My experience 25 years ago with the Southern Baptist Church (that was what I remember as the beginnings of the “uprsiign” of the biblicists; the movement in the Southern Baptist Convention to basically ovberthrow what many conservatives considered to be a “liberal” leadership. This group was headed by Paul Pressler, a southern judge who , together with a few choice fundamentalist theologians such as Paige Patterson, and with a campaign of “theological smear” tactics that I am now recollecting as I observe the same types of tactics being employed by the Republican party, in a more secularist sense (although there is also that very prevalent component of an “American religious piety” invoked, to appeal to the Religious Right supporters).

Many of the more moderate to liberal folks who left the Southern Baptist Connention to pursue its increasing irrelevance into personal piety over social justice, now reflect on how it was most likely the sense of condescension the conservatives felt coming to them from the denominational leaders that finally drove people like Pressler, Patterson, and Criswell to say “We’re not going to take it anymore” that motivated the takeover.

The same sort of polarization has now saturated the political landscape. And like the peronal and professional atrocities that were committed by the uprising leaders are now seeing a similar vindictive attitude being visted upon the “Democrats” by the Republicans and conservatives that felt humiliated by the 1992 defeat to Clinton.

Even though the 1979 stakes with the Southern Baptist Convention was mostly in the theological arena, and today’s battle is a political one, the stakes are even higher with our democracy, since so many livelihooods, economic and national security, and international relations are at stake. And today, in this presidential campaign, at stake is the battle to remove what I and many other Americans believe is the most corrupt presidential administration in history.

Also at stake is the reputation of the Church. The silence and even the complicity, even outright zealous support, of these Churches has done what will likely be unreparable damage to the concpt of the Church in the minds of many who receive what I still believe to be a God who calls out to all humans to answer a call to some purpose and role in playing a part in the workings of the Kingdom of God which is sovreign, always seeking justice, following a vision of a world where God’s will is done on earth as it is done in heaven. In other words, where life is lived and respected and valued as it should be, where all God’s children are helped to reach their true potential.