Interview: NAE President Leith Anderson on Richard Cizik's Resignation
It seems like the NAE's focus has been to bring evangelicals together to speak on political issues such as creation care and torture and other issues. Does this situation call into question whether the NAE has become too political in the last decade or so?
In our last board meeting, we had a major presentation related to mental and moral health for clergy. The year before, we brought in an expert about church health and church growth. None of those things made news stories, but those are things that we are constantly doing.
In a general election year especially, the interest goes to what is happening in the political scene. Because evangelicals have been a major influence on American culture, obviously there's an interest in this. But it's a misunderstanding of who we are to neglect the core of our beliefs and issues of the church and faith. It would be enormously helpful if people could understand that what we are about is the Bible and personal faith in Jesus Christ.
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Michele M.
I hear Mr. Anderson say that the NAE is about "the Bible and personal faith in Jesus Christ", that they are not primarily a political organization, and yet NAE members are referred to as a "constituency" and these issues are necessarily being discussed in the public square. Mr. Anderson states that he has no idea or hasn't thought about the response or perspective of the Religious Right with regard to representing the views of the evangelical "constituency", when asked to comment on their role in this very public discussion, which is a non-answer (avoiding the question) as far as I can tell. Another troubling answer has that the NAE only speaks about defined positions (nothing original here), and not potential solutions to the problems they're taking stances on (Biblical marriage, abortion on demand, creation care). Let's acknowledge the public square, the influence of evangelicals (positive and negative) and posit some workable solutions that line up with Biblical teachings.
pat
I heard the original interview of Cizik by Terry Gross on NPR last week. I was a bit surprised that he was willing to go out on a limb like that on civil unions. I get the idea that when people like Cizik are on NPR they think that nobody from their camp is listening, or at least not the hardliners, but in this case it seems like the hardliners (Modern day Pharisees? )were looking for any misstep they could find and got him on this one. Cizik is correct that the younger Evangelicals are re-thinking the issue of civil unions. The government should get completely out of the marriage biz and leave that to the churches, synagogues & mosques. The government should issue civil unions for all couples (gay or straight) and the Church should issue the marriage certificate. The future of Evangelicalism doesn't belong to the Dobsons or Robertsons - it belongs to the younger Evangelicals. The old guard needs to stop trying to control and instead trust that God is doing His work.
travis
I think the NAE needs to go away.It is not a true representative of Christ or His church to the non-Christian world.All these political institutions that operate under the auspice of Biblical Christianity are doing very little for the true cause of the Gospel.For all the money they spend, they are getting very little bang for the buck.But what else would one expect.The work of Christ in the world can only be accomplished by the Spirit of Christ at work in the Church of Christ.Politics is the work of man.