Why trust for church falling?

Evangelical support for Santorum shows generational shift for Catholic candidates.

One needs to look no farther than any presidential or American political race where one’s faith becomes a political hot potato, or better yet vote getter.

Now I am not saying that politics and religion are seperate entities…I am saying that when it comes to one’s personal faith they should shape one’s decisions on everything. For leadership of any religion to come out with official endorsement of one candidate over another, strips the believers, disciples, and apostles of Christ from using their faith to inform their daily decisions.

For what is it to say that just as many believers would not be led to vote Romney, Obama or someone else. But an endorsement of this kind brings the divide into the pews of “this is God’s choice”.

From my personal perspective I remember this happening in the first church I returned to as an adult, Foothills United, where during the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance Party (C-CRAP) was forming under Stockwell Day in the late 1999 early 2000, where Day an outspoken early Earth, evangelical-Pentecostal was rising in polls to be leader. This Sunday morning during announcement time, before opening prayer the board chair stood up and began hawking memberships so that church members could vote for Day to ensure the Christian voice was in Ottawa.

Rewind that, yep you read correctly, at the time we had a Roman Catholic Prime Minister, and a devout Roman Catholic Finance Minister, an evangelical opposition leader, many anglicans, Jewish, muslim, sheik, etc in the House of Commons and Senate, yet this endorsemnt clearly stated that if people supported anyone but this one person their choice was UNChristian…ala they were anti-God.

Suffice it to say 4 years into my renewed spiritual pilgrimage with God this shook me, as I was definately not an Alliance supporter, I leaned more to Joe Clark and his Red Tories, or the NDP, or Communists, or the Liberals…so I received a pew slap that morning as did quite a few in our church being told by our elected board chair that we were insufficient as Christians because our faith had not led us to the same conclusion.

So before leaders of any church deem it is right to say this is “The Christian Candidate” or the “God Choice”…stop, breathe, and remember your belief, and the Holy Spirit may be guiding you to this choice, but you must also remember that each and every one has the Holy Spirit in them, and as a leader you must trust them to make the choice that their faith speaks to.

For those elected, you must trust the faith of the elected, whatever that is from Atheist to Zoroastrianism, to shape them and their decisions.

This open and honest way of allowing for Free Will to actually live out, renews trust in the institution that many have begun to distrust among the spiritual/sexual abuse scandals, financial scandals, and just what is perceived as a thirst after our money…

Let us refocus as the church on what we were called to do…share the gospel through word and deed that opens many up to becoming “Believers”  and once believers then they journey with the community of faith and become disciples, and if the call is there in their lives they will take their discipleship and break new ground in new places as apostles, or be called to be formed as teachers or preachers, or evangelists, or prayer warriors themselves.

But there needs to be an allowance for their own relationship and faith to develop out of their own situation and story, not a brain washing that exists within the negative connotation of cults.

 

Advertisement