And it's a very welcome crisis, I think - not in the "I hate the religious right, let them suffer" kind of way, but rather, in the "the religious right has gotten away from Jesus" kind of way. They no longer represent Jesus' teachings, they now represent Ceasar's.
The religious right has "gone too far," says Hamilton. "They've lost their focus on the spirit of Jesus and have separated the world into black and white, when the world is much more gray." He adds: "I can't see Jesus standing with signs at an anti-gay rally. It's hard to picture that."James Dobson, the Family Research Council, Lou Sheldon, and the men at the Concerned Women for America are angry people. They do not talk like the kind of Christians I grew up with on the south side of Chicago in the 1960s. They talk more like Ken Mehlman. And Karl Rove.
Whatever happened to love thy neighbor? Whatever happened to feeding the poor and the hungry? Whatever happened to being good stewards of the earth? All of that flew out the window when the religious right tricked its evangelical flock to focus more on gay marriages than their own. To focus more on unborn children than the world's one billion children in need who are already alive and in dire need of help.
Evangelicals in America are in crisis, and as much as it must pain them, I believe it's a good and healthy crisis. Their churches and their leaders have gotten too big, too rich, and too political. They've become beholdened to one political party - and to money and riches and power - and now that political party, and that desire for wealth and influence, controls them. And when you start doing the work of politicians, or the almighty dollar, you stop doing the work of the Almighty.
It's time evangelicals had their own Republican revolution. And it's not just a revolution to overthrow their overlords in the Republican party, but it's also a revolution to overthrow their overlords at the largest "family values" organizations and churches who care more about who they hate than who they love.
