Avoiding the trappings of power

I wrote that Progressive Christians are entering the age of relevancy, but I hope that we can quickly end our back-patting congratulations and get to work.  I also pray that we will not respond to our relevancy by becoming ensnared by the trappings of power. On many accounts, it would be good to learn from the Religious Right and their demise. What happened? Why did they fall into irrelevancy? Can we avoid the same problems? How?

First, we should take heed before we ally ourselves too closely with one political party. If we align ourselves with one party, we could lose our moral grounding. We saw it happen with the Religious Right, when Evangelist Billy Graham endorsed Governor Mitt Romney and quickly took Mormonism off the list of cults on his website. Clearly, the Republican agenda took precedence over his beliefs. I applaud the open-mindedness, but the fact that the Religious Right leadership suddenly said that Mormonism was a-okay, did not sit well with many Evangelicals who didn’t want to watch their next president being sworn in with a Book of Mormon instead of the Bible.