Progressive Christians in the News

For nearly two years, Wallis has traveled across the country attempting to do just that. And some would argue that those efforts have begun to bear fruit, as demonstrated by gains in the recent elections. But Wallis, America's leading progressive evangelical, contends that the issue is far larger than any one election, that the Christian conservative movement has remade Christ in its own image. "What's at stake here is not politics or social action," he insists, "but the very integrity of the word of God."

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THE LAST DEMOCRAT TO WIN THE PRESIDENCY with more than half of the electorate was also the last Democrat to nearly split the religious Christian vote: Jimmy Carter. Carter has been a devout Baptist for the whole of his 82 years. He lives today in the same town in which he was born and has spent the bulk of his life in the Bible Belt. He remains the pride of Plains, a diminutive town in the deep south of Georgia. To this day, political analysts chalk his 1976 victory up to his Southern heritage.

But CBS News exit polling demonstrated that for six in 10 voters, "restoring trust in government" was the number one issue that led them to support their candidate, dwarfing by three times all other issues. Carter's ability to authentically speak to his faith may have allowed voters to find a pathway to trusting his character.

2.) PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANS RESPOND TO JAMES DOBSON'S INACCURATE STATEMENTS

Judgmental Rhetoric Does Not Follow the Teachings of Jesus

Washington, DC November 29, 2006 James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, made a number of highly inaccurate statements on matters of faith, sexuality, liberalism and the United States Constitution in on CNN's Larry King Live, November 22, 2006.

The Institute for Progressive Christianity, a think tank comprising mainstream liberal Christians is issuing a correction of Dobson's crackpot assertions.

KING: If the left gets glee, Doctor, does the right get glee over sexual peccadilloes on the left?
DOBSON: That's very possible. We're all inclined to look at other people. But it's interesting to me that those, again, on the more liberal end of the spectrum are often those who have no value system or at least they say there is no moral and immoral, there is no right or wrong. It's moral relativism.

"For James Dobson to claim that liberals do not know the difference between right and wrong is new twist on McCarthyism," said Frank L. Cocozzelli, a director of the Institute. American Liberalism, and particularly religious liberals have long been in the forefront in the battle against the greatest evils of our time, and active proponents for justice in the U.S. and around the world."

To offer but one example, the birthday of the liberal Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is celebrated as a national holiday because he personified the moral center of the liberal Christian social justice tradition that led the nation to equal rights for African Americans after centuries of slavery and oppression.
"James Dobson's preposterous claim that liberals do not know the difference between right and wrong says much more about James Dobson than it does about liberals," said Stephen Rockwell Director of the Institute for Progressive Christianity.

"Dobson claims to be a follower of Jesus, but his calumny and his reckless coarsening and polarization of public discourse sounds much more like the Pharisees than Jesus Christ. Dobson owes liberals and all Americans a heartfelt and public apology," he said.

3.) Christian Alliance for Progress Joins In Protest of Left Behind Video Game

The Christian Alliance for Progress deplores the release of the video game Left Behind: Eternal Forces in which the game's object is to convert or kill any who stand in opposition to the ideology that the game and its companion book series seek to promote. We urge the game's sponsor, Tyndale House, a Christian publishing business which used to be concerned with sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, to recall its values and withdraw its support for such an un-Christian enterprise as this.

The game, which comes with a copy of one of the books in the series, represents a relatively novel way of interpreting the book of Revelation and the biblical passages that treat the end of history and the coming kingdom of God, whose origin is less than 200 years old. It thus rejects the historic ways of reading Revelation and the coming of God's kingdom that have sustained followers of Christianity for two thousand years. It also rejects the insights of biblical scholarship and deliberately misreads Revelation as a book of prophecy, rather than the kind of literature it actually is, which is apocalyptic.

Worse, rather than seeking to close the gap between neighbors, as Jesus did in his ministry, the game's purpose is to drive a wedge between people, teaching teenagers that what God intends is for them to slaughter those who do not share their beliefs. Because of the predominance of Christian fundamentalists on television and radio in the past generation, the American people have been left with the false impression that this strange way of interpreting the Bible is what Christians have always believed and taught. We are here today to challenge that view and to name it for the error that it is.

Wh at You Can Do

Go to the CrossWalk America site to sign the petition demanding that Tyndale House recall the video game.
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