Last spring, evangelist Tony Compolo announced the formation of a Speaker's Bureau of so-called “Red Letter Christians.” The objective was to assemble a distinguished number of writers and speakers who have become alarmed over the “merger” of the Christian Right with the Republican Party.
Red Letter Christians (RLC's) are Christians who focus on the words of Jesus to promote social and economic justice, distancing themselves from wedge issues that tend to consume enormous time and energy and detract from the true mission of the church. By the appearance of the Speaker's Bureau, the members are decidedly progressive in their politics.
On the way to the Forum, an eerie silence ensued from the myriad of RLC Internet blog sites that sprung up, the last postings occurring around September, 2006. With the election of the Democratic majority in Congress, RLC's seem to be regrouping.
Key Democratic presidential hopefuls do have religious gurus on staff to recapture what they call the “ground of faith,” a deflective phrase to regain lost Catholic and evangelical voters. However, RLC's have been more reactive to the drubbing of thoughtful Americans by the Christian Right than they have been to reforming the church.
I have written extensively on the unholy alliance between the Christian Right and the American Dream ethic of prosperity and success ( McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry and Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship). I am not, however, a Red Letter Christian. Having recently repented of owning and operating for twenty-five years a small New England chain of pop-Christian bookstores, and having served in the Maine House of Representatives both as a Republican and a Democrat, I do not claim to be a progressive Christian in the RLC sense.
Here's why:
The difference hinges on the authority of Scripture. Both the Christian Right and the Christian Left are making the same interpretive error of legalism, one tending toward the Old Testament law and the other toward New Testament ethics. Whether it is the Old or the New, you cannot extract Scripture or portions of Scripture without doing violence to the whole.
The overarching theme of the Bible is the tendency of humans to cling to the letter, rather than the spirit, of Scripture. The very essence of the Christ event was the clear and unmistakable message that the prophets and the law were being fulfilled. Christians are said to believe that the spirit of the law has been restored in the person and work of Christ, to be lived out by citizens of the announced Kingdom of God.
The red lettered words of Christ, therefore, are meaningless without the Old Testament history of the law. Likewise, the mandates of the Old Testament law are meaningless to a Christian without the example of its overarching spirit demonstrated by Christ. The linking text happens to be red lettered – the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus explained to his disciples the difference between the letter and the spirit of the law. He said it in terms of, “You have heard it said...but I say...”
Under both the Old and New Covenants, the message is the same - “Love God and want for your neighbor the best of what you want for yourself, especially if that neighbor is your enemy.” That stands as a warning against wanting for ourselves what our neighbor has. Cars, houses, oil, money and power, these all are examples of the effects of desiring what our neighbor has, both as individuals and as nations.
The Christian Right has given definition to the Republican Party's worship of money and power as evidence of God's blessing. The Christian Left, however, cannot do likewise with the Democratic agenda of social welfare, an affirmation of Christian principles minus religious zeal. As such, the Republicans ultimately will evict the Christian Right, while the Democrats will simply use the RLC's.
As an Evangelical pastor and theologian, I believe that the church needs a good shakeup in order to become a voice of truth in our culture. As the church has surrendered its soul to politics, America finds itself adrift both politically and spiritually.
Marginalizing certain behaviors or legislating certain social benefits has nothing to do with love, either of God or of neighbor. A red letter definition of love is, “No greater love has a man than this, that he lay down his life (or his desires) for a friend.”
Christians, both Right and Left, would do well to remember that.
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