Kudos to this pastor for doing the right thing - even if it's cost his church a fifth of his membership in the process.
Hopefully more that are busy at mixing religion and politics will follow suit.
Disowning Conservative Politics Is Costly for Pastor"Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing -- and the church's -- to conservative political candidates and causes.
The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute “voters’ guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?
After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called “The Cross and the Sword” in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.
“When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses,” Mr. Boyd preached. “When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.”What I thought was the most telling - and the saddest - was this section:
"Mr. Boyd gave his sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 million fund-raising campaign. But only $4 million came in, and 7 of the more than 50 staff members were laid off, he said.
Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.
“They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way,’ ” she said. “It was some of my best volunteers.”It's very sad that these people were so shallow in their faith that they felt the church's role should have been to support *politics* rather than to support their faith. What they wanted was the churches rubber-stamp on their political beliefs - and left when they didn't get it.
Church should not be used to support a *political* belief. Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, Pagan, Unitarian, Democrat, Republican, Green, Libertarian, etc. If your faith leads you to support a political action or cause, so be it. But to see your churches' function as *support* for that faith is, at best, misguided, and, at worse, mocking of the very faith one claims to be. I would be just as offended by a Unitarian's saying their church's "purpose" is to support the "Democratic Way", or for any faith - my own included - to see their purpose as supporting political group x, y, or z.
Kudos to this pastor again. He could have taken the easy road like many of the evangelical "megachurches". But he listened to what his faith and heart said. The 1000 that left are poorer spiritually as a result - but the ones who remained and those who have since joined are richer as well.
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