The Reverend Double Standard by Gary DeMar

From http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/11-02-06.asp


The Reverend Double Standard by Gary DeMar

11/2/2006


Barry W. Lynn is an ordained United Church of Christ Minister and an attorney. Since 1992, Mr. Lynn has been the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He has been a constant vocal critic of conservative Christians bringing their understanding of the Bible on moral issues into the realm of politics. American Vision invited Mr. Lynn to debate Herb Titus at its 2007 Worldview conference to be held in Asheville, North Carolina. We were told that he would be busy promoting his new book Piety and Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom that has just been published, so he would not have the time for the event. Considering some of what he has written, it would have been a lively debate. Maybe in 2008.
I noticed something curious about the cover. The book's not just by “Barry W. Lynn”; it’s by “The Reverend Barry W. Lynn.” All this talk about mixing religion and politics is a bad thing if you are on the right of the political spectrum, but it’s OK if you are on the left side. The Rev. Al Sharpton made similar comments on October 31, 2006 in Indianapolis:
We have been inundated in the faith community with bedroom sexual morality issues and not dealing with the broader moral issues of poverty, of injustice and of health care. We can no longer be misused by some in the Christian right that will not deal with the broader issue of injustice and fairness and inequity in our society.1

He also criticized the Christian right for focusing too narrowly on abortion and not enough on issues of “justice.” I suppose killing black pre-born babies is not a justice issue. He should take a look at the following statistics taken from the www.blackgenocide.com website:
Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Blacks were lynched in the U.S. That number is surpassed in less than 3 days by abortion.
1,452 African-American children are killed each day by the heinous act of abortion.
3 out of 5 pregnant African-American women will abort their child.Since 1973 there has been over 13 million Black children killed and their precious mothers victimized by the U. S. abortion industry.

With 1/3 of all abortions performed on Black women, the abortion industry has received over 4,000,000,000 (yes, billion) dollars from the Black community.
Instead of criticizing the Christian Right’s “preoccupation” in dealing with homosexual marriage, Rev. Sharpton should look to fix the high illegitimacy rate among blacks. In 2002, “68.0 percent of the black women who had babies were unmarried, down from 68.4 percent in 2001. The peak was 70.4 percent in 1994.”2 He might want to say something about the number of single (mostly female) heads of household in the black community. If he’s all for homosexuals having the right to marry, then why doesn’t he go into the black community and preach on the sanctity of marriage and its practical benefits to his own people? Again, it’s perfectly legitimate for a liberal clergyman to mix his brand of religion with politics, but conservatives must take a political back seat and leave the driving to those who don’t have a fixed moral center.


1. Quoted in Ken Kusmer, “Rev. Sharpton Faults the Christian Right” (October 31, 2006): www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8L3UO700.html


2. Steve Sailer, “ Black Illegitimacy Rate Declines” (June 27, 2003):
www.isteve.com/2003_Black_Illegitimacy_Rate_Declines.htm
Gary DeMar is president of American Vision and the author of more than 20 books. His latest is Myths, Lies, and Half Truths.