Editors' note: this piece is co-authored by Ken Klukowski
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to follow President Obama’s lead in claiming that God directs her lawmaking, invoking the Bible as her legislative roadmap. If a conservative Republican did this, it would be the top of the news.
Last week, Pelosi made a rambling, redundant, somewhat incoherent monologue in which she claimed that “The Word” directed her. She clarified that meant “The Word Made Flesh”—the incarnate Deity—Jesus Christ. She doesn’t leave us to surmise, elaborating that she makes policy decisions, “in keeping with the values of Jesus.”
However, the only place to learn about “The Word” Jesus is to read “The Word,” the Bible. As two Christians who read the Bible, we’re not sure where in its pages Nancy Pelosi found the inspiration for her top legislative priorities. Since the Bible is the sacred text of the Christian faith, and the exclusive record of the teachings and values of Jesus, where else could she be enlightened to the values of Jesus?
We don’t recall ever reading, “Thou shalt require every person to buy health insurance” or “Thou shalt oppose charter schools and home-schooling” in the Bible. We’d have to rename the Ten Commandments the Twelve Commandments instead. How do those Pelosi priorities embody the “values of Jesus?”
Nor do we remember being taught, “And Peter spoke unto them, saying, ‘The Lord commands that you shall pass a cap-and-trade tax which shall tax all the people, that they may inherit a cooler planet.” (Given that the science doesn’t support man-made global warming, at least this last possibility would explain where Speaker Pelosi gets her evidence for cap-and-trade. She’s claiming divine revelation.)
We can’t imagine what Bible Speaker Pelosi is reading. The Bible does not sanction gay marriage or abortion. It does not command heavy taxes on employers and professionals to pay for government handouts.
Instead, the Bible speaks of God and man, the relationship between the two and how that relationship can be restored. It reveals the moral character of God, the divine plan for the ages, and explains the purpose and duties of man.
From everything we see from her, we are firmly convinced that none of those biblical instructions or admonitions has any impact on Pelosi’s official activities.
This reminds us of the 2008 election season, where then-Senator Barack Obama claimed that Christian Right leaders had “hijacked” Christianity. Hijacked? How dare any politician claim that a group of clergymen upholding the traditional beliefs of the Christian faith is “hijacking.”
Yet after winning the White House, President Obama showed the audacity to claim a biblical mandate for his agenda. On August 19, 2009, the president held a conference call with Christian clergy, urging them to endorse his healthcare legislation as a moral issue, and claiming that their Christian duty to care for their brother obligated them to support him. Now that is what hijacking Christianity looks like.
In the end, perhaps President Obama and Speaker Pelosi read the Bible the same way they read the Constitution. They believe in rights to abortion and government-run healthcare, despite the fact that the Constitution nowhere mentions such rights, but they oppose the idea that the Second Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment make gun bans like the D.C. gun ban or the Chicago gun unconstitutional, despite the fact that the Constitution plainly declares it.
Obama and Pelosi likewise do not take at face value the Bible’s words on countless moral issues or divine truths. They claim biblical imperatives that are not found in the text, and ignore words that are spelled out in black and white.
If a Republican politician did this, there would be an outrage. How dare he! Doesn’t he know the Constitution declares the separation of church and state? (Words, by the way, which never appear in the Constitution.)
But this is the hypocrisy of the modern liberal culture. Countless Christians who go about their 2 Timothy 3:16 duty of regarding the Bible as God-breathed, and useful for teaching and correcting are mocked and ridiculed. These leftist elites recoil in horror if you cite to a specific passage of Scripture as guiding your decisions, while claiming that the Bible endorses a far-left political agenda is not considered worth mentioning on the air.
In our #1-bestselling book, The Blueprint, we explain how this is part of President Obama’s design to fundamentally transform this country. Christians need to rise up and contend for their faith. In the words of Titus 1:9, we must, “hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught,” so that we may, “encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it.”
These are challenging times in which we live, but Providence has placed us in a country where we have the right and ability to speak out. We must not stand silently by as Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama claim that we have hijacked Christianity, while in fact that is exactly what they are doing right before our eyes.
We must stop President Obama’s blueprint to turn America into a radical secular nation.
Ken Blackwell is a senior fellow with the Family Research Council, where Ken Klukowski works as special counsel. They are the authors of the national bestseller The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency.
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