JOSHUA JOHNSON of NPR, ‘This Week’ Transcript, 12-10-17
JOHNSON: I feel like the evangelical Christians who are supporting [Republican US Senate candidate for Alabama] Roy Moore have a very strong impetus to show up because of the platform that he’s put forth. I’m almost more interested to see what happens with evangelical Christians, particularly with all the issues important to evangelicals that have come up in 2017, and whether this affects the way they view themselves not only as voters but as Christians.
This Week co-anchor MARTHA RADDATZ:… What is your general feeling about it?
JOHNSON:… I can’t stop thinking about this verse from the book of Mark chapter 8, [verse] 36. “What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul.” There have been a lot of issues important to evangelicals this year from the naming Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or the Johnson amendment or Roy Moore’s candidacy, or Joel Osteen in Houston not opening Lakewood Church to victims of Hurricane Harvey that a painting a picture of evangelicals as a key of President Trump’s base.
And I wonder at what point a reckoning comes, if any, where evangelical Christians say, we may be getting what we want in Congress, but is God pleased with our sacrifice? Is this who we want to be as a community of Americans whose primary purpose is to make more Christians. Is this who we are?
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From Jim Reisner, former pastor of Westminster Pres in Albany, now in Maryland:
Has the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel the teachable moment for the church to make the distinction between Christians and Dispensationalists; between the followers of Jesus, and the followers of John Nelson Darby; between those who take the lessons of Jesus seriously, and those who dismiss what Jesus said as moral lessons intended for another era than our own?
And in this season of Advent, can we make a distinction between Christians who are waiting for Jesus to enter into the world and Darbyists who are waiting for him to destroy it?
For my non-religious friends, I want to let you know that we Christians aren’t all [guano] crazy.
