Excerpt from a Time magazine article:
May 17, 2007
by Nancy Gibbs
Time magazine
Today’s young evangelicals on campus still have their heroes and their causes, but it’s less likely to be Falwell and James Dobson fighting abortion and gay marriage than Bono and Rick Warren leading the way on addressing poverty and “creation care” and AIDS in Africa When Falwell talked of AIDS, it was about God’s punishment of homosexuals. When Rick Warren, who also views homosexuality as a sin, talks about AIDS, he’s talking about how to stop its spread and minister to the suffering. When he hosts a global AIDS Summit, he invites both Barack Obama and Sam Brownback.
It will be tempting to call Falwell’s passing the end of an era, but that risks missing the larger point. The movement he helped lead was never monolithic, or as tidy as its critics imagine — or obedient to earthly powers. In every generation, Christians have wrestled with the question of whether their efforts are better spent changing laws or changing hearts, and how to proceed when those goals seem to conflict. Falwell enthusiastically practiced the politics of division, flinging damnation at those who disagreed with his vision of a Godly America. Now a rising generation of Christian leaders is looking for ways to bring people together: the politics of division may be a shrewd electoral strategy, but it’s a shallow spiritual one. Their God is bigger than their party, more mysterious, more forgiving and more embracing. It is only partly wishful thinking when a progressive evangelical counterforce to Falwell like Jim Wallis declares, “The Evangelicals have left the Right. They now reside with Jesus.” Click here to read this entire article.
See also:
Christian or Christ-Follower
