Did Values Voters Have a Prayer This Year?

[underpants]

a Christian conservationist gets real close to connected the dots of how she is being taken for granted

Liza Field is a Christian conservationist and teacher in Wytheville.
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http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/opinion/article/LIZAFIELDSOP_20081226-201115/162654/

We started out last winter, each Thursday at noon. By summer, it was every noonday. October was solid, month-long prayer.

By then I was tuckered out. Though we'd started during primary season, asking God "to raise up righteous leaders," Dr. Jim Dobson said we were now praying only for particular candidates.

"Of course, it's always risky to politicize your prayer life," Dobson admitted to Sarah Palin, an October "Focus on the Family" guest. But he apparently didn't mind risking his prayer life--or ours.
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Some Huckabee supporters connected the dots. Huckabee's low-budget campaign couldn't afford to pay business consultant Ralph Reed, whose client-promoting instructions Dobson and Robertson have followed for years.

Rudy Giuliani had linked up with Reed, however. So Robertson announced, last November, his baffling endorsement of this social liberal as the "values candidate." When Giuliani dropped out, Christians were told to support another perplexing, Reed-backed "values candidate" -- Mitt Romney -- who surprised the media by delivering Regent University's commencement address in May.
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Pat Robertson also jumped aboard, warning that a nuclear Armageddon might follow Election Day. Whether values voters should be for Armageddon or against it was unclear, but plainly it should get us to the polls.

So it was a relief when Sarah Palin assured Dobson, in their October interview, that she knew that "on Nov. 4, the right thing would be done for this country."

Palin's interesting comment provided a break from all the doomsday predictions, and seemed to leave room for God to influence the outcome, rather than Dr. Dobson. After all, countless Christians around the world were praying for Obama. Would God ignore them and hear only the political right?
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PASTOR JOHN Hagee preached that high gas prices were caused by "eco-terrorists" who opposed ANWR oil-drilling. Chuck Colson, in his program "BreakPoint," said that environmentalists were a cult. Because they asked human beings to make sacrifices, they were practicing "human sacrifice."

"For what will it profit us if we save the whole world and lose our souls?" asked a Jerry Falwell ad, in early 2007, rearranging Jesus' words to fit his vast campaign against climate change action.

Why would Falwell pick greenhouse-gas reduction as a "sin" worthy of so many advertising dollars?
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I doubt the political shift will take values voters off the market, whether for big energy or other special interests. Certain broadcasters will continue preaching that God is an American oilman who favors drilling in ANWR.

But the end of 2008 provided Christians a welcome end to what some called our "Prey-for-the-Election" role. Maybe those prayers can remain freed-up, for a while, to include larger values -- like saving the life of a world that "God so loved."

[Warpy]

1. Starting WWIII in an attempt to knock Jesus off his heavenly throne

might have been a prime Christian value to old men like Dobson and their young protegé Palin, but it just didn't resonate with voters who are trying to pay their mortgages while keeping the kids off heroin.

Simply put, they've chosen the wrong values to push for years, and no year was that as starkly apparent than 2008.

[Crunchy Frog]

2. I have values, and I vote them. I did very well this election year.

:shrug:

[noel711]

3. Ignorant doofus... she prayed for a righteous leader....

and God listened.... he sent Obama.

Ain't that a miracle?

[southernyankeebelle]

4. Oh Ya

The question Palin asked says it all. He will put the right people he wants in office. How wonderful that the religious right finally get their come upins.