Cizik Backers Push for a Like-Minded Replacement at the National Association of Evangelicals
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country.
Reacting to Richard Cizik's resignation last week as chief lobbyist of the National Association of Evangelicals over comments he made that were supportive of gay civil unions, a coalition of roughly 60 evangelical leaders (mostly of the non-Christian right variety) has written to NAE President Leith Anderson pushing for a Cizik-like successor to 28-year NAE veteran. Someone who's not beholden to the Christian right, in other words, and who embraces more progressive causes like combating global warming. Full letter is here. Here's a Q&A with one of the letter's key drafters, David Gushee, a college professor and prominent activist in the progressive evangelical community. Excerpts:
This letter didn't protest Cizik's resignation, though I'm guessing many of its signatories wanted to:
We decided to go for a consensus approach. We wanted to accomplish two things. First, to affirm Richard Cizik as a human being and as a Christian brother because we felt his reputation had been damaged and he wasn't able to speak on his own behalf. The second goal was to come in behind the statements we were hearing from [NAE] President Leith Anderson that they are not going to abandon the broader agenda, the environmental issue and other issues. That they weren't going to pull back to the Christian right agenda. We wanted to affirm that.
How much pressure is there on the National Association of Evangelicals from the Christian right to replace Cizik with someone more ideologically aligned with its agenda?
I'm sure those pressures are there. I think Leith and the executive committee are going to take their time and let the furor over this die down. I personally think they need to find somebody who can promote all seven of the policy commitments in the NAE's Health of Our Nation statement. There's one on sanctity of life and one on climate change and one on poverty. There are always pressures from the right that the two fundamental issues of our time should be abortion and homosexuality. I think there will be pressure to hire somebody to make those the top priority.
I can tell you from some feedback that if the NAE makes the mistake of rolling back to the classic Christian right agenda, they would lose support of a lot of people who are currently happy to be working with them.
Cizik hasn't been talking to the press. Have you been in touch with him?
Yes.
How's he doing?
I don't want to speak for him, but the whole thing happened rather suddenly. A 28-year career came to an abrupt end with no time [for him] to develop a plan to do something different. That's a tough situation for anyone to be in. I'm concerned for him, and I'm praying for him. But it's Christmas time and he's unemployed, which is the situation for a lot of people right now.
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Cizik
I think they dhould hire a muslim.
Let The Episcopal Church and its full-blown theological crisis...
...be a cautionary tale to those evangelical leaders who have written NAE President Anderson to push for a like-minded replacement to Mr. Cizik. Their distinguishing of themselves from the 'Christian right' has a real naivete to it, when considering the current theological and moral crisis faced in TEC, a microcosm of what is beginning to come to sour fruition all over the United States.
Often I think those evangelical Christians who have not experienced directly the furor and terror (and I do not speak lightly -- it is tyranny!) of the Left's agenda in U.S. Episcopalianism are very naive about the consequences of supporting it and its stands. There are many Episcopalians who stand for the historic Christian faith and have a high view of Holy Scripture and at the same time are extremely concerned about the environment, business ethics, and the worldwide AIDS crisis, among so many other things, yet have come to realize again (or for the first time) that concern for human life from conception on must always come first in tackling these related issues. Letting our guard down on it, with the spread of legal abortions, will never allow us to strive with God toward the full humanity and re-creation that He intends for us in our salvation and in Jesus Christ's Second Coming.
Having seen the ugly stances of the Episcopal Church and noting its disregard for human life in its official positions, those Episcopal/Anglican Christians with their very real and valid concerns about abortion and homosexual unions have seen again how important it is to 'Choose Life' and have much to offer in terms of a deeper discussion with these 60 evangelical leaders and their cohorts, who need to give up their language of opposing the 'Christian right' and instead work to offer an intelligent, coherent, integrated account of the Life-giving Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Correction
The NAE document "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Social Responsibility," to which Mr. Gushee refers, does not mention climate change or take any position on it. Instead, it calls for stewardship of creation. Mr. Cizik made hundreds of public statements that created the impression that the NAE backed his own view that global warming was one of the greatest moral issues of our day and that God would judge those who disagree, but in fact the NAE never took such a position--a point Leith Anderson confirmed in his comments on Cizik's resignation. The Barna Research Group released a poll in September showing that evangelicals generally rejected Cizik's views and believed instead that climate change is largely natural, cyclical, and not primarily manmade, and that efforts to fight global warming could hurt the poor by slowing economic development. Cizik was, in other words, as out of step with the NAE and evangelicals as a whole on global warming as he was on same-sex unions.
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