The Christian Rights

Smith, Kenneth, The Washington Times (Washington, DC)

Theology, said the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, teaches people what social goals and ends are desirable; politics, the most effective way to achieve those ends.

An organization that attempts to combine the two, say in the form of an explicitly Christian party, may find itself in a politically awkward and even morally dangerous position. "By the mere act of calling itself the Christian Party," warned Mr. Lewis, "it implicitly accuses all Christians who do not join it of apostasy and betrayal. It will be exposed, in an aggravated degree, to the temptation which the Devil spares none of us at any time - the temptation of claiming for our favorite opinions that kind and degree of certainty and authority which really belongs only to our Faith."

Like the Moral Majority before it, the entrance of the conservative Christian Coalition into politics in the late 1980s has generated as much hostility and resentment as Mr. …

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Publication information: Article title: The Christian Rights. Contributors: Smith, Kenneth - Author. Newspaper title: The Washington Times (Washington, DC). Publication date: March 11, 1998. Page number: 19. © 2009 The Washington Times LLC. COPYRIGHT 1998 Gale Group.

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