Truth is a Moral Value Too
In February of 2008, while attending the birthday party of a couple from our church, a huddle of middle-aged men discussed how to defeat Barack Obama. One man spoke up: while marking himself personally as racially impartial, he urged that the GOP get out the vote of every “redneck and KKK member.”
Religious conservatives should fear Obama’s agenda. But our religion also obliges us to accept certain limits on our advocacy. We should not stir racial tension. And we must accept that persuasion is most effective and enduring when it is true.
The emails that circulated during the 2008 election, claiming that Senator Obama was a Muslim with close association to domestic radicals proved for some religious conservatives that half-truths continued to hold sway. The ends justified the means. Obama should be stopped at all costs, right?
As an ally in the wider-movement of American conservatism, religious conservatives are at a point of maturation. Awaiting a long-needed growth spurt, conservatives have rallied around the healthcare discussion as a catalyst to the movement’s momentum.
But religious conservatives must lay claim to a renewed sense of principled engagement, not fiery rhetoric that fills up email accounts and heats up the conversation around the coffee pot at one’s local church. Stop talking of “death panels,” or “killing Grandma” and return to principled debate representing the same concerns of the past: liberty and rights, not baseless rhetoric.