Dangers for Evangelicals

As I said in an earlier post, the real winners of this election were the so-called evangelicals. There have been many statements made by leaders in the Democratic party that the Democrats have to re-position themselves and get back to traditional values. The Republicans pretty much destroyed the Democrats in the south and the plains of the U.S. The evangelicals are being held responsible for getting Bush re-elected. The Democrats don't want to be known as the party of the Northeast, that's pro-gay, for singles, and without morals. The Democratic leaders have vowed to gain more evangelical and religious votes. This mean that the moral balance of the country will shift towards the evangelical side. Specifically banning gay marriage, and repealing the Roe v. Wade decision. In my opinion there is no greater injustice in the world than abortion. I don't want to neglect other issues of social justice, I just think those issues ought to be handled by the church and not the government, and the fact that the church doesn't handle these issues... well, shame on the church.

Why do I think that this situation is dangerous for the evangelicals? Now it seems that they (we) are going to get everything that we want. Now, it's not necessarily a bad thing to legislate morality, but my concern is that of Soren Kierkegaard. (A very loose paraphrase of Kierkegaard is about to follow.) Kierkegaard said that when there is a state church and everyone is a Christian, there is no church and no one is a Christian. What this means is that when things are easy for the Christians, we take things for granted. I'm concerned that we might develop into a quasi-state church in the U.S. with an evangelical morality instilled among the U.S. citizens. I'm concerned that the church will reduce itself to a moral agent, no longer concerned with biblical standards of morality, but the morality that the evangelicals want to choose to follow. The theology of the American Church is nothing short of atrocious right now, we are semi-gnostic in our theology and don't even realize it. The danger for evangelicals is that we have the possibility of creating a quasi-state church, where all the evangelicals are believers and holy, without having to worship God. I'm concerned that evangelicals will commit idolatry.