Liberal cleric Tony Campolo, still a popular speaker with some evangelical audiences (audiences who are largely unaware of his leftist political and social opinions) is a member of the Democrat Party platform committee whose language change on abortion has been the subject of a couple of recent Vital Signs posts (1 and 2).This Kristin Jensen story on the matter for Bloomberg concludes with a couple of very telling quotes from Campolo:
...Religious leaders who consulted on the platform said they expect Republicans to use abortion as a ``wedge issue'' in the way they used gay marriage to turn out evangelical voters in 2004. That's why finding a middle ground was so important, said Reverend Tony Campolo, a platform committee member.
``This doesn't solve the problem, but it certainly moves in the right direction,'' said Campolo, 73. ``We're a diverse party, and we ought to have room ethically for each other.''
In other words, Campolo is dedicated heart and soul to the Democrats winning elections. That the Democrats have been for years (and more than ever remain) the party of abortion and homosexual privilege doesn't bother him.
But what does bother him is that other evangelicals and serious Catholics are not as progressive, enlightened, and open-minded like he is. They remain too doggone stuck on those biblical values they were raised with.
The trick then is to pry these Neanderthals away from the Bible's teachings about such gross immorality as abortion and gay marriage -- to give them, as the soft-headed Florida preacher Joel Hunter openly admits earlier in the article, "an excuse to vote for Obama.''
Campolo, Hunter and Jim Wallis all are part of this shameful shell game with the Democrat platform. For they are attempting not to persuade their fellow Democrats about the rightness and seriousness of what the Bible says about sin. Rather, they are conniving with them in ways to hoodwink religious citizens.
Rev. Hunter knows quite clearly that Barack Obama has boldly and repeatedly defied the Bible's position on these crucial moral issues. But does he tell his congregation that? No; he instead tries to finagle "excuses" for people to still back Obama.
Rev. Campolo is frantic to get rid of the "wedge issues" and find "a middle ground," though he too knows to what purposes Obama and the modern Democrat Party are committed. Therefore, his "middle ground" is an illusion. Nothing has changed. Nothing will. It is but a mean and disgraceful act of obfuscation on his part.
There is a lot of ridicule heaped on those lavish-living televangelists who, rather than leading the sheep, simply look to fleece them. But the Campolo bunch may be even more ignoble and dangerous. For they want to shear from the sheep not their money...but their principles.
