Letter To A Christian Candidate circa 2013

December 10, 2013

Rev. Blair:

I was present at the Patriot Pastor’s luncheon in Tulsa when you spoke. I have walked the path that you are now taking and know where some of the landmines are located. Remember Santyana’s famous quote, "Those who cannot learn from the past are condemned to repeat it."

I watched as Jerry Falwell raised the Moral Majority, as Pat Robertson raised the “Christian Coalition” and then ran for President. I watched as Dr. James Dobson followed it all by defining and leading the “religious right” and “values voters.” I was a loyal foot soldier in each of these movements. But, I watched our leaders produce GOP majorities time and again that did absolutely nothing to further our agenda and in fact held us and them in public contempt. Soon our own leaders adopted the contempt for its workers shown by the political class. I watched heartbroken as our religious leaders who set out to change the political system were instead changed by it and became something that was neither religious nor right.
 
What were their mistakes?

First, you must preach a pure gospel. It is easy to draw a crowd by feeding them a constant stream of current events, political rhetoric and badly thought out patriotism. The faith that we share is neither political nor changed by current events. It is not limited to one country or one political system. Its power to change societies lies in its ability to produce men who will die for these universal principles of the faith in the certain knowledge that they are serving a power higher than any earthly regime, political party or country. That knowledge is not and cannot be based solely upon temporal issues. They must first know and commit their lives to the unchanging moral principles contained in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There is an old saying in the military, “You’ll never take a hill you’re not willing to die on.” I didn’t learn that saying in the military. I learned it from Bruce Green, former chief counsel of the American Family Association, former chief counsel of the ADF and former Dean of Liberty Law School. We were sitting at dinner. He was telling us, a small group of new Christian civil rights lawyers, that we had to be willing to sacrifice our careers in the profession of law if we intended to win battles for the Lord. There could be no compromise in the type of battle he was sending us out to fight if we expected to win.

So, the primary task of a true “Great Awakening” style revival must be a return to the purity of gospel. Your altar calls must produce not just changed minds but changed lives. Converts must willingly accept Bonhoeffer’s costly grace that calls them not just to eternal life but also to worldly death, not only spiritually in terms of self-will but also socially, financially and sometimes even physically. Only the pure gospel will produce believers who will stand in the time of trial. If you do not preach the pure gospel, you will produce shallow quasi-converts who are incapable of standing when called upon. Be warned my brother, I have served alongside these people. They will betray you and the gospel when things get tough. They will be dazzled by access to power and in turn betray you to that power all the while thinking that they have served the Lord by compromising His principles.

Second, you have to have a plan beyond just revival meetings. There is a passage in Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” where a dishonest, black, New York civil rights figure explains the real political system to a naïve white lawyer trying to do the right thing. He explains that any kind of political turmoil is just fire under a boiler. That fire produces steam which is in turn controlled by valves and then directed to do whatever the person controlling the valves decides to do with it. The people stoking the fire have no say in the final outcome. It was the civil rights workers job to simply keep the fires stoked in return for which he was paid handsomely regardless of the final use of the steam. That is a perfect picture of the church’s involvement in politics for the past forty years. We have provided the steam and let other people turn the valves and thus steer the ship to a place nobody wanted to go.

So, in order to “control the steam” you first have to produce foot soldiers who, once elected or appointed, will die before they compromise. But even that is not enough. They also have to be trained to do their jobs effectively. That is a long process that may require a generation or more to complete. Our “movement” needs to first produce faithful, hardened foot soldiers and then from their ranks produce equally hardened leaders to place in positions of public authority. They must be trained, competent, disciplined and above all loyal to the cause of Christ. I can’t count the number of times I have watched a Christian go into politics to change it and even before they are elected, they are instead changed by system and turned into just another “stoker.” I’m watching one local candidate carefully right now. If you do not develop your movement in a way that you control the steam as well as the stokers, you will always be controlled by people who do not share your values and will eventually betray you. It’s not enough for them have good intentions and call themselves “Christian.” They have to be smart enough to take on the best the world has to offer, tough enough to challenge the worldly mindset in almost every situation and well educated enough to be respected as they do it.

The classic example of this was a well-known retired pro football player/congressman who also sat on the board of Focus on the Family. I gained his staff’s ire when, as president of the Christian Legal Society at the University of Tulsa, I refused to invite him in for “debates” on key legal and social issues. I had watched him perform there before. He wasn’t trained in the law and couldn’t hold his own on the issues. The law students tore him to shreds much less the professors. The law school only wanted me to invite him to give the mostly liberal law students confidence in their cause through an easy “victory.” Later, this congressman was badly tricked and outmaneuvered in the Elian Gonzales affair and made an absolute fool of himself. This wasn’t well known in his home district and I was ostracized when I had the bad taste to say back home what was common knowledge in D.C.

Third, you must reclaim cultural institutions. The church tends to ignore cultural institutions because they don’t understand them and they are viewed as “enemy territory.” Education, classical music, the arts and the sciences were all once the province of men of faith. Instead of ignoring these institutions we have to first learn about their Godly heritage and then reclaim them. Our enemies criticize people of faith for being anti-intellectual and in many cases they are correct. Many in the church have developed a “Dick the Butcher” attitude toward the professions, arts and science. This new movement must embrace Godly knowledge in all its forms because the knowledge that flows from application of the pure gospel must be applied by men with the education, knowledge and skills to do it both faithfully and skillfully. If you do not reclaim cultural institutions, your movement will die in one generation and the currently dominant worldview in these institutions will prevail by default.

In summary, it will not be enough to have a series of “successful” meetings where people get excited and promise to do things they don’t know how to do or don’t have the skills to complete. The only hope is a genuine spiritual and cultural revival based upon the timeless gospel of Jesus Christ in all of its purity. When that seed is planted, the right crop will grow. Time and effort must be taken to disciple men first in the Lord and then in the art of politics. It has to be in that order and it may take a generation. Finally, instead of avoiding classical learning and the professions, this movement must embrace them and reclaim them for the Lord so that they can again take their proper place in society.

Too many people in our movement believe that we are ready for a second American revolution. They are hopelessly naïve. First, from a spiritual and political standpoint we are not ready. The Great Awakening came BEFORE the American Revolution. Without another Great Awakening a second American Revolution would be doomed to failure from within. Second, the times and tactics have changed. The American Revolution happened at a very fortuitous time in history when a rebel force could still have a fair chance against an established army and navy. Today, the whole Continental Army at Valley Forge could be taken out in one airstrike.

Yours in Christ,

Bill Kumpe