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This editorial originally appeared in the August 9, 1985, issue of Christianity Today.

In the White House, the moral forces are strikingly friendly to most theological conservatives. As for the Supreme Court, hope flows like a freshet in anticipation of a new majority that will change the onerous Roe v. Wade decision. Nativity scenes on public property are, officially, no longer a sinister threat to the Constitution, and high school students may now study the Bible in classrooms after school. Prominent televangelists are emboldened as never before to speak up on public affairs. They are generating high voltage awareness about public issues among their mass congregants, and because of that they are becoming a potent force on the political power spectrum.

Clearly, conservative moral forces are having more influence in the councils of government than in a generation. Why is this so? Those who closely follow the changing "power curve" point to several influences: a general conservative swing in the United States; religious radio and television personalities who have captured huge audiences (this giving them unprecedented publicity in the national news media); and evangelical lawyers who have used the courts intelligently to advance the cause of religious freedom.

We are pleased by these advances, but we see potential for trouble ahead. Gospel values triumph ultimately when they are victorious in the hearts of the lost, not when they advance in the courts and the halls of Congress.

Fired by the fuel of righteous moral anger, the Christian political lobbies are sure to prosper in skill and stamina. As they grow, the tendency will also arise to equate legislative accomplishment with spiritual victory. We trust this will not happen, but we fear it might, and so we raise the caution.

A year has now gone by since Congress passed the equal access legislation, a significant victory for the evangelical church. The bill allows student-led groups to hold Bible studies on school property before and after classes. The atmosphere has now improved dramatically for student outreaches in high schools, and although some young people have been taking advantage of it, on the whole there apparently are no large numbers of Bible study groups materializing in the nation's high school classrooms.

In fact, the biggest influence on teenagers as a societal group this year is not a wealth of new Bible study opportunities but a pig lot of sordid, soft-porn movies. Titles such as Porky's Revenge, Hardbodies, and Private Lessons moved Newsweek to report recently that "teenage audiences are grossing out on grossouts."

With all evangelicals, we rejoice that moral initiatives are being heard in the national forums. We stress, however, that the church's mission is to bring the lost to Christ and to equip the saints for valid Christian living, regardless of the government's friendliness toward the church. Is it possible that the evangelical cause will find growing success as a political lobby and still fail in its primary mission? Several writers warned against this very problem in a special series of articles in this magazine last April, dealing with the Christian's duty as a citizen.

Carl Henry wrote in that series, "Christians are not to rely on legal implementation to fulfill divine imperatives that they themselves are to communicate to the nonbelieving world through preaching and persuasion." David McKenna wrote, "By refusing to align himself with political parties and rejecting the use of temporal power, Jesus warns against the political captivity of the church by parties, lobbies, or candidates." This is not to disdain the courageous antiabortion campaign that involves so many Christians, for in this case the aims of the church accord well with the Constitution, which affords protection of life to all.

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April (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51