Right-Wing Hypocrisy-Part Three
A major emphasis of right-wing Evangelicals in recent years has been to keep the Ten Commandments in our secular culture. Right-wingers are fighting to keep them in our public and government buildings, and would like to once again have them put back in our public schools. This issue received national attention when the Alabama chief justice, Roy Moore, was removed from his judicial position because of his refusal to remove the Ten Commandments from government property.
The Christian Right has drawn a line in the sand regarding the Ten Commandments, and is willing to pursue all legal avenues to keep them in our culture. Conservative, religious, legal organizations, such as the “American Center for Law and Justice” and the “Alliance Defense Fund”, have fought, and are fighting, many legal battles on behalf of the Church in courts across America to keep the Ten Commandments in our public and government buildings.
One would think that Evangelicals must hold the Ten Commandments in high esteem and cherish them greatly, based on their aggressive efforts to have them recognized in our public institutions. One would expect that the Church itself must be honoring, teaching and preaching these commandments. One would surmise that the importance of these commandments, and of obeying them, must be a major focus among Evangelicals. One would assume that the same Church that insists that the Ten Commandments should not have been removed from our public schools, would never tolerate any attempt to remove them from the Church. It would certainly be logical to assume and expect these things, yet this is not the case.
A common teaching within Evangelical Christianity is that the Ten Commandments were nailed to the cross of Jesus and have been abolished. I myself had a debate on a Christian college campus with the president of the Christian Apologetics Ministry in Minneapolis regarding this issue, and he espoused this teaching. The same Christian Church that denounces the removal of the Ten Commandments from our public institutions, readily accepts the proclamation of a doctrine that, in effect, removes the Ten Commandments from the Church! I think that most reasonable people would find this to be inconsistent and hypocritical.
If Evangelicals want our secular society to recognize and honor the Ten Commandments, it would seem reasonable for them to do so first. After all, why should our secular culture want them if the Church doesn’t?
Tags: hypocrisy, right-wing, Ten Commandments