Choosing a Team

By Dave Haigler – Sept. 6, 2004

Do we use different approaches to choosing a team depending on whether it’s a sports team, a church team or a political team?

I’d suggest we do. Choosing a sports team, we consider location and win/loss ratio. We ask questions like – does their strategy work? We may know some of the players. We may have played the game ourselves.

Choosing a church team, many consider tradition. How did they grow up? What did their parents think? What does its organizational structure say about who’s accountable to whom? What are the group’s beliefs? In studying statements of beliefs, more attention is paid to the statements than to whether the people actually practice those beliefs or not.

Choosing a political party was once a matter of who delivered the goods to whom. In the past 25 years, however, it’s become more like choosing a church. Many consider the beliefs, or the party platforms – which say what the groups claim to believe or practice. An example of that is the pro-life plank of the Republican Party. The Republicans say they are pro-life, but are they really?

I’d suggest that the Republicans discovered something in 1980. They discovered they could say they believed whatever the people wanted to hear, and then do whatever they had to do to remain popular and elected. Much has been written since Reagan died about what a great communicator he was, but how he did a lot of things inconsistently from what he said he believed. Bingo!

What the Republicans dis-covered in 1980 was that they could cede the platform to the Religious Right, and keep the money and the candidates for the power elite that has always controlled that party. The Repub-lican Party became two parties – the Religious Right who controlled the platform and the power elites who controlled the money and the candidates.

As proof of this, I would cite the fact that nothing significant has happened on the pro-life agenda other than fights to retain the pro-life plank in the platform. Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for over 31 years. The pro-life plank has been in the Republican platform for 24 years. A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices have been appointed by Republican presidents since 1980.

When George W. Bush first ran for political office in 1994, he said to his pro-life forces – trust me, let me establish a good record on other issues and I’ll take care of you when I get the chance. What have been the results? A waiting period for abortions has been adopted in Texas. And the so-called partial-birth abortion bill has passed the federal congress. I submit these bills have not stopped a single abortion in this country. A woman who wants an abortion can still get one legally despite these two bills.

The Republicans are in control in all three branches of the federal government, yet Roe v. Wade remains the law of the land. Why? I submit it’s because the Republican power elite never intended to act on the pro-life plank. That plank was merely a bone to throw to us poor dogs who believed that way.

Belief is not tied to action. It is how many people relate to their churches. They may check out the doctrinal statement of the church and say, "This is what I believe. I want to be associated with this church." But they may or may not live their daily lives in accordance with those beliefs. Or, they may assume that other members of the church are living in accordance with those beliefs because they show up on Sunday and recite the creed. That's the way the Religious Right has treated the pro-life plank--it is an article of faith that is often not tested in daily living. A politician can say he’s pro-life on Sunday and still live like hell the rest of the week and the pro-life movement is none the wiser.

Rushdoony said, Americans want their religion but they want it cheap. What he meant was, reciting truths but not having to live them. That’s what the pro-life plank has become – a token belief that’s not acted upon.

We Christians mostly want our politics cheap too. By that I mean, not being diligent to really check out the facts on a broad range of issues. “Is he pro-life?” is all many of us ask. Otherwise, he may be voting a whole range of un-Christian things, or lying and saying he’s voting Christian things and really not doing so.

The only remedy is to really get involved and be diligent to know the issues.

I won’t say pick one party or the other based on how their platform compares with your personal beliefs. Because the platform does not really tell you much. I’ve been saying for 20 years that Christians should get involved in both major political parties, and I still do.

I used to think I’d have to hold my nose to get involved in the Democratic Party because they were not pro-life. Then the rush into the Iraq invasion forced me to switch. And after I did, it sunk in to my awareness that the Republican Party really wasn’t pro-life either.

I finally realized why we pro-lifers had been so hated by the powers that be in the Republican Party all those years. We were not part of the power elite that controlled things, even though we often could be in a majority in our local setting – as I was part of a Christian coalition (little c) that had a majority on the county executive committee in my county for a dozen years. We had the votes, but we didn’t have the control. I never understood that until years later after I switched.

So you don’t have the choice between a pro-life party and a pro-choice party. They’re both pro-choice, but only one is being honest about it.

That realization should be very liberating for Christians wanting to do the right thing about their faith and its implications for public policy. We are no longer conscience bound to be Republicans because they’re pro-life.

We can choose a party more like a sports team now. Skill, style, winning the right kinds of contests – that sort of thing.

This year, I suggest that a collaborative foreign policy and bringing the commitment in Iraq to an honorable end are major contests that need winning. Which team has the better policy on that? Not to mention, which team can bring the deficits under control better and faster?

Maybe in 10 years or twenty, the Republicans will be on the right side of the dominant issues of the day – I don’t know. But they’re not now, and that’s why I switched to the Democratic Party and think other Christians should be free to consider it.

I don’t feel comfortable, like some people do, telling other Christians they are conscience bound to vote one party or the other, any more than I’d feel comfortable telling Christians they should all be Baptists, or Presbyterians, or Methodists, or Catholics, or even Church of Christ like Dr. Arlie Hoover at ACU or Interdenominational Charismatics like me.

Or any more than I’d feel comfortable telling all Christians they should root for the N.Y. Yankees or the Dallas Cowboys.

In fact, I’d say it would be principially wrong for one Christian to try to bind another Christian’s conscience in picking a church or a sports team or a political party. There is simply no Biblical mandate for forcing any kind of choice like that. In fact, the Biblical mandates of liberty of conscience dictate not binding another like that.

Even if you could prove that the Republicans were 55% Christian and the Democrats were only 45% Christian, that would be no reason to go with the majority. In fact, the Great Commission’s mandate to disciple the nations suggests that Christians should be active in both parties, discipling people and being salt and light to their part of our national life.

So let’s be salt and light wherever we are – including our political parties.

--Dave Haigler

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