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Why did you go into column writing instead of TV or reporting? What was it that kept you going as a columnist?

I started out in broadcasting. In 1980, Jerry Falwell offered me a position as vice president of communications for the Moral Majority, organizing Christians who we presumed would all vote the same way, and once a Republican got into office, 16-year-old daughters would no longer get pregnant. That didn't work out too well. But it did allow me an opportunity to fuse my faith with national issues.

In 1983, I published a book called Book Burning, about censorship from the Left. Then I thought, Wait a minute, I ought to write a column about this. I had never written a column in my life; an occasional letter to the editor was it. So I wrote it and thought, Might as well start at the top, and sent it off to The New York Times. To my astonishment, they printed it and got a ton of mail in response. A couple of weeks went by, and I wrote a column for The Washington Post. I wrote another one for the Los Angeles Times. Then I wrote one for USA Today. I said, "Lord, what's going on? This is ruining my talk on the biased media!"

So in 1984, I was in Los Angeles and I met with the chief copy editor and the vice president of the L.A. Times syndicate. By the way, that morning before I went over, I literally got down on my knees in the hotel room and I asked God to do a greater work than Moses parting the Red Sea. I asked him to part the liberal mind. Then I went to lunch, and the vice president of the syndicate turns to me and said, "By the way, I hear you're a Christian, is that right?" I told him what that meant and how Jesus Christ had changed my life. He said, "Can you do two columns for us starting April 17?"

How has your idea of Christian involvement with politics changed?

When I joined the Moral Majority, I thought the real answer to fixing the problems with America was having the right people in the White House and the Supreme Court and in Congress. There are fewer abortions now, but that's not because of legislative, judicial, or executive orders; that's because of the proliferation of crisis pregnancy centers or pregnancy help centers. And that's the work of the church reaching out to women in difficult circumstances, sharing the gospel with them and caring for their physical needs.

I'm not looking for a savior; the one I have is sufficient. I'm certainly not looking for a political deliverer because our major problems in America and the world are not economic and political — they're moral and spiritual. The real problem is that we're sinners, not dysfunctional people. We don't need reformation, we need redemption. So the real danger, including for modern Christians on the Left and the Right, is that they're always looking for politicians to fix things. But you might as well go to an auto repair shop to be cured of pancreatic cancer — they're just not able to do it. The gay rights movement advances because of the moral squishiness of the country and the fact that we worship not the living God but the Dow Jones industrial averages. In Dow we trust, not in God.

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April (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53