The Old Way to CommunicateThe Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about the ways the Obama campaign wooed and won religious voters. The article says that:
Reversing his party's poor showing among faith-based voters in the 2004 presidential election, Mr. Obama won among Catholics, 54% to 45%, made gains among regular churchgoers and eroded a bit of the evangelical support that has been a fixture of Republican electoral success for years, exit polls showed.
It is hard to believe that Roman Catholic and Evangelical voters would elect to the Presidency one of the most rabid supporters of abortion that we have ever seen in America. Yet, they did. Catholics voted for Obama 54% to 45% for McCain. This is shocking.
Perhaps the real answers can be found on the blog by my friend Ron Tate. (Click the Boomer Wave link.) We are in a Post Modern era when single issues are not seen as key to a person's life. Young men and women tend to be Post Modern thinkers who see dismiss Obama's radical abortion policies while being strongly pro family and pro life themselves. Post Modern thinking somehow equates poverty with abortion. Obama was able to communicate the notion, wrongly I think, that he is for helping the poor so many Christians voted for him.
We are certainly in a time of transition in America. If we who are older in years and faith want to have influence over the future we need to understand how our kids think. Ron's blog offers some great insights for us. We need to learn how to communicate God's Word in the Post Modern world.
Gary Sweeten
1 comment:
Gary,
Right now I cannot clearly articulate this, but it is possible, too, following on your previous discussion of the Willow Creek research, that many, many, Evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians have been shamefully poorly catechized about the relationship and intersection between Faith, Belief, non-negotiable moral issues (those predicated on the Truth of God's natural law), Transcendence and the dignity of the human person. Throw in there the possibility of a dearth of philosophical training in right thinking among the great majority of believers, and what is the result.
No judgment here at all, just a thought that the shepherds more than any other group ought to be scratching their heads right now, and checking to see whether any of the sheep are bleeding from the attack on faith and reason.
Surely as beings with free will, we each have a responsibility to take prudential judgments of the best ways to organize the society in which we live, and provide for its protection and common good. And on these matters, people of good will might disagree. But, are we free, really, to choose from a basket that includes things that are always intrinsically evil and those that are intrinsically good? That's it for now -- sorry to have rambled.
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