Dr. James Dobson responds to Kathleen Parker - well, he had to, didn’t he?
So, Kathleen Parker has determined that getting rid of social conservatives and shelving the values they fight for is the solution to what ails the Republican Party (“Giving Up on God,” Nov. 19). Isn’t that a little like Benedict Arnold handing George Washington a battle plan to win the Revolution?
Whatever she once was, Ms. Parker is certainly not a conservative anymore, having apparently realized it’s a lot easier to be popular among your journalistic peers when your keyboard tilts to the left.
Food fight!
But you gotta love Dobson’s logic here. Anyone who disagrees with me = evil liberal.
The accuracy of her numbers isn’t the point, anyway — it’s the notion that, because there are people of many faiths in the United States, those of the Christian faith must not think or act like Christians when engaging the public square. That is similar to something then-Sen. Obama said a couple of years ago, arguing in a speech before a gathering of liberal Christians that “democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.”
“It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason,” he added. “I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.”
That is, as my theologian friend Al Mohler called it, “secularism with a smile” — offered in the form of an invitation for believers to show up, but then only to be allowed to make arguments that are not based in their deepest beliefs.
No, that’s not what it is at all. It’s to say that believers can show up and make their arguments - but that their arguments aren’t necessarily going to carry any more weight than anyone else’s arguments.
That’s the way it works in a pluralistic Democracy; everybody gets a seat at the table, no one’s argument is entitled to carry the day. We all have to learn compromise.
Conservative Christians cop the attitude that they will not compromise because there can be no compromise on what God wants and doesn’t want. Fine for them to believe that; but I’m not bound by their beliefs. Their proposals absolutely must be subject to argument - and if they can’t handle that, then they really do need to get out of the arena. Because that’s just the way it works.
