My problem with so-called “conservative Christianity” is its hypocrisy: its attempt to pass off its political agenda as “Christian,” to achieve its political ends. That hypocritical political purpose has been evident from the beginning, when it delivered 80% of “evangelical” votes to the 1980 “conservative” Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, giving him victory over his Christian opponent.
(But then Reagan was also hypocritical in claiming to be "conservative."
The touchstone of that doctrine was always that government has no business “interfering” with citizens’ personal "rights." As Governor of California, Reagan enacted that conservative principle in state law when he “de-criminalized” California’s abortion laws so women could make that choice themselves, without government "interference."
But Presidential-candidate Reagan's “conservative” initiative to Christian voters was that he opposed abortion. It worked so well for him that it remains…at least during every election season…the lip-service "principle" of every “conservative” politician today.)
Christians have been deeply foolish to be deceived by political hypocrites; especially when the deceivers were so blatant as to give their counterfeit a political label. But my greater grief is Christians’ failure to live up to scripture’s teachings.
The Church has long allowed itself to be rent by division, contrary scripture’s numerous teachings about our unity in the Spirit (I Corinthians 12:13 and Ephesians 4:4-5 for example): and most grievous of all, contrary Jesus’ prayer that our unity be like His with the Father, witnessing His glory to the world (John 17:20-22).
We’ve accepted the divisions we’ve created as manifestations of our obedience to God, by our theological purity. Or is that not why the Orthodox and Protestant churches separated from the Catholic church, Calvinists from Reformed, Puritans from Church of England, Fundamentalists and Charismatics and Evangelicals from all those other kinds of Christians ?
While they may have some descriptive usefulness, every modifier we’ve attached to “Christian” is a way we divide ourselves from “those other Christians” (or “them” from “us:” either way, the work of the flesh that Galatians 5:20 calls “factions”).
Born of our, not God’s, spirit, those “religious” divisions also embody more than a little human pride. Thinking we obey God by our superior theological purity, how can we not be rather pleased with ourselves…and think ourselves better (more “Orthodox,” for example) than those other Christians ? To my experience, the “Fundamentalist,” or “Evangelical,” or “conservative” Christians I know are, get down to it, rather prideful in their chosen denominator.
Which is my problem with “conservative Christians.” The denominator they choose to identify with is a human political one: so Its pretense of “obedience to God” and “theological purity” is transparently false. It is, worse, hypocrisy so absolute that its adherents are political followers (as was their manipulators' purpose) of a man of lies and violence: the kind Jesus called a “child of the devil” (John 8:44).
But God is merciful. It may yet be that He will awaken a few “conservative Christians,” so that they repent and return to follow Him.
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