One of the pastors at the church I attend wrote a rant comparing Trump to Hitler and saying he is in the neverTrump camp. It was disturbing to hear that from him.
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Hoo boy that cheeses me off...
I won’t go into an epic rant about this, but I’ll copy/paste something I wrote last night.
“The super-religious tone of the Cruz campaign made me wary. I might not sound like it all the time, but I’ve completed my MDiv degree and I’m serving a church in Missouri as an interim minister at the moment.
And the way Cruz just kept on talking God made it sound like he was trying to use the Lord to win a political campaign, and that soured me.
There’s another reason that I don’t like the super-religious campaign either. I love talking politics, but when I serve my congregation, I have to make absolutely sure that I don’t bring up names as positive or negative. I speak plenty about what Scripture says about certain issues, mind you. Abortion and same-sex marriage are NOT acceptable, to say the least. But I do not mention who it is I support. Nor do I mention who I oppose. Mostly I trust my flock to look at the issues themselves.
The reason is not because of tax exempt status or anything like that, but because I’m a spiritual leader in a congregation, and if I start mingling politics with the Word, then I run the risk of offending the faith of someone weaker than me. I’ve seen how politics taken too far in church can wound faith, and their souls are my responsibility.
But Cruz running like he’s God’s chosen candidate really makes me queasy for that same reason.”
That’s why I believe that pastors—with some exceptions—really shouldn’t get involved in personal politics, other than to point out which policies are morally evil and which are morally justified.
When a spiritual leader starts talking about people, the same thing happens as what happened to you. It wounds faith, especially when these rants are coming from people who are supposed to be spiritual leaders. It’s an abuse of power.
Addendum:
Being open about faith is one thing. Prayers before rallies, or saying that his Christian faith informs his politics, or the like. Those are all awesome.
It’s at the point where they start trying to use God to win that things start getting skeezy.
Bingo. I run a para-church ministry and have had similar issues arise.