The Moral Majority was a prominent American political organization associated with the Christian right and the Republican Party. Jerry Farwell, a Baptist Minister, and his associates founded it in 1979. By the end of the next decade it was “officially” dissolved, however, the Evangelical community has remained actively engaged in national politics and policy ever since. Evangelicals have always claimed a high moral authority because they professed to anchor that so-called authority in the tenets of biblical principles and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christianity’s foundations lay atop the Bible as the Living Word of God and followers of Christ are called to live their lives based solely on God’s word as the source of their power and moral authority. So then how do we reconcile what is, by the high moral standards of biblical precepts, clearly an administration in Washington, DC that is led by someone whose life, beliefs, language and actions are in direct conflict with the high calling of morality that is explicated by Evangelicals when they call into question the lives of others who fight for the rights of the LBGTQ (I) community, or a woman’s right to choose, or equal justice and criminal justice reform? What ground do these Evangelicals have to stand on when they excuse, allow and comply with a leader who by has own admission is a womanizer, has committed sexual assault, is a serial adulterer, and is, if not a pathological liar, has a “questionable” relationship with telling the truth? How can those who claim the high calling of God look the other way, close their eyes and refuse to see what is clear to the entire world about the moral decay of the Office of the Presidency of the United States of America?
Relativism is the belief that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture (cultural relativism). Moral relativism, by the same measure is the practice of seeing and believing that moral principles apply only in a limited context. Hmmmmmm? Really? So, have Evangelicals traded in what they used to call Moral Absolutism for Moral Relativism? Is this how they justify all of the “free passes”, excuse making and enabling of the amoral behaviors exhibited by the man who is held up as the “Leader of the Free World?” Moral relativism is on the opposite end of the continuum from moral absolutism, which seems to say that these so-called Evangelicals no longer hold out the BIBLE and the teachings of Jesus as the standard by which they want to hold our public leaders accountable? NO. They have decided to sell out their beliefs and the morality they professed to the expediency of political policy and the cult of personality now on exhibit in our nation and in our national discourse. The new position taken by those Evangelicals who formerly held some sway on moral grounds have entirely slipped down the slope of “moral relativism.” #SAD
