Thank you for recommending this book. It refocused me on what is truly important – my Savior’s good news.

No doubt, Ms. Welch came into her “investigation” as a person of the Cultural Left and the Democratic Party, and then goes right into the heart of the Religious Right, and for most people that is where things stop. What I do find interesting and, frankly, surprised is the fact that she really was able to experience at least some of the grace that should be found among believers, be they evangelicals or fundamentalists. We evangelicals often do not exhibit much grace to the outside world, and the fact that evangelicals often are associated with the Republican Party makes us even less appealing to much of American society today.

I grew up in the evangelical subculture (my father taught at Covenant College for many years, and I even remember attending a writing seminar by Phil Yancey when he was there), and when I was younger, the political divides were not as great. Many of our evangelical friends were Democrats (1950s and 60s and early 70s) and the various political movements of the evangelicals had not yet occurred, i.e. the foundation of Moral Majority.

From what I can tell, the move by the Democrats to try to codify much of the Sexual Revolution, along with the growing divides over abortion pretty much put the evangelicals in the Republican camp. As much as I hate this political development, I will say that Democrats now really want nothing to do with evangelicals and are quite happy to have them out of the party.

As a long-time observer of the evangelical scene, I believe that the foray into politics has been a disaster. While I can understand why Christians have become obsessed with the political scene, nonetheless we have to remember that in the words of economist Robert Higgs, politics ultimately is “the systematic organization of hatreds.”

http://blog.independent.org/2012/05/05/the-systematic-organization-of-hatreds/

I think it is important to remember that what Ms. Welch found unexpectedly attractive was the grace that believers demonstrated. That grace cannot be found in politics, as Higgs writes:

“Even a devout Christian has no small difficulty in following Christ’s admonition to “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” But when we live and act in the private realm, we can make our best attempt to love others or at least to tolerate them in peace, and we have many options for avoiding or running away from hateful people and situations; occasionally we may even be able to lead someone, or ourselves, to substitute love, or at least understanding, for hatred.

“In politics and government, however, the institutional makeup fosters hatred at every turn. Parties recruit followers by exploiting hatreds. Bureaucracies bulk up their power and budgets by artfully weaving hatreds into their mission statements and day-to-day procedures. Regulators take advantage of artificially heightened hatreds. Group identity is emphasized at every turn, and such tribal distinctions are tailor-made for the maintenance and increase of hatred among individual persons who might otherwise disregard the kinds of groupings that the politicians and their supporters emphasize ceaselessly.”

Your writings have truly been a great blessing to me always, and now this wonderful briefing about Gina Welch is truly blessed, I pray that may the church always be as loving, caring and welcoming as our Lord Jesus is always.

Also, reading Vol. II in William Gurnall’s book pg. 32 on the ‘shield of faith’, your friend Richard always comes to mind while i read this book….it is so good and it might answer a lot of his questions.

I have a new e-mail address, i hope you can delete the old one. Thanks.

On a completely unrelated matter, I remember you once said that you need to read 17 positive letters from fans to overcome the effects of one negative letter from a critic. I wonder if the ratio today is any different? I suspect it is.

Great question! The negative letters still sting, but I get enough kind comments from people like you that they don’t paralyze me as they used to.
Philip

I hope you would make a plan to visit Indonesia (which is the biggest Islam country in the world. ) and hold maybe like two days seminar about writing (or maybe about how to live like Jesus in the country that most of the people are Islam)
God bless you Phil!! 🙂