Newt Gringrich – “family values” – bringing down Obama….From the article: “The antidote is simple. Christians need to read their Bibles more. It makes a difference.”

Evangelical Consistency and the 2012 Elections

One of the greatest failures of Christians in this country is when they don’t think and act as Christians first. Instead, they think first as Americans, consumers, partisans, and sometimes even as Red Sox fans. This leads to bending over backward to justify un-Christian behavior and attitudes to fit these other identities. The biblical name for this behavior is idolatry.

Now, Christians can and do identify as Americans, consumers, partisans, and even Red Sox fans (the latter being my particular temptation!). But, it should never be our first or primary identity. Those other identities should all be subservient and accountable to our identity in Christ.

A piece by Michelle Goldberg in Newsweek chronicles some evangelical voters in Iowa trying desperately to contort their values in order to justify supporting Newt Gingrich. She quotes Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council as saying, “Under normal circumstances, Gingrich would have some real problems with the social-conservative community… But these aren’t normal circumstances.”

In other words, this guy clearly doesn’t stand for our values but we are ready to jettison those in order to make sure our party wins the 2012 election.  Newt Gingrich’s three marriages – serving his first wife divorce papers while she was suffering from cancer, and cheating on his second wife while leading the impeachment battle against Bill Clinton for lying about his sexual sins – would normally be disqualifiers for family values conservatives. Later in the article, Ralph Reed discusses evangelical support for Ronald Reagan, our country’s first and only divorced President, and says, “These voters believe in forgiveness, they believe in redemption.”

Read the complete article: http://sojo.net/blogs/2011/11/30/evangelical-consistency-and-2012-elections.