Christian Coalition in trouble

Their in-coming President Elect has decided to leave (before taking office). Read here.

His reason? According to the article he wanted to expand the agenda of the Coalition beyond abortion and gay marriage to (you might have guessed) poverty and the environment. I.e. in addition to not substitution for.

Christian Coalition is Pat Robertson's group. Robertson has been isolated for among other thing recently: saying Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans bc of their sin; the US should assassinate Hugo Chavez; and Ariel Sharon had a heart attack bc God was pissed he gave away the Gaza Strip.

The Moral Majority (Jerry Falwell's organization) is suffering right now. Ralph Reed, the golden boy of the movement in the 90s lost his bid for Lt. Gov of his homestate in the last election.

The National Evangelical Alliance within the last few weeks saw its Leader (Rev. Ted Haggard) accused of having ilicit sexual affairs plus drug use with a gay prostitue.

Not to mention the Republicans loss in the midterm elections.

In fact the only real hard core member of that crew left is Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. He is increasingly isolated and is himself very disappointed with the Republican party.

And now this. Yikes--bad year all around.

As I've said before I sense the evangelicals will return in cyclical fashion as per their history to a movement back towards personal conversion and social justice/mission and away from political involvement. [e.g. after the Scopes Monkey trial].

What evangelicals theologically have always known--in their best moments--is that political power corrupts and that humans are tempted by sin. Maybe they have forgotten their own wisdom for a bit--some anyway. Perhaps now a more honest humble recognition of needing to return to their core principles is in order.