Jim Rice recently recalled Sojourners’ 2004 observations about Reagan upon his death. “Reagan’s policies were disastrous and destructive.” After all, “poverty worsened at home and abroad, he spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the largest peacetime military buildup in history, including $80 billion (and counting) for the fantasy of Star Wars and tens of billions for first-strike-capable nuclear weapons.” Reagan also reputedly “ignored” the AIDS epidemic. He instigated “U.S. wars in Central America” that included right-wing “death squads” and killed tens of thousands, including Jesuit priests.

According to Sojourners lore, “Reagan’s policies worked against the interests of the poor and marginalized and further enriched the wealthy and powerful.” His “most destructive legacy could very well be the mania for ‘deregulation’ that he unleashed, starting with his declaration in his first Inaugural address that ‘Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.’” Of course, Reagan’s passion for deregulation led in a straight line to the “tsunami that swamped Wall Street” in 2008. Reagan was personally “likeable,” Rice admitted. “But don’t let the revisionists whitewash one of the most damaging presidencies of the 20th century and the dangerous legacy it left us.”

In the stroll down memory lane, it could also be recalled that Jim Wallis’ Sojourners effusively praised various Soviet surrogates around the world, including Nicaragua’s notorious Sandinista regime. And Sojourners, then as now, wanted U.S. unilateral disarmament. If the Religious Left view had prevailed in the 1980s, hundreds of millions might still live under a Communist police state. Of course, Rice instead suggests that Reagan’s “militaristic approach helped bolster the hardliners in the Soviet Union and forestalled rather than caused the inevitable downfall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War.”

At least consistent, Rice essentially rehashed the Religious Left warnings that issued forth almost immediately after Reagan’s 1980 election. In 1981, a few months after his inauguration, the National Council of Churches (NCC), then a far more important organization than now, dispatched a “Message to the Churches” ominously called, “The Remaking of America?” It warned that the new administration threatened the “vision of America as the model and embodiment of a just and humane society.” Reagan’s agenda was “contrary to the best insights of both Christian faith and the national creed.”

Allegedly, Reagan was “giving away the public inheritance to private entrepreneurs,” capitulating to “sheer naked, untrammeled greed.” He was also exchanging concern for “human rights” for a “selective preoccupation with ‘terrorism,’” which the NCC helpfully put into scare quotes, and which recalled the “hysteria of the McCarthy era.” Reagan was reviving a “distorted vision of the bipolar Cold War world,” and a dangerous obsession with Communism. The NCC worried that Reagan proposed to “make America ‘Number One,’” which it found truly frightening. In the heartless Reagan vision, “compassion is a weakness,” and government only a necessary evil to “protect privilege from assault.” Reagan wanted our nation to be “principally” an “Empire” guided by “Manifest Destiny,” with a “mission to extend its power and commerce throughout the continent, the hemisphere, the world.”

In 1986, the NCC’s chief celebrated that the Democratic Party’s new majority in the U.S. Senate at least could “control the damage the Reagan Administration has done to the fabric of our country.” Of course, the Mainline Protestants who comprise most of the NCC’s supposed constituency voted by 60 percent or more for Reagan’s reelection in 1984. Evidently they were also lacking in “compassion,” despite decades of attempted guidance from the NCC.

United Methodist Bishop James Armstrong would become NCC president in 1983. Only days after Reagan’s 1980 election he bewailed: “People voted their self interest instead of the social principles of the church. It looks like United Methodists with everybody else forsook their Christian idealism at the ballot box.”

Another panicked United Methodist bishop similarly exclaimed after the 1980 election: “If we sincerely believe that the American people are ready to regress into some style of oppressiveness, some minuscule interpretation of religion, some ultraconservative posture of belief, then we have absolutely lost confidence in the whole process we have contributed to over the years.” He further faulted the disastrous election on the “weakness of the saints, who somehow in their faltering leadership could not quite gain the confidence of the population.”

Still another United Methodist bishop in 1981 waited only two months into Reagan’s first term before decrying the “alarming turn towards violence, confirmed by a soaring arms race, by the belligerent rhetoric of a revived cold war, a turning away from human rights in the name of national expediency and support for a variety of military governments abroad while neglecting the poor and wretched at home.” Trying to be profound, one other United Methodist bishop thoughtlessly commented after the failed assassination attempt on Reagan: “It is puzzling that Americans are highly and correctly offended by Mr. Hinckley’s violent outbreak but the death of some 13,000 persons in El Salvador during the last year doesn’t upset us much.”

Of course, in Religious Left mythology, the war in El Salvador was not the fault of a Soviet-armed Communist insurgency attempting to overthrow an elected government. It was Reagan’s fault.

Then, as now, once prestigious groups like the National Council of Churches and the United Methodist bishops, having sat in the cockpit of American religion for so many decades, could not understand how their post 1960s radicalism, and church membership implosion, had made them increasingly irrelevant. They were especially indignant over newly arisen conservative parachurch groups that successfully organized as the “Religious Right,” and which, unlike they, commanded loyalty from millions of church goers.

The Religious Left then as now did not understand or acknowledge the Reagan-era prosperity which helped both poor and rich. Devout statists, these prelates and activists were not interested in increasing wealth, only in seizing it and redistributing it according to their own political considerations. They had stopped criticizing Soviet bloc human rights abuses in the 1960s, and were largely indifferent to the Soviet empire’s collapse. And they never understood how Reagan-era policies fueled not only communism’s collapse but also facilitated the transition of countless rightist regimes to democracy, from the Philippines, to Chile, to South Korea to South Africa. No doubt, the Religious Left preferred to claim credit for itself.

Ironically, Reagan was himself a lifelong Mainline Protestant and, by extension, a constituent of the National Council of Churches. He grew up in the Disciples of Christ and was a practicing Presbyterian during his final decades. No doubt he was indifferent when the elites of his own denomination caustically condemned him. And he probably understood these politicized clerics rarely spoke for most church members. Sojourners editor Jim Rice, amid his recent blistering critique, opined that Reagan was at least a “model of civility in contrast to the flame-throwing rhetoric his successors wield today.” But the Religious Left, in its countless jeremiads against Reagan’s rule, was itself far from civil, or even sensible.

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. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (63) | Leave a comment Leave a comment

Robbins Mitchell| 2.4.11 @ 6:23AM

Jim Wallis is intellectually dishonest at a minimum if not an outright heretic....closer to being Caesar's butt boy then a soldier of the cross

Alan Brooks| 2.4.11 @ 8:34AM

"poverty worsened at home and abroad, he spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the largest peacetime military buildup in history"

It IS true what the anti-Reagan religious Left said, yet Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Empire. Only simpletons in the year 2011 think the world is a 'nice' place, or that things change peacefully.
The far religious Right is gullible, too; they are sure they will go to Heaven, but maybe not, perhaps they will go to that other place-- the place where no furnaces are needed in the winter.

Robbins Mitchell| 2.4.11 @ 9:22AM

Anybody who goes on TV and says that "The American people think that anyone who speaks with a British accent is intelligent" like Wallis did,has no respect for the American people or the Gospel...and if he would lie and patronize about something as pulingy trivial as that,he would lie about Reagan and pretty much anything else...Wallis needs to get over himself

Alan Brooks| 2.4.11 @ 9:27AM

But funny, the more Reagan is praised, the more it is implied that the Bushes weren't as good as Reagan:
good meaning decent AND competent.
-----------------
Any way you look at it, it doesn't look encouraging, does it?

Robbins Mitchell| 2.4.11 @ 11:09AM

Encouraging for what?..to toss Obozo out on his ass in 2012?..au contraire...it's looking better every day.

Alan Brooks| 2.4.11 @ 12:09PM

"Encouraging for what?..to toss Obozo out on his ass in 2012?..au contraire...it's looking better every day."

What is the far Right so worried about? that blacks are going to have more sex with whites? Something like that? or is it something else?
Something doesn't meet the eye, the overreaction is so intense. Even Clinton wasn't disliked as much as Obama is by the fringe-Right.

bob alou| 2.4.11 @ 2:46PM

What a stupid rejoinder. It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with agenda. I strongly resent Obama's apologist agenda, his socialist bent, and his elitist attitude towards those whom he sees as his inferiors. Its the agenda, not the race.

Alan Brooks| 2.5.11 @ 1:20AM

"It has nothing to do with race and everything to do with agenda."

Jimmuh Carter said all criticism of Obama is "racist", but Carter was being smarmy, as is his wont.
What I think is there is an overreaction to Obama that goes beyond the attacks on the Clintons, something isn't right: it appears some whites are afraid of miscegenation- or something as powerful; something that triggers whites to go ballistic.

Mark in Kansas| 2.5.11 @ 7:51PM

I can tell you to your face that I detest the policies of Barack Obama with the same intensity that I disliked the policies of Jimmy Carter. I could tell you this all day long. I could further go on to say that I additionally dislike the policies of Barack Obama that caused automobile companies, financial institutions and other private enterprises to transmit a significant share of their ownership to the federal government, but because you're so much smarter than me, you'd simply tell me it's because I think our president is a black man.

The simplistic argument is your friend. Go with what works best for you.

Alan Brooks| 2.6.11 @ 12:50AM

"you'd simply tell me it's because I think our president is a black man."

No, it might be that one of Obama's parents is white. Many Rightists think miscegenation leads to mongrelization of the species. Millions of whites are of the opinion that the gene pool is debased by miscegenation.

Mark in Kansas| 2.6.11 @ 6:23AM

"it might be". You're pulling motives out of thin air and ascribing them to people you don't even know. I know how you leftists operate. When you can't support your position with facts, you create straw-men to argue with. Go with what works.

mark in kansas| 2.7.11 @ 3:14PM

I could tell you tell you I dislike Obamas financial policies, but Id be lying. The fact is, I'm a fat,worthless, uneducated, tiny dicked trailer monkey, who's pig whore meth head sloppy cunt wife would rather fuck a black man than me, and I'm bitter about that.

David Carr| 2.4.11 @ 6:41PM

But Alan, that is precisely the point. The Bushes are "inferior" to Reagan, in the sense that they are Northeast elites and ultimately fall back on statism to solve tough problems. I voted for them but didn't like it.

Alan Brooks| 2.5.11 @ 1:23AM

"I voted for them but didn't like it."

And you will do it again.

Oldefarte| 2.7.11 @ 12:33PM

Any and all of them individually or combined are a hell of a lot more 'good, decent, competent' than the current occupant of the oval office, huh??????

YOU SAID WHAT?| 2.5.11 @ 9:25AM

Alan, Reagan didn't bankrupt the Soviet Empire anywhere near as much as Chernobyl did.

big bob| 2.5.11 @ 9:32AM

YSW,
Maybe you could elaborate for us on that. I'd love to see your numbers. Make sure you compare the loss of petro dollars forced by Reagan to the cost of rebuilding Chernobyl...oh wait...!!! They never rebuilt Chernobyl. So enlighten us...how did it actually go down??? You may want to include the cost of the cold war to the Soviets, as well..

YOU SAID WHAT?| 2.5.11 @ 3:21PM

I rely on the honorable Gorbachev, who isn't the liar Reagan was, for that assessment.

skip| 2.5.11 @ 5:01PM

Relying on stupidity and dishonesty is no way to go through life.

YOU SAID WHAT?| 2.5.11 @ 6:01PM

Don't forget relying on Nancy, too, Skip..but we agree he was a pompadoured fraud.

skip| 2.9.11 @ 8:25PM

Alan?

Brook?

That you?

Oldefarte| 2.7.11 @ 12:25PM

NO, it is not true [It IS true what the anti-Reagan religious Left said], but is FALSE!!!!!!

FREE bee| 2.4.11 @ 6:36AM

----Sidestreets and sideshows.

FAR more enlightening is to make a quality investigation of the history of Freemasonic
Arminian Heresy undermining of the entire
Christian establishment worldwide.
(THINK Rockefeller/Carnegie/Ford Foundation
and the nefarious World Council of Churches).

------PLEASE, get with the de-program!

Alan Brooks| 2.4.11 @ 8:36AM

... And the Bilderbergers! the Jesuits...
and David Ferrie's gay agenda!!!...

Alan Brooks| 2.4.11 @ 9:32AM

...Caroline 'n John John shot their father in Dallas, 1963...

Oldefarte| 2.7.11 @ 12:28PM

WRONG, as usual; but neither did conservatives from the South!!!!!!!!

David W| 2.4.11 @ 12:12PM

FREE Bee, who are you and what do you want? Are you talking about the Trilateral Commission?

Appleby| 2.4.11 @ 7:01AM

These Sixties Religious were just the bellwether of the ObamaNaughts of today, whining they were SUPPOSED to be leading the parade and could anybody tell them where it had gone. Today their pale-shadowed presence is a ghostly wailing in the background as thy continue to demand that the proletariat fall in line and wish to be China for just one day...

One can easily believe that they would attend The Kings Speech and cheer for Edward VII.

Robbins Mitchell| 2.4.11 @ 7:58AM

Edward VII died in 1910...one presumes you meant Edward VIII of wretched memory

Appleby| 2.4.11 @ 9:51AM

Sorry, I am dysnumeric in Roman Numerals too!

Alan Brooks| 2.6.11 @ 12:55AM

"whining they were SUPPOSED to be leading the parade"

They could have done worse than LBJ if they tried to.

Oldefarte| 2.7.11 @ 12:37PM

LBJ didn't have a law degree from Haarvard [paid for by the taxpayers] and wasn't a Chicago community organizer, but as stated, he 'tried to'!!!

Purple Lips| 2.4.11 @ 7:19AM

The Religious Left was ineffectual in 1981; it is ineffectual today. Yes, they have deep pockets (thanks in large part to generous donations from Progressive Trust Fund Babies, and gentrified leftists with lots of loose change), large endowments, and they control some very pricey real estate. But, for all of thier money no one really pays them much attention. Thier numbers are small, and thier fellow travelers who are if anything secualr agnostics detest them.

What is more pathetic than a 64 year old former hippie with an advanced degree from Harvard Divinity, who claims that Christ was a community organizer?

talkradio55| 3.4.11 @ 12:19PM

How about a 20-something masquerading as someone with a Masters of Divinity claiming that Christ lived in a commune with hippies?

Ken (Old Texican)| 2.4.11 @ 8:12AM

Heh,
I can't help myself. We still see copy/pastes of these screeds here every day when Mr. Reagan comes up.
I hope each of you will drop by NRO today and hit the magnifying glass on their home page videos as you scroll down.
Study the cartoon carefully. It will crack you up.

S.L. Toddard| 2.4.11 @ 9:55AM

George Soros, one of the leading billionaire leftists—he has financed groups promoting abortion, atheism, same-sex marriage, and gargantuan government—bankrolled Sojourners with a $200,000 grant in 2004. A year later, here's how Jim rebutted a criticism of "religious progressives" for being allied with Soros and MoveOn.org: "I know of no connections to those liberal funds and groups that are as direct as the Religious Right's ties to right-wing funders."

Since then Sojourners has received at least two more grants from Soros organizations. Sojourners revenues have more than tripled—from $1,601,171 in 2001-2002 to $5,283,650 in 2008-2009—as secular leftists have learned to use the religious left to elect Obama and others.

http://blog.christianitytoday......its_t.html

Kevin| 2.4.11 @ 10:20AM

Thank you, Mark, for reminding us that these toxic creatures are still with us.

Citizen Jerry| 2.4.11 @ 10:26AM

Just like a number of the churches in Revelation, many in today's mainline denominations have left their first love and their lamp stands have been taken away. Icabod. The glory has departed.
All that's left is the shell of a secular leftist political agenda incapable of changing a thing in the world. Pathetic indeed.
And right now, Ronald Reagan smiles from heaven. Well done, sir.

big bob| 2.5.11 @ 9:37AM

Actually, IMHO, the Sojourners find themselves more closely aligned to the Muslim brotherhood in that they have far more in common with Marx than with their "messiah" or "allah". After careful study, I think both groups are nothing more than excuses to promote the Marxist agenda. The nomenclature of "religious" left is their own. I would call the black liberation movement, the "religious" left, as well. Nothing wrong with it, mind you. Just make sure you identify the disease by its correct name!!!!

Petronius| 2.4.11 @ 10:45AM

Look at what's happened. The old clergy are gone. Most christian denominations have drunk the koolaid of Will Hutton's Declaration of Interdependence verbatim and binned the Commandments.
Were the Second Coming imminent, I shudder to think that the Almighty would affirm the activities of these oxygen thieves and social parasites. They rebel as always against the Facts of life.
LIFE is competition! And these weenies refuse to compete. They squeal and gripe that "the rich take Their fair share" which they are "owed". The late H. L. Mencken wrote a century ago that, "getting a living is far too easy in this country and gives rise to inferior men." Would that he were living and writing today, people like Wallis would receive more forceful invective, point blank. To wit: It is incumbent upon every person of sound mind and body to establish and maintain him or her self in society. The world is not a sand box where everyone gets a level pail full. It is an arena.To any and all who will not compete heads up with all others, take your infantile attitudes and character deficiencies and leave this country. You are gangrenous limbs on our body politic.

Jesus loves you| 2.4.11 @ 11:32AM

Remember the 45 Communist Goals of 1963:
Number 27 said: Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a "religious crutch." Now “Christian” churches of the left are fully focused on social goals under the headings of Social Justice (socialism for all and redistribution of wealth), Peace (surrender of Biblical precepts as too ‘exclusive’), Tolerance (the inclusive church where all gods and religions are equal, and where no perversion is to be despised), with a dedication to social change (by neutering God and declaring Jesus a radical community organizer).

The liberal church, like the devil, knows there is a God. But like the devil the liberal church is doing everything it can to justify itself, short of repenting. Groups of liberal theologians have red-lined the words of Jesus until there is nothing left. By selective quotes from the Bible (to give them some cover and credence) they have demoted Jesus to just a prophet of the change to come. The liberal church through its own efforts will complete the work Jesus started. They will recreate Eden (utopia) on earth where all are equal (and some are more equal), despite differences in skill, effort, and intelligence of individuals.

Jesus loves these miscreants who by their rejection of the truth now live a lie. They still have the same chance to repent as they ever had, if they will read an unadulterated Bible and forsake their miscreant preachers spouting leftist theology. If these people will humble themselves and pray, and seek His face, and turn from their wicked ways, God will forgive them and give them life. All pathways do not lead to life. The broad liberal path leads to death. Enter by the narrow gate. Life is in Jesus only, despite leftist rhetoric.

davelnaf| 2.4.11 @ 11:40AM

Why take anything the NCC says seriously? They are about increasing entitlement spending and the control of government over our lives. They continue to be communist sympathizers out of a misguided and unbelievably dated notion that communist governments are theoretically progressive and therefore desirable over grungy capitalist governments. Their PC correct position on any and everything anti-Western includes silence on Islamic terrorism. This says it all about them.

Doctor Right| 2.4.11 @ 1:07PM

If the Left dislikes something, it is, by definition, good.

If they despise it, it's great.

If they think it's wrong, it's usually right.

If they think it's absurd, then it's probably true.

The Left are the world's fools...Practically everything they believe is then opposite of truth.

Nancy in NC| 2.4.11 @ 4:23PM

Agree...everything that I was taught as good is now bad...black is white...up is down. It's nuts.

nancy in sc| 2.7.11 @ 3:24PM

Mmmmmmm....black and white. A gang bang of big, young black bucks pounding me in my fat, cum dumpster whore ass. Their white jizz spacled across my face. Oh I feel like Robert E Lees wife!

Frisbee| 2.4.11 @ 9:23PM

Doctor Right - well said.

Nick| 2.5.11 @ 11:25PM

Doctor Wrong,

The left despises the Roman Catholic Church.

I guess that makes it....GRRRRRRREAT!!!, huh?

St Reformed| 2.4.11 @ 6:36PM

From the "Annals of the Religious Left":
My most amusing observation came after the fall of the the Soviet Union & its Empire: Millions of oppressed Christians in Eastern Europe were liberated--politically, economically and spritually. They looked upon the likes of the NCC and its lackeys with a great and deserved disdain.
After all, those self-righteous frauds on the Left, for whom Jesus represented another barefooted Marxist, had appeased and promoted the Soviet bloc and its third world meddling as harbingers of the 21st century world. Those who contributed to "Sojourners" were indistinguishable from the staff of "The Nation". Now, Jim Wallis only has the ear of Hugo Chavez---and the White House. Delicious.

Oldefarte| 2.4.11 @ 8:35PM

No offense, but THE RELIGIOUS LEFT is an oximoron. You should say instead, the LEFT or simply LIBERALS. As there is NO CRYING IN BASEBALL, there certainly is not much RELIGIOUS in LEFT. The one and only religion for the left/liberals is GOVERNMENT!!!!!!!

Frisbee| 2.4.11 @ 9:28PM

I remember as a kid worrying that Reagan would usher in the 3rd world war. No doubt I had heard propaganda to that effect.

Then he got elected. The hostages in Iran were freed soon after. He said "tear down this wall", and soon after the wall fell. A modern Joshua.

God keep you Ronald Reagan. (But I sure wish you had not legalized abortion in California in 1967, and I know you wish the same.)

Tina B| 2.4.11 @ 9:55PM

"The far religious Right is gullible, too; they are sure they will go to Heaven, but maybe not, perhaps they will go to that other place-- the place where no furnaces are needed in the winter."

I have a firm faith that Jesus died for me and I am, in fact, going to heaven. Anyone who calls me the religious Right is speaking in a very narrow context. I am conservative, have voted totally Republican often more against someone than FOR anyone. (I ask myself. . .is this really the best America can do?") and mark my ballot for the lesser of two evils.

Gullible? Sometimes, still. I sense many of the respondents who write to TAS and quote Scripture most elegantly and appropriately, have been gullible, at times. Bush term 1 was totally different from Bush term 2. But really, ALGORE? for President? the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull(sic) as President? The inventor of the Internet? President ALGORE? Who was gullible?

Religious, I am not, particularly. But I love my fellow Christians who are. I will be again. Right now each day is an act of worship as I teach and do my best to serve Him.

And then you know what I have to look forward to? Heaven. A place created by the same God who created this magnificent universe and world that I love living in. But heaven, yeah. Wow. Light show? I'll bet. Inter-Universal fun? . . . better than the best video game.

And fiery furnace is for real. Christ talked about it. It's real all right, and it's no joke.

Religious Right as opposed to Religious Left?
How about "card-carrying" Christian Conservative.

Try it Alan. Do you read the Bible? just askin'

John Carnal| 2.4.11 @ 10:24PM

How can Mr. Rice and his ilk call themselves Americans? When was America ever in pursuit of their blindness about the world and our countries place in it now and in the past? Please you guys move to Cuba already.

Nite| 2.4.11 @ 10:34PM

The religious left for the most part are not religious at all.

DaveS| 2.5.11 @ 5:48PM

I'd argue that not for any part are they religious: it's been hundreds of years of compromise and delusion.

Yosemeti Sam| 2.4.11 @ 11:44PM

" Religious Left Despised Ronald Reagan ...."

And The Gipper tossed and turned in his sleep - thinking about THEM?

THEM who are/were worse than the THEM in the movie "THEM".

LOL.

Yosemeti Sam| 2.4.11 @ 11:51PM

On the other hand, I'll bet Ronnny had several pairs of special sunglasses as were worn in John Carpenters' movie "They Live" - THEY being aliens - to reveal THEM in their utter UGLY.

Charles Stevens| 2.6.11 @ 10:59AM

It is long past time for Conservatives to admit the real problem sustained by the left and its useful idiots of the NCC, and confront it head on, which is this...

Equality of outcomes is evil.
Equality of outcomes does not advance the general welfare.
Equality of outcomes is a lie.
Equality of outcomes is exploitation.
Equality of outcomes is slavery.
Equality of outcomes can never be countenanced, sustained, or allowed by a moral people.

wbheff| 2.7.11 @ 10:41AM

O ne
B ig
A wful
M istake
A merica

Pelligrino| 2.8.11 @ 12:27PM

American Spectator Online Forum Monitor: Please remove (above) post from: nancy in sc| 2.7.11 @ 3:24PM

This is completely unnecessary.

Please have some standards here. People want to come here for informed, honest, intellectual discussion/debate after the articles. Thank you.

Pellligrino| 2.8.11 @ 12:39PM

Mr. Tooley, thank you for the article. Very timely. One could have the opinion that Teflon Ron really had is overall very easy (what, the Bitburg, Germany flap was the first time he was ruffled?) during his 8 year presidency.

Not so. Lots of political and social opponents, well heeled, well bankrolled, and media with ample artillery support.

And it can be worst when it comes from those proclaiming a genuine Christian faith.

You are right to point out that there is nothing genuine or Gospel-focused about much of the 1980's Sojourners and that same group today.

Probably a worse Sojourners today?

Christians beware. Those earnestly seeking real Life with Jesus beware.

We are already warned in the Bible's New Testament book of Acts (the very earliest days of the Church not long after Jesus' ascention into Heaven) that there would be false gospels and false teachers and prophets.

And they can sound so sweet or seem so pure in their motives. Nothing has changed in 2,000 years.

The lesson for real Christians who aim to help our nation in city councils, as mayors, in the statehouses, governors' mansions, or in Washington, D.C.: Read the Bible. Know the Bible. Seek the Lord's wisdom and not your own. Put on the full armor of God as Paul tells us.

And stand firm in the face of the sure, relentless, ruthless opposition you will face even when doing what is morally right in God's sight and for the soul of our nation.

It will be tougher for present-day genuine Christians in leadership than it was for President Reagan.

That is why we common folk need to be in daily intercessory prayer.

العاب بنات | 4.11.12 @ 4:01PM

Were the Second Coming imminent, I shudder to think that the Almighty would affirm the activities of these oxygen thieves and social parasites. They rebel as always against the Facts of life.

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