The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of a nondenominational megachurch in Longwood, Fla., said he resigned as the coalition's incoming president because its board of directors disagreed with his plan to broaden the organization's agenda. In addition to opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Hunter, 58, wanted to take on such issues as poverty, global warming and HIV/AIDS.
"My position is, unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we're not carrying out the full message of Jesus," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. "They began to think this might threaten their base or evaporate some of their support, and they said they just couldn't go there."
It's hard to blame the old-guard leadership at CC headquarters for this. They say they had four state chapters break away in protest of Pastor Hunter's statements indicating he wanted to expand the conservative activist group's areas of concern. Notice expand not change -- but the old-line grassroots revolted. Well, if that's how they feel about it, fine; I think what Pastor Hunter represents is terrific, but I'm not a member of the Christian Coalition. But do please note that this reveals once again how fractured Evangelicalism is, and how the coming generation of Evangelicals have different priorities.
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I agree with Maclin. One way to sink a ship is to add too much baggage. Start a pro-life group and you get a lot of complaints like "what about pollution? Don't you care about born people?" That's like complaining that the hardware store doesn't sell wedding cakes.
This article sheds much light on what many conservatives fear about carelessness in jumping onto the enviro bandwagon. I agree that folks like Rick Warren had no idea who he was signing on with in the whole ECI deal.>
Just for the record, I'm in total agreement with teacherkd about the way Christians should treat people with AIDS. I think this has always been the approach of Mother Teresa's order, the Missionaries of Charity: how somebody came to be sick or otherwise in dire straits is irrelevant to how I, as a Christian, should react to them person-to-person.
How a politically-focused organization like the CC wants to deal with AIDS or environmentalism as political issues is a whole different question, though, as the article Pauli links to indicates.>
Before you get all excited about Pauli's link, take a look at the people involved at Acton and the IRD. Never have so many pro-business/capitalists who profit from lack of environmental regulation spent time with Christians. Both groups have a very specific agenda, and most of it isn't Christian. Instead, they are using Christians as cover for pro-business, anti-regulatory policy.
The Christians on Acton's board should be ashamed of themselves for being corporate shils giving cover to the anti-environment lobby.>
Pauli,
You're linking to the Acton Institute brings to mind the true weakness (and duplicity) of the Christian Coalition. Hunter was not booted because he wanted to expand the agenda beyond abortion and gay issues. It was because discussion of the issues he wished to expand into runs a serious risk of undermining the CC's other main purpose (and I would argue real purpose since it is engaged in consistently but not openly): promoting Christian support of economic liberalism/libertarianism.
They're trying to avoid this inevitability.>
teacherkd,
God bless you! We need more evangelicals like you!>
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