LaHaye's Politics

Bruce Gourley had a funny and thought-provoking column at Ethics Daily yesterday. Entitled "Educating Tim LaHaye," it responded to a letter to the editor that LaHaye wrote in the USA Today. Here are a few highlights:

Dear Rev. LaHaye,

You may not be aware that someone wrote a fictional letter to the editor to the USA TODAY and signed your name to it. I'm sure you would be concerned that someone would dare impersonate you, so I'm just giving you a heads up.

... Whoever the author of the editorial, he has a very imaginative mind. I'm sure you will be outraged to know that he accused you of "never" urging "evangelicals to vote for the GOP." After all, as recently as November 2007 the real Tim LaHaye and his wife (on behalf of Mrs. LaHaye's Concerned Women for America), declaring that certain Democratic political forces threatened our society in a similar manner to what Hitler did in Germany, invited their conservative Republican Christian friends to political conferences in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina featuring one candidate: Republican Mike Huckabee. And in the 2000 election cycle, the real Tim LaHaye and his wife personally funded only Republican candidates.

Obviously, the person impersonating you does not know that in 1980 the real Tim LaHaye helped found the Moral Majority (a Republican advocacy organization that formed for the express purpose of defeating then-Democratic president, and Southern Baptist, Jimmy Carter; the Moral Majority lived on for several decades, advocating for Republicans)

... Insiders also know that the real Tim LaHaye has no use for Democrats at any level. Some of your critics point to your firing of the principal of the private school you founded. When the man disagreed with your Republican views, and you discovered he was a registered Democrat, he had to go, of course. And in 1985 you told your followers to pray that God would ensure "the removal (by any means God sees fit) of at least three" Democratic Supreme Court justices during Ronald Reagan's presidency.

... Well, I better stop here before you get really mad. I mean, I'd be angry too if, at your age, someone impersonating me made such ridiculous claims about me that sullied my hard-fought accomplishments and called into question my visionary political legacy. In fact, you may even want to write a letter to the editor of USA TODAY in order to set the record straight.

This piece does a great job of pointing out the blatant lie that LaHaye offered in his letter and should render useless his critique of David Gushee's column (which I mentioned in an earlier post). Evangelicals cannot be confined in LaHaye's political box because the politics of God transcends partisan lines. We are called to prophetically challenge all in political power, rather than bow to one side. It sadly seems that with LaHaye's politics, the biblical evangelical focus on Jesus has been left behind.