Question

At work, I work with a lot of people who aren’t Christians, but get very upset about the actions of some Christian leaders, and I know that the issue is really whether they know the Lord and anybody can keep them from knowing the Lord, but can you make some comment about Jerry Falwell and the “Moral Majority”? 

Answer

All I can say is that when you are a well known evangelical Christian, and you get yourself mixed up with a high profile involvement in politics, you run a high risk of alienating people from your message. There is no question about that. I was asked yesterday, by a marvelous young pastor, who is the only black man ever to graduate from Dallas Seminary with a THD. He is a brilliant young man, great pastor, but as a black pastor who has got an exploding church in Dallas, Texas, he’s under tremendous pressure to get involved on behalf of black people in political issues, but he knows the price is so high that once he identifies himself, he’s going to alienate people because there are so many factions in political view points.

The reason I don’t belong to the Moral Majority is because I’m not willing to alienate all of the democrats.

What do I gain by that? Because politics isn’t the issue. And what happens, to be really frank with you, what happens when Jerry Falwell goes to South Africa, no matter what he intended to do, and no matter whether we agree with his viewpoint is; the press takes that and he comes out as anti-black. And so he has just alienated all those people and all those people who agree with the black struggle in South Africa. And the price is so high for that high profile political involvement, that the Christian message is lost to some people. Now, the pattern that I want to follow, is the pattern of Christ who NEVER got involved in a political issue! Never! Because the price was too high. Because if you take sides with that stuff, which is very volatile, and within which there are many opinions, you will run the risk of making people think that Christianity is a certain political viewpoint or lobby position and that’s the reason I don’t belong to the Moral Majority. I can’t answer for Jerry. I know he loves the Lord and he’s got a lot of marvelous things that he’s doing, but for me, once you mix the thing with politics, you really do, you’ve got the whole thing in one bag and people see evangelical, fundamental Christianity as a right wing, anti-black viewpoint. Some people see that and I think that price is too high to pay.