For many in the media establishment, Easter is a great time to talk about religion, but for ABC News Easter was an opportunity to showcase the perceived decline of evangelical influence in America. One of the reasons given was Christianity’s supposed intolerance with regard to homosexuality and same-sex marriage in America. Reverend Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and son of its founder, and Cokie Roberts of ABC News were among guests on ABC’s “This Week” panel whose topic was “Are Evangelicals Out of Touch with Mainstream Views?”[1]
In response to a question from panel moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC News, Graham reiterated his strong opposition to same-sex marriage. Graham assured the audience that any gay person can go to heaven if they will repent. However, he stated that gays, like others in adultery or some other type of sin, cannot stay in their sin and be accepted by God. He said, “Franklin Graham is a sinner, and I’m no better than a gay person. I’m a sinner, but I’ve been forgiven, and I’ve turned from my sins. For any person that’s willing to repent in turn, God will forgive.”
Ms. Raddatz responded that Graham’s view appeared to be at odds with dramatic changes in the attitudes of many Americans as reflected by various polls. She pointed to a recent ABC poll that indicated 59 percent of Americans now approve of same-sex marriage and 61 percent approve of gay adoption. For those under age 30, 75 percent approve of same-sex marriage including 43 percent of evangelicals under 30.
ABC News’ Cokie Roberts suggested reasons for this change in the attitudes of Americans regarding homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
The reason the numbers have changed so fast and so dramatically on this question of gay marriage is because everybody in America now has experience with someone who is gay. People have come out of the closet and said, ‘I am your brother. I am your sister. I am your cousin. I am your friend.’ And then they have seen these families raising children and see these loving families.[2]
Ms. Roberts’ comments and Ms. Raddatz’s recitation of the results of recent polls imply that evangelicals are wasting political capital through their opposition to gay marriage because they are out of touch with mainstream views. Ms. Raddatz’s poll numbers reflect the results of just one of the battles in the continuing secularization of America over the last 75 years. However, I strongly disagree with Ms. Roberts’ assertion that Americans’ change in attitude regarding homosexuality and same-sex marriage is because Americans have come to understand and respect homosexuals and the rightness of allowing same-sex marriage. To the contrary, the change of attitudes are the result of a three-generation slide into post-Christian and post-modern worldviews in which a large number of Americans have abandoned Christianity as the standard of truth and morality and have embraced a relativistic view of truth in which the barometer of right and wrong always points in the direction of popular opinion.
The assumptive language posed in “Are Evangelicals Out of Touch with the Mainstream Views” implies the highest importance to which ABC News attaches to being in touch with mainstream views and therefore being politically relevant. Of course ABC News is an entity that feeds on ratings and therefore must seek the mainstream and determine how to be in the middle of it.
It would be interesting to hear Raddatz’ and Roberts’ response to the following question. If evangelicals are deemed to be out of touch with mainstream views, by inference could they not also say that God is out of touch with mainstream views? Of course, this is a rhetorical question, and the answer must be found in either the opinions of man or God’s word. To illustrate, we look to the biblical truth with regard to God’s condemnation of homosexuality.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth…Therefore, God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever! For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own person the due penalty for their error. (emphasis added) [Romans 1: 18, 24-27. RSV]
Based on God’s view of homosexuality, it would seem that Roberts and Raddatz must also label God as being out of touch with mainstream views. But God doesn’t have a view. He is God, the great I AM, and Creator of the universe including the laws of nature and laws of human nature. God is truth, and how feeble are man’s attempts to distort that truth revealed in His creation, the biblical revelation, and His image stamped on His special creation called man.
ABC News and much of secular media continue chipping away at the Christian principles upon which the nation was founded. Thirty-five years ago Malcolm Muggeridge identified the source of the attack on Western civilization (Christendom).
Previous civilizations have been overthrown from without by the barbarian hordes. Christendom has dreamed up its own dissolution in the minds of its own intellectual elite. Our barbarians are home products, indoctrinated at the public expense, urged on by the media systematically stage by stage, diminishing Christendom, depreciating and deprecating all its values.[3] (emphasis added)
Rather than reinforcing Christian principles, morals, and manners upon which the nation was founded, the humanistic worldview of modern mass media molds public opinion by setting the agenda and influencing what people think about. From such manipulation has come a cultural shift as mass media’s humanistic worldview has ascended while the Christian worldview is marginalized and demeaned through substantial and constant attack.[4]
So what should the evangelical do in the face of a rising tide of secular humanism in America? We take our instruction from the Apostle Paul’s exhortations to Timothy.
…preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching. For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own and wander into myths. As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (emphasis added) [2 Timothy 4: 2-5. RSV]
In other words, evangelicals must evangelize whether they are in the mainstream or in the marginalized minority.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Mary Alice Parks, “This Week Panel: Are Evangelicals Out of Touch With Mainstream Views?” ABC News, April 20, 2014. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/04/this-week-panel-are-evangelicals-out-of-touch-with-mainstream-views/ (accessed April 20, 2014).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980), p. 17.
[4] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods-Humanism and Christianity-The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 374.
