re: “Look at post 24, do you really think that Evangelicals are the weak link in Christian voting? Compared to what?”
No, I do not consider evangelicals as necessarily a “weak link” in voting conservative - I wasn’t even addressing that. Further, I don’t think overall that evangelicals are going to vote en masse for Obama.
But, I do see problems for conservatism in the evangelical movement. And, I was giving an explanation about why this pastor Beard, and some other evangelicals I’ve met and talked with, could confuse Christian ethics with some aspects of “progressivism” (or what used to be called the “social” gospel) because a general lack of interest in knowing Christian doctrine (the What we believe and Why).
I’ve seen this attitude on the part of many evangelical churches in the “contemporary” movement (such as Saddleback Church, Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, etc.). Learning doctrine isn’t “exciting”. It’s not “fun”. You have to work at it, and, let’s face it, some segments of evangelical Christianity are plain lazy in regard to knowing what they believe and why. In the same way, many of these don’t know political ideology very well either or how Christianity relates to the beliefs of the two major political partys.
The greater concern I have regarding evangelicals is that a large percentage won’t vote at all because they consider politics as “of the world” or “God’s-in-control-and He’s-gonna-work-it-all-out-as-He-see’s-fit-anyway” so why should I vote? Others think politics is too “divisive” and too “judgmental” and try to ignore the political debates and controversys - they see it all as “evil”, even both partys as equally bad.
That’s the thing I fear the most. But, with Obama supporting same-sex marriage (along with all the other left wing stuff), that might be enough to rejuvinate the evangelical voting bloc to be more motivated to get out and vote.
That was a good post, thanks for that.
A source of problems for me on these type of threads, is that I don’t know who these people are, yet I know a little about the voting stuff, so I think that sometimes I don’t realize that you guys are talking about real life people, that might have influence.
I'm going you disagree with you on this point. I find it amazingly so. But then I'm 64 and started learning the trumpet this year, so I think I have a curious mind. I've studied the occult for a while, too out of curiosity, but I never tried to practice it. Too much fear of giving Satan an 'in'. The point is, learning is fun, and the reason the country is in so much trouble is that people won't. Not just sound Christian doctrine, but history, economics, science, and math, too, among many other subjects.