Jesus, the GOP, and ’08’s angry evangelicals

By Darrell Laurant

Published: September 13, 2008

What in God’s name is going on with this presidential election?

That’s what Cosette Conaway would like to know.

She’s the pastor at The Lighthouse, an independent, evangelical church on Fort Avenue, and she finds herself cringing at the turbulence being generated at the stormy junction of religion and politics.

“So many evangelicals seem like such angry people and so close-minded,” she said. “Is that really the image we want to project?

“In my mind, if we can’t get down on our knees and pray for God’s help for whoever wins this election, then there’s something wrong.”

Personally, I long ago decided that the supposed marriage of Jesus and the GOP is only a union of convenience. I became convinced of that in 1980, when evangelical Christians overwhelmingly rejected Jimmy Carter, who seemed to stand for most of the things they did.

OK, there was that Playboy interview. But still … .

“Why do Christians have to be Republicans?” Conaway wonders. “And where is all the anger coming from?”

Don’t misunderstand. She isn’t saying she wants her congregation all to be Democrats. She just wants the process to be civil.

And given her concern, she has responded in a classically American manner — by finding a T-shirt that expresses her views. The T-shirt says, “Please Forgive Steve.”

Huh?

“I like the fact that it’s going to make people ask questions,” Conaway said with a chuckle. “Like ‘Who’s Steve?’ And ‘Why does he need to be forgiven?’”

She explained this to me in an e-mail:

“According to research, Steve is the most common name of members in evangelical churches. The church has been responsible for causing quite a bit of hurt, harshness and even damage, not representing Jesus well at all. Someone put those two facts together and came up with a T-shirt emblazoned with the words ‘Please Forgive Steve.’ I bought one of the shirts to wear at Day in the Park.”

Her daughter took it a step further. She put the phrase on the church’s outdoor sign, an old-fashioned one with removable black letters, not a flashing light show.

“Now, I’ve got to follow through,” Cosette Conaway said. “If I change the sign, I’ll just leave people wondering.”

One of the interesting things about The Lighthouse is that its small (around 100) congregation is one of the most diverse in the area.

“I don’t mean to sound too mystical,” said Conaway, daughter of former pastor H.B. Conaway, “but my mother had a dream one night in which the membership of the church was half black and half white.

At the time, we were pretty much all white.

“We didn’t try consciously to make it happen, but her dream pretty much came true,”

Which, in this election, triggers a lot of discussion.

“It’s like the white evangelicals all seem to be Republicans and the black Evangelicals all seem to be Democrats, and both think the other side doesn’t get it,” Conaway said.

Last year, Conaway read the book “unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity, and Why It Matters” and found it disturbing.

“It’s a study,” she said, “that concludes, among other things, that young adults see the church as hypocritical, only interested in people if we can get them saved, anti-homosexual, sheltered, political and judgmental.

“How much of that is true isn’t as important as the fact that we’re giving them that impression. I say ‘we’ because I see our church as evangelical, and I believe that Jesus is my savior. So I include myself among those who need to be forgiven.”

The bottom line is, she finds the Christian ideal of love difficult to reconcile with the Rush Limbaughs of the world.

“Don’t blame the Gospel,” she said. “The problem is, people aren’t really following what it says.”

If you see her, ask her about it. That’s the whole idea.