My candidate is Christian-er than your candidate
April 4th, 2007 ~ Political circusFound myself kind of annoyed with this story.
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson appeared to throw cold water on a possible presidential bid by former Sen. Fred Thompson while praising former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is also weighing a presidential run, in a phone interview Tuesday.
“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.
So Thompson has ‘come out strongly’ for pro-family issues. And a spokesman for Thompson points out that he’s been baptized into the Church of Christ. But Dobson — who has to know that his opinions on these matters carry weight with a lot of people — just doesn’t find his name in the Book of Life?
And to make it really confusing, Dobson has been talking up Newt Gingrich? Now I love hearing Gingrich talk — he’s the kind of strong, intelligent ‘movement conservative’ that we don’t get to hear much anymore. But given that his track record with the women in his life is almost as bad as Bill Clinton’s, how is it that Dobson considers that he is washed in the blood of the Lamb and Thompson isn’t?
But wait, it gets more annoying:
In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.”
“We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians,” Schneeberger added.
Ohhh. Well, now I get the picture. So really, it’s okay for me to get behind a heathen like Fred Thompson, because according to this definition, I’m not a Christian either.
“We use that word — Christian…” Boy, I’ve got some words I’d like to use.
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April 5th, 2007 at 8:21 am
It makes me very sad to hear those words from anyone anymore (although I used to be very willing to say who I believed to be a Christian and who surely wasn’t). There but for the grace of God…..
April 5th, 2007 at 9:44 am
It’s a slippery slope for sure. I found when I started writing this that it was hard to talk about it without slipping into some Phariseeism as well (and maybe I didn’t completely succeed).
But I think that when Christians get into these public contests of making people prove how “Christian” they are, we deserve some of the scorn that non-Christians have for us. What would it matter for a person to “talk openly about his faith,” as Dobson’s spokesman wants Thompson to do, if it was all for show?
And to throw an extra bit of food for thought into the discussion, I note that when Professor Bainbridge blogged about this (Link HERE), two commenters mentioned that a lot of fundamentalists don’t consider Catholics to be Christian(!!)
Well, I’d love to think they wouldn’t be so condemning of Orthodox Christians if they knew about us (which they probably don’t), but I think I’d be fooling myself.