Christian Alliance v. Falwell

We here at CrossLeft are huge fans of our friends at the Christian Alliance for Progress. For one thing, they've done a better job than the rest of the grassroots orgs put together of getting in the media on a regular basis. The Christian Alliance did a great job early on of fundraising, hiring, and subletting work to pr agents in DC -- an example that the rest of us will need to follow as our work becomes more intense.

However, that said, we have a great collective struggle ahead of us in the challenge we face of speaking to the media as the Right has learned to do.

I'm often told by other Christian Progressives that coming off well in the media is hard, because the Right's arguments always feed on fear, while the Left tries to speak to people's better nature.

Be that as it may, I don't think it's our taking the moral high ground or the educated position that's behind our lack of success with the media. The art of the sound bite is about quickly appealing to common sense. We have a lot of common sense on our side.

Let me just take a quick example, from this recent article about the Christian Alliance's standoff with Jerry Falwell:

Falwell went on to remind us that Jesus "was not a hippie do-gooder, but rather the Son of the Living God who came to earth to pave the one way to heaven for mankind."

What's the issue here? Christian progressives insist that we're talking about the path to heaven, the path of correct living, and the knowledge of God. We in fact contest that Falwell has honestly faced those issues, or interprets the Bible in what could vaguely be called a responsible and consistent fashion. Christian progressives argue, simply, that Jesus taught that the path to godliness, heaven and truth was through actions of responsibility and service to fellow men.

Falwell and his ilk are self-proclaimed enemies of mankind, and from our point of view, they're enemies of the true church; in their own rhetoric, they might as well be servants of Satan.

We contest that Falwell is utterly skirting the issue when he talks about whether Jesus is on the side of "hippies" or "preppies." He comes to set war between fashion police; he reduces God's will to one's choice of jean design. He minimizes divine things and distracts the faithful from the will of God.

In contrast, Christian Progressives approach the media to talk about real moral issues and the state of amorality in which the Americans of self-proclaimed faith live in willful ignorance or spite of their brothers in poverty, in direct contradiction to Christ's orders. We refuse to let the media go on in pretending that this fringe minority of heretics represent the rest of the church. We have a higher vision for the church and a more divine calling for the nation.

...
Back to the article. The reporter quotes Falwell and then segues schizophrenically back to Tim Simpson, a great man whom I respect profoundly, who is quoted here talking about the interior politics of the Christian Left, as if he didn't care whether or not Falwell said that he didn't care about God and was a worthless hippie:

Reverend Timothy Simpson, CAP’s director of religious affairs, said that while he wasn’t sure what to expect, he really isn’t surprised that CAP has been received with such fanfare: "There is a void out there. There are some top down organizations that are populated by fine people, folks that we admire tremendously, but there isn’t really anything out here in the hinterland being put together by folks out in the hinterland; none of us are famous, we’re just regular people who are fed up."

Look up again. Falwell says, Simpson is a hippie who hates God. Simpson says, we're honest people who have some organizations. The confused moderate reader wonders, What if Christian progressives really *are* godless hippies? Maybe they don't believe in Jesus after all?

Now doubtless some of the discontinuity is because the reporter asked different questions of each, and because Simpson and Falwell weren't in the same room, weren't talking to each other, and the poor reporter was trying to stitch together a story out of nothing.

But I wonder if there's a lesson here for us. We know what the Right is going to say about us, and we need to quickly, brusquely do away with their absurd criticisms. We are fighting for what we believe to be the actual teachings of Jesus, and we need not be afraid to say so. We believe that they have hoodwinked the nation about the true nature of Jesus, and we need not be afraid to say so. Some of us believe that in many cases the hate-filled blasphemies of the Falwells and Dobsons are actually doing the most destructive work possible to good families trying to understand the will of God, and we must not be afraid to explain our reasons why. All of this is simple morality, the simple religion of families and friendships and service, exactly as Christians have practiced it for thousands of years. Sound bites shouldn't thwart us. But we'll have to learn to come to the soundbites knowing what they expect to paint on us, and determined not to let them.