The former chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), fired by the group in 2008 for his controversial comments favoring same-sex civil unions, spoke recently at Washington’s liberal National Cathedral.
Richard Cizik joined Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III to speak about “civility” with the theme “Identifying the Common Good: For Ourselves, For Others, and the Planet.” The opponent to that common good was identified as “old guard” traditional Christian conservatives whom Cizik accused of igniting metaphorical “roadside bombs” in the culture.
“Frankly, there is a roadside bomb on this road that the religious right and now the tea party is taking us,” Cizik warned. “And that roadside bomb is going to explode, because incivility always does.”
During his talk, the former NAE official expressed concern about how evangelicals were viewed in elite academic circles. He also conflated “old guard” leaders such as James Dobson with figures such as Terry Jones, the Gainesville, Florida Pentecostal Pastor who threatened to publically burn copies of the Quran in observance of the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. In doing so, he said “old” was not about age, but about attitude.
“I admire the evangelical movement, I consider myself still part of it — but I don’t admire the incivility,” Cizik said. “You have a pushback by the religious right against those of us who are more progressive.”
Cizik said a “public theology” of how to speak was needed in evangelicalism, and absent that, incivility was resulting – incivility that had consequences overseas, such as violence triggered by the Koran burning episode.
“You have these comments that in the global public square become roadside bombs that trip off and result today in the denigration — not just by millions of people worldwide of the evangelical faith — but by intellectuals, the academy, otherwise intelligent people in American who look at what these leaders are saying and say ‘if that’s evangelicalism, I want no part of it’ hence our movement for a new vision.”
Since departing NAE, Cizik has been a fellow at leftist billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Institute as well as Senior Fellow at liberal media mogul Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation. In early 2010 the Evangelical Presbyterian pastor formed the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good to espouse “a new vision of Evangelicalism” and focus upon climate change, alleged U.S. torture practices and nuclear disarmament.
“[Some leaders] want to define that community called ‘evangelical’ narrower and narrower,” Cizik alleged. “Instead of doing that, we’re doing the reverse – making the circle wider and making it a dotted line as opposed to a hard line.”
Speaking of his departure from the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), Cizik recalled his controversial interview on National Public Radio in which he addressed the presidential election, abortion, contraception, climate change and civil unions.
“The end result was that I had infuriated the right wing,” Cizik said, not noting that the criticism had been specific to his indicated acceptance of homosexual civil unions. “A host of leaders took to the airwaves and said I had to go.”
Cizik said the “right wing” went to the leadership of the NAE and so he was asked to resign.
“I don’t blame the NAE, I understand,” Cizik insisted. “But I do have an opinion that they capitulated to the right. Instead of standing up and saying ‘Richard is entitled to his personal views, he wasn’t suggesting that these were all the views of the NAE’ I made it clear they were not – but nonetheless that wasn’t sufficient, I had to go. So yes, I have experienced the rough edges of incivility, I was called all kinds of things.”
Despite his departure from the NAE, Cizik emerged confident that he was being vindicated by the purported views of younger evangelical Christians.
“The opinion data on my views — in other words supporting government funded contraception, supporting the idea of civil unions … that was the most provocative idea — those ideas are not out of the mainstream among younger evangelicals, in fact they are right in the middle of those younger evangelicals,” Cizik said. “This shift to new evangelicalism is incredibly important because it takes away the old battle lines between evangelicals and mainline Protestants.”
“To move America away from this divisive public square that we have today, requires an acknowledgement first of all that the culture wars are damaging,” Cizik said. “It has to begin with us. You have to have leadership assert this new civility.”
Asked about connections between evangelicals and the tea parties, Cizik was quick to criticize the nascent political movement, saying evangelicals associated with it due to identity politics.
“You could argue –and some people do – that it’s the deficits, it’s the stimulus bill, it’s Obamacare, it’s outsider versus insiders – and the tea party says ‘we’re the outsiders’ – au contraire, they’re not outsiders,” Cizik said. “The Tea Party is characterized by ‘oldsiders’ with a lot of money who are grasping at those evangelicals who they knew in the past and asking them to join them. And these evangelicals are willy-nilly joining in ways that are ultimately counterproductive, right? It’s identity politics, and identity politics denies experience, undermines authority and elevates ignorance.”
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