I keep plugging Fred Clark’s blog, Slacktivist, because he’s a really decent guy, and in these times of religious right triumphalism this nation needs more voices like his.  Had there been more Baptists like him in my life growing up, I might still regard myself as one.

He has a blog up today about the Ted Haggard affair that you really should read.  It’s eminently typical of Fred, and why I am so sad some days, that there isn’t more plain old decency in the public discourse like this anymore…

Haggard has waged this political battle against homosexuality while living a lie. That requires two, related responses. The first is on a political level. Haggard and his allies have been fighting a political fight — they have been trying to wield power to force others to comply with their wishes. And it’s perfectly legitimate to respond to power with power…

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But the second response — which I can’t ignore — has to do with Ted Haggard the person who is, among other things, my "brother in Christ." There’s a script for how this will play out in the evangelical community — a script written out on that very same NAE page cited above:

… homosexuality [is] a sin that, if persisted in, brings grave consequences in this life and excludes one from the Kingdom of God.

Individual Christians, ministers, and congregations should compassionately proclaim the Good News of forgiveness and encourage those involved in homo­sexual practices to cease those practices, accept forgiveness, and pray for deliverance as nothing is impossible with God. Further, we should accept them into fellowship upon confession of faith and repentance, as we would any other forgiven sinner.

All that language — forgiveness, deliverance, confession, repentance — really means here only that Haggard needs to go back to living a lie. If he agrees to live that lie, and with clenched teeth to continue proclaiming that others must join in living that lie, then Haggard will be "accepted" back "into fellowship."

Haggard is now seeking "spiritual advice and guidance," and there are tens of thousands of Very Nice Christian people praying for him. But his spiritual guides and advisors are all going to tell him to follow that script. Those people praying for him are all praying for him to follow that script. And that script is evil. That script is a lie.

For Christ’s sake, enough with the lies. The last thing Haggard needs is to be "accepted" into a fellowship that cannot accept who he really is. Both he and that fellowship have just been given an opportunity to abandon lies. I’m praying that they will recognize that opportunity and take it.

Go read the whole thing.  I ping Fred’s blog often.  You should too.  At the end of her novel about the life of the poet Simonides, The Praise Singer, Mary Renault writes, "In all men evil is sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men."  It’s a moral roadsign we can all try to keep in view, regardless of our spiritual or political beliefs.  And it is the touchstone by which you can see, clearly, what distinguishes the militant religiosity of the right.  This country desperately needs more people like Fred in the public discourse, who keep doggedly trying to rouse within others, their better nature. 

It is the tragedy of these times, not only for the Christian faith in America, but also the American Dream, which once upon a time offered the promise of religious freedom to the oppressed people of the world, that the arousal of ugly passions that turn neighbor against neighbor has become nearly synonymous with Christian politics in America.  And the religious right is not completely to blame for it either.  Secular and cynical politicians, republicans largely, have been using the fierce hatreds of that one strain of American Christianity as a crowbar to break this nation into ever smaller and smaller warring factions, the better to win elections.  And they’re supported in that, by secular and cynical big businesses, who don’t give a good goddamn about religion, but about keeping big business friendly republicans in power.

Regardless of our spiritual beliefs, simply as American citizens, we all have a stake in making sure other Christian voices can be heard too.  We can demand that our news media not routinely accept the pronouncements of the Dobsons, the Falwells, and the Robertsons, as "the Christian point of view".  We can demand that whenever religion is brought into the public discourse, that the religious right is not given a free pass to define Christianity in the popular culture.  Every one of us, whether we ourselves are Christian or not, have a stake in how broadly the Christian experience is represented in the media.  Because the voices of peace and reconciliation must not be shut out of the conversation.  Because a house divided against itself cannot stand.