To The Reader’s Forum:

Fishing out a double-standard, Dr. Everett Piper, President of Oklahoma Wesleyan, posted saying, “A pastor accuses me of being ‘too political’ while he’s promoting a Planned Parenthood fundraiser and DACA on Facebook. What am I missing?” In response, I added, “I find it amazing how so many on the left (like that pastor) are so politically engaged as they lambaste those with opposite positions as being ‘too political.'”

On the very morning of Dr. Piper’s post, I heard a similar complaint about me being too political. So, I ask, “Are pastors to address politics when issues of morality, theology and worldview are at stake? What political issue does not have moral, theological and worldview implications? Having so many founders of our nation and signers to the Declaration and Constitution possessing extensive theological background and training, what makes such training today a disqualifier for speaking up politically, unless the training is slanted left?”

So many on the left — who, on the one hand, often despise the Bible — exploit the Bible to say that it promotes socialism, since the early church voluntarily sold their possessions and gave to others in the church as they had need. The left carelessly extrapolates that into justifying government having a license to coercively demand money from the public for politicians and bureaucrats to hand out as they see fit on whatever. Despite the text of Scripture being very plain and clear, the left ironically can’t separate church from state and can’t even see the huge difference between Christian compassion that’s inherently voluntary and secularized political coercion that’s unjustly involuntary.

When governor of Virginia, Terri McAuliffe, a “pro-abortion Catholic” who also supports the anti-Catholic redefinition of marriage calls his fellow Catholic, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, “a threat to millions of American lives for decades to come,” the Catholic politician chucks the sanctity of human life and marriage for the political agenda of Planned Parenthood. To state it another way, his leftist politics compromise his Catholicism rather than Catholicism shaping his politics. (Political formation isn’t shaped in isolation. Sources shape everyone’s politics.)

Citing Psalm 23, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey feels compelled to oppose Brett Kavanaugh on the grounds that Kavanaugh represents “the valley of the shadow of death.” (As a politician, Booker is all-in for abortion.) The surreptitious use of the Bible has no place in a truth-seeking society, which needs the right use of the Bible to remain free, virtuous and compassionate in light of its primary use to make the gospel known.

The Rev. Mel McGinnis

Frewsburg