The response by an evangelical pastor and Liberty University alumnus to Bernie Sanders' speech at Liberty University, the university founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, on Monday stands as a good reminder that there are, indeed, evangelicals out there who attempt to seriously grapple with the demands of their faith. But the problem remains that far too many evangelical Christians have fallen under the influence of the Evangelical Movement, which is not primarily a religious or theological movement at all, but is rather an opportunistic political movement that masquerades as a religious one and preys upon people who are no doubt sincere, but are also exceedingly gullible and, in some cases, quite bigoted. For the Evangelical Movement, even if not for some sincere evangelical Christians, Jesus and his teachings are reduced to the role of mascot, to be trotted out in support of their bigotries and political ideas. There is perhaps no greater evidence of this than the "honor code" at Liberty, which the pastor mentions and under which students can be expelled for any public statements in support of any candidate or official who supports abortion or same-sex marriage.
Under the influence of the political Evangelical Movement, many -- far too many -- evangelicals have completely lost sight of the notion of collective (i.e., public) morality in favor of a strictly private morality. By doing so, they absolve themselves of any obligation to work towards a more just society (thus making themselves a prime target for exploitation by corporate and big money interests of the GOP).
But it's even worse than that. Even their sphere of individual, private morality has effectively been circumscribed so as to include an obsession with just two issues, opposition to LGBT civil rights and opposition to abortion. Speaking as someone who identifies as a non-evangelical Christian (Presbyterian by upbringing, Episcopalian by adult choice), I have long been baffled at the kind of theology and biblical interpretation required in order to reduce Christianity to a fixation an these two issues. I am not a biblical literalist (nor are most Episcopalians), nor do i believe (as most evangelicals do) in the plenary inspiration of the Bible; I support a woman's right to choose and, as a gay man, support same-sex marriage. But even if I believed every word of the Bible to be literally true, and every word to have been dictated by God, I would be hard-pressed to make a case for a Christianity so exclusively focused on just two areas within an exclusively private sphere of morality. The result has been a perverse, twisted expression of Christianity (if it can even be called that) that bears little, if any, resemblance to any Christianity I have ever known.
What Bernie Sanders speech at Liberty has done, quite remarkably, is to remind at least some evangelicals (those who attempt seriously to grapple with Jesus' teachings, that is), that morality -- even traditional Christian morality -- operates in a collective, public sphere as well as an individual, private one. Hopefully, those whose consciences he was able to move will have at least some leavening effect on those he did not so move.
Finally, though, what Bernie Sanders has done has been to bestow an invaluable gift to the Left as well: that is, the gift of recovery the Left's moral discourse. The political left, understandably eager to distance itself from the hypocritical moralizing of the right, has tended to avoid invoking moral arguments in support of its policy agenda. This has been a huge mistake. By avoiding moral arguments, we have effectively ceded to the Right the entire discussion of morality in a public context. Among many sincere, but not necessarily well-informed voters, this has led to the perception that only the GOP has any moral basis for its arguments (laughable though that notion clearly is). In his speech at Liberty, Bernie showed us how it is done!
