Pastors for Presidents

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26494404.post-588822322971922542008-03-04T15:10:00.006-05:002008-03-04T15:24:28.857-05:00Pastors for PresidentsDon’t think it’s by chance that pastors are playing a huge role in this year’s upcoming presidential elections. People seem to forget that they’ve long been at the heart of our nation’s political process—and will continue to be. It was impossible for the mainstream media to ignore the pastors-and-politics connection when Mike Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor and denominational leader, stepped into the ring—then befuddled everyone by sticking around. Then came the hubbub over Barack Obama’s relationship with his pastor, Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, who just happened to be a longtime supporter of Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan. And as the apparent next contestant in the “Who’s Your Pastor?” political game show, John McCain recently found an endorsement from San Antonio pastor John Hagee to cause more of a stir than he’d hoped. By now it’s obvious that the evangelical vote, no matter how fragmented, is still a hot ticket. What else explains the smiles among candidates as the roll call of Christianity’s biggest names—and their valued endorsements—continues? There’s an interesting shift that has taken place, however, in this wild electoral season. Call it the “new evangelical vote,” the “rising vote of social justice-based believers”—however you dub this development, it boils down to an age-old scenario that’s been a cornerstone of American politics since the Founding Fathers: a local pastor preaching his heart out on biblical values—values that, yes, connect directly with how we vote and just might line up with a particular candidate. This used to be called “normal”; now it’s called into question. Such is the vacuum created when generations of pastors resigned from the political arena and allowed their sheep to fall prey to a “separation of church and state” agenda. (After all, when pastors don’t speak, someone else always will.) I invite you, dear pastor, to find a place in history when pastors have ever been excluded from the American political process. You are, and always have been, the key to declaring God’s truth among the people—in every arena of life. That doesn’t mean you’re endorsing Obama, McCain, Huckabee, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul or anyone else for that matter; it means you’re urging people to vote as followers of Christ, just as you’ve always done. On that note … I’ll probably be plugging these again in the future, but I can’t think of a better time to promote two articles we’ll be running in upcoming issues of Ministry Today. If you’re a pastor and unsure what you can and can’t say from the pulpit in regards to politics, you won’t want to miss <a href="http://lc.org/index.cfm?PID=14096">Mat Staver</a>’s article “Pastors, Pulpits & Politics” in our May/June issue. If, on the other hand, you subscribe to the belief that pastors shouldn’t be part of the political process, I strongly urge you to check out <a href="http://www.wallbuilders.com/ABTbioDB.asp">David Barton</a>’s piece in the following issue.Marcus Yoarshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17904433211603328492noreply@blogger.com