There was a time not to long ago that most American evangelical Christians saw the United States as a moral force in the world. The thinking was that if the U. S. was doing it, it must be the right thing to do. Those days may be coming to an end, however. The promotion of legal abortion as a standard of freedom, the exporting of filth in the name of free speech and the high rate of collateral damage from Mr. Obama's drone war have put a serious dent in any claim the U. S. had to moral authority.
It is with these things in mind that we read in the Christian Post the rather shocking news that 62% of evangelical pastors oppose a military strike on Syria. It seems that the era when evangelical Christians walked in lock step with the government may be over.
62% of Evangelical Pastors Oppose Syria Strike, NAE Says
The National Association of
Evangelicals conducted a poll of its member pastors and found that
62.5 percent oppose U.S. military intervention in the Syrian civil
war.
"Should Congress authorize direct
U.S. military intervention in Syria?" the survey asked. Only
37.5 percent answered "yes," NAE President Leith Anderson
announced in a statement to Jonathan Merritt at Religion News
Service.
The National Association of
Evangelicals represents 40 evangelical Christian denominations and
over 45,000 local churches. Not all evangelical denominations are NAE
members, though.
The largest evangelical denomination,
the Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, is not a member. So,
the views of Southern Baptist pastors would not be included in the
results. (Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist
Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, does not
support a military strike against Syria.)
Anderson does not take a definite
position himself on the issue in his statement. Rather, he outlines
several reasons that the issue is difficult and that evangelical
pastors are in disagreement.
On the one hand, he points out, there
has been an international consensus against the use of chemical
weapons, and not taking action now could encourage further use of
those weapons in the future. On the other hand, whether a military
strike against Syria would help or hurt the situation is unknown. It
could make the situation worse by leading to a broader regional
conflict.
