Texas Faith: Is the Religious Right’s considerable influence on politics over?

Like most of the right-wing conservatives, Pastor Robert Jeffress lives in a bubble believing in self-aggrandizing information, and aggressively seeking to take advantage of his microphone to get ahead of others in the business of influence. He has done that both in politics and religion and has failed miserably. Continued: http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2012/12/texas-faith-is-religious-rights.html
 
Texas Faith: Is the Religious Right’s considerable influence on politics over?

The Texas Faith blog is a discussion among formal and informal religious leaders whose faith traditions express a belief in a transcendent power – or the possibility of one. While all readers are invited to participate in this blog, by responding in the comments section, discussion leaders are those whose religion involves belief in a divine higher power or those who may not believe in a transcendent power but leave room for the possibility of one. Within this framework, moderators William McKenzie and Wayne Slater seek to bring a diversity of thinkers onto the Texas Faith panels.

This week’s question has two parts: 1) Should Christian conservatives in the future follow Jeffress’ advice and avoid making prudential issues in which voters can disagree part of their central moral agenda? And 2) even if they do, will it make any difference? Is the era of religious right’s considerable influence on politics a thing of the past?

MIKE GHOUSE, President, Foundation for Pluralism, Dallas


Pastor Jeffress is a politician in the religious garb, not a good politician but the one scanning for opportunities to his advantage, his advice is yet to make sense.

Like most of the right-wing conservatives, he lives in a bubble believing in self-aggrandizing information, and aggressively seeing to take advantage of his microphone to get ahead of others in the business of influence. He has done that both in politics and religion and has failed miserably.

When the evangelicals ganged up on Romney, and unleashed Santorum as the conservative candidate, Jeffress came down on Romney, ruefully representing the Baptist Church and denouncing Romney’s Mormonism. The Moderate Republican majority dumped Santorum and other candidates with sectarian views and opted for Romney, who represented moderation at that time, but when Romney donned on the conservative avatar to clutch the nomination, Jeffress was out again with an embarrassing compromise; supporting Romney.

The moral agenda of the conservatives is to stand firmly against abortion, and same sex marriage, whereas Americans want to live by the First Amendment: government out of religion and their lives. Ironic as it may sound, the conservatives wanted to impose their views on others, and go against the very essence of constitution they purportedly want to uphold. If I were his congregant, I would have advised him to preserve the dignity of church and stay out from falling flat on his face again.

On religious side, Jeffress made a preposterous statement, “Qur’an is a false book written by a false prophet….” to a standing ovation from his congregation. He knew he was wrong and did not take up my challenge, “that if he finds faults with Qur’an, I will convert to his Faith, if not, I asked him to be a blessed peace maker that Jesus had wanted us to be. We held the Quraan conference anyway with 10 non-Muslim religious clergy and honored him for causing the truth to be otherwise. Details at www.QuraanConference.com

The era of religious right’s considerable influence on politics is indeed a thing of the past.

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Published in Dallas Morning News. Message from all contributors at:
http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/2012/12/texas-faith-is-the-religious-rights-considerable-influence-on-politics-over.html/

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Mike Ghouse is a speaker, thinker and a writer on pluralism, politics, peace, Islam, Israel, India, interfaith, and cohesion at work place and standing up for others as an activist. He is committed to building a Cohesive America and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day at www.TheGhousediary.com. Mike has a presence on national and local TV, Radio and Print Media. He is a frequent guest on Sean Hannity show on Fox TV, and a commentator on national radio networks, he contributes weekly to the Texas Faith Column at Dallas Morning News, fortnightly at Huffington post, and several other periodicals across the world. His personal site www.MikeGhouse.net indexes everything you want to know about him.