James Dobson, Baptist Bloggers, Al Gore and "An Inconvenient Truth"

We went to see Al Gore’s new movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” yesterday. It's not at all what I was expecting. I thought it would be more like a Michael Moore movie, but it wasn’t. I almost hate to recommend seeing it because Al Gore does a disturbingly excellent job of explaining the ins and outs of Global Warming so well that anyone can understand what the issues are and why we should be concerned. (Anyone who sees this will not be able to make the excuse that they don't understand it any longer.)

My friend, GK, who also went to see the movie sent me an article this morning about the Baptists electing a new leaders who are a little less to the right than their previous leadership. The editorial by E.J. Dionne Jr. in the Washington Post, highlights a slow incremental movement by evangelicals away from the fringe right. For example, Rich Cizik, the new vice president for governmental affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals who is a self-described “Ronald Reagan movement conservative”, urged evangelicals to make environmental stewardship a central element of their political mission.

I think in light of seeing Al Gore’s movie would be a positive move that they are starting to think greenJames Dobson, and other prominent Christian leaders on the right however, are attacking Rich Cizik for his position on the environment. After seeing Al Gore’s movie, I think one has to really question how moral James Dobson is and whether he is merely trying to line his pockets with the money he continues to accumulate with his ultra-conservative mantra. After all this new “FEED THE RICH AND STARVE THE POOR neoconservative dogma is good for “bizz-ness.

Kudos to Baptist Bloggers who are making inroads into the “Good-old-boy” hierarchy of the Baptist church and causing them to modify their extreme positions. Dionne writes, “Over the past several years, an active network of Baptist bloggers has opened up discussion in the convention and given reformers and moderates avenues around what Parham called "the Baptist establishment papers.”

Let’s hope more Baptists go to see this movie.

(That is, unless they get raptured out of here before things heat up.)