Baptist Seminary President: Kerry Scandal not merely a "Catholic issue"

The public scandal of John Kerry, and how Catholic clergy and laity respond to it, is an example for Christions nationwide, according to R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY:

This is not merely a "Catholic issue," of course, for evangelical Christians face the same dilemma in dealing with candidates who claim to be evangelical but support same-sex unions and abortion. Have we really reached the point when candidates must just "happen" to be evangelical Christians, Jews or Roman Catholics? This implies that faith is nothing more then a matter of ethnicity or privatized belief.

Political maturity -- and Christian conviction -- must require that we judge a candidate by consistency of character as well as by the eagerness of identification with one faith or another. We should look for integrity of heart and consistency in political judgment. In other words, we should hope for Catholic politicians who are genuinely Catholic and evangelicals who are authentically evangelical. This is especially true when dealing with issues of life and death, marriage and family, war and peace.

There is no getting around the reality that candidates who merely "happen" to be Christian and make no connection between their faith and public policy will produce a nation that "happens" to be fully secularized. That's just the way it is. Or, as John Kerry might prefer to put it, faith without works is dead.

http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/bpnews.asp?ID=18023

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), April 10, 2004

Answers

Bump

-- Bill Nelson (bnelson45-nospam@hotmail.com), April 10, 2004.