Tooley: Ambitious Pastor Took ‘Cheap Shots’ at Religious Right

on April 3, 2013
Reverend Luis Leon and President George Bush
The normally restrained Rev. Luis Leon, seen here with President Bush, adopted a divisive tone in his Easter Sunday sermon. (Photo credit: Color Lines)

By Charlie Butts and Jody

[Editors note: This article originally appeared on the Instant Analysis website, quoting an interview with Mark Tooley.]

The Episcopal priest who brought politics to the pulpit on Easter Sunday is being accused of taking “cheap shots” at conservative Christians in a Washington, DC, venue while the First Family was in attendance.

St. John’s Episcopal Church – located across from the White House – is often referred to as the “church of the presidents” because for almost 200 years presidents have attended the church on occasion. That includes President Barack Obama and his family for Easter services this past Sunday.

The priest at St. John’s, Luis Leon, has preached there for 18 years and, according to reports, has attempted to remain non-partisan. In fact, Leon spoke at George W. Bush’s inauguration in 2005 and Barack Obama’s in January. But in his Easter sermon this week, Leon delivered a scathing attack on conservative Christians in a criticism of those who call for a return to “the good old days.”

“It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back … for blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet, and for immigrants to be back on their side of the border,” he said during his sermon.

In an interview with The Christian Post, Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD) said Leon delivered “cheap shots” during a political message. “It’s sad when clergy egregiously politicize worship,” he added.

Tooley tells American Family News the priest was trying to portray the religious right as “racist and chauvinist and bigoted” – and that his message was inappropriate because the focus of Easter is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

“[He] made it centrally a political message – and it’s sad on several different fronts,” says the IRD president. “But it means in essence at least under this particular priest, that that church cannot be a ‘church of the presidents’ but it can only be a church for liberal presidents.”

Tooley says Leon has aligned himself with the very liberal theological and political trends in the Episcopal Church – a move he says “has had a disastrous impact in reducing membership and overall spiritual and cultural influence” of the denomination.

Doesn’t Implicate the President

While many conservatives have taken the opportunity to criticize the president for Leon’s remarks, a respected Fox News political commentator says it should all be laid on the pastor – not on the president.

“The guy [Leon] knew that the press would be there. This was a way for an ambitious cleric to make himself heard and to make news,” said Charles Krauthammer. “But I would give the president a pass on this. This is not like Jeremiah Wright, in whose church he sat for 20 years, who was his mentor, who married him.”

And like Tooley, Krauthammer sees in Leon’s sermon the downward spiral of the Episcopal Church as it reflects more and more a liberal theology.

“The Episcopal Church, it used to be said of it a generation ago it was the establishment at prayer. And now, it’s the American left at prayer,” added the Fox News commentator. “And I think that’s one of the reasons why it and the other mainline denominations are in such decline. Because if you want a message like what Reverend Leon delivered, you go to a Democratic Party meeting or a pro-choice rally – you don’t go to church.”

On Monday, when asked about Luis Leon’s remarks, White House press secretary Jay Carney declined comment. Krauthammer believes Carney “has every right to stay away from this” because it does not “implicate” the president in any way.

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  1. Comment by Marco Bell on April 3, 2013 at 4:05 pm

    What was so bad about what Luis Leon said? He lamented that the “Captains of the Religious Right are always calling us back, back, back…[Blacks, back to the back of the bus…Women back to the kitchen…Gays, back into the closet…etc..”]

    These items he mentioned are nearly front and center on the Republican agenda, so he spoke more closely to the truth, and I guess that upsets some people. Granted Easter Sunday worship should center around Christ’s resurrection, but I also think it’s important to remind congregants that society as a whole needs to move forward. And I believe the Religious Right tend to preach regressive-ness.

    St. Johns Church isn’t just for Liberal Presidents. It must have been good enough for George W. Bush. And to quote Bush’s English grammar… If you want better than GOOD, you want GOODER! (Those were words he used during one of his press conferences regarding Mexican Immigrants). Let’s all thank God that W. is finally out of office!!!

  2. Comment by Paul Zesewitz on April 3, 2013 at 4:55 pm

    I could go on for hours about what drives me crazy about the Captains of the Religious Left! I could actually write a novel. But I’ll just talk about the one issue with them that takes the cake for me: the apparently careless way they interpret the Bible. Since the 1870’s the Episcopalians, along with most other Protestant Churches, have been what were then called ‘Higher Critics’ of the Bible, meaning they question the very authority of the Bible as God’s written word (which is, I suppose, why they support the ordination of gays and gay marriage). They like to tell you stuff like ‘well, half the book of Isaiah wasn’t really written by the prophet Isaiah himself’. What matters is not who wrote the book or who didn’t, but what it says! They forget that when all is said and done, it was written by the Holy Spirit!
    I used to respect liberal ministers. I thought they were nice, kindhearted people, until Easter Sunday. I guess the idea of liberals and conservatives either sitting side by side in the pews, or sitting at the same table of fellowship calmly talking over their differences over a nice, warm cup of coffee, just doesn’t sit too well with Leon. What a shame. Something tells me he wouldn’t have gotten over so easily blasting conservative Christians if his old pal George W. Bush, who read the Bible regularly during his presidency, was in attendance on Sunday.

  3. Comment by skotiad on April 3, 2013 at 8:15 pm

    I wish it were true that this Rev Leon was some kind of exception to your image of the kindhearted liberal, but that is not the case. I worked for one of the UMethodists’ national agencies for several years and can say plainly that the bigwigs in liberal denominations HATE evangelicals. In fact, the staffers where I worked would not even refer to their enemies as “evangelicals” but as “fundamentalists,” since that name fit their stereotype of uneducated knuckle-draggers. (They used several epithets which I will not repeat here.) Most of the staffers were relatively conservative in terms of their own lifestyle, yet instead of reacting to the coarsening of the culture, the general decline in morality, the threat of terrorism, they saw the real enemies of society as those horrid “fundamentalists.” If you engaged in conversation with a liberal pastor and referred to Muslims by such derisive names as “ragheads” or “camel jockeys,” he would have a Politically Correct multi-culti hissyfit, but if you made disparaging remarks about the Religious Right, you could get him going for an hour and it would never cross his mind that it might be un-Christian to talk that way. I’ve seen church websites where the pastors make statements like “My pastimes include running, woodwork, and doing anything that upsets the Religious Right,” and the sermons available online frequently bash evangelicals. Putting it simply, the religious left follows the secular culture every step of the way, and right now the secular culture sees one group of people that it can bash and get away with it, and that group is orthodox Christians. So don’t be misled by the left’s “compassion” act, because compassionate people don’t act that work toward people with different opinions. Being compassionate or being Christian or pleasing God is not the motivation here, they see that the unbelievers have won the culture wars and they intend to be on the winning side.

  4. Comment by Ramon Estevez on April 3, 2013 at 7:24 pm

    No, what Leon said was NOT anywhere near the truth, in fact, he is a blatant liar, and that’s why it “upsets people” – lying tends to do that. You and he are free to think anything you like about people who don’t view the world exactly as you do, but for a clergyman to stand in the pulpit on Easter Sunday and lie about the Religious Right – pretty nasty behavior for any human being, especially one who puts “Reverend” in front of his name. I think I know a lot more Republicans and conservative Christians than you do, and I mean personally, not just by what you and your liberal buddies “heard” about conservatives, and I don’t know ANY who want blacks to sit at the back of the bus, and incidentally, I’m not a WASP myself, and my family, from Peru, has done extremely well in this country, which I don’t consider “racist” at all. You put on this glad-handed act, then say thing that are truly offensive, slandering a rather large group of your fellow Americans. Why don’t you stick to the facts instead of just parrotting the liberals’ stereotypes about conservatives? Does it make you feel righteous and important to attack this straw man, who doesn’t even exist in the real world? If you want to hate Christians over the marriage issue, that’s cool, but it’s hardly “regressive” to maintain something that has existed for several thousand years. Even the ancient Greeks and Romans with their notorious immorality weren’t stupid enough to think that two women or two men could constitute a marriage.

    If your goal in these slanderous comments is to make evangelicals feel even more attached to our faith, you are doing a superb job. When I hear liberals repeat one slander after another, with no basis in reality, I don’t want to have anything to do with such people who have no scruples about lying to make their opponents look bad. Very ironic that it is conservatives who always get labeled as “hypocrites,” but the “tolerant” and “compassionate” crowd set the bar pretty high for their hypocrisy.

    Btw, I don’t know any evangelical pastor who would choose Easter Sunday to bash liberals from the pulpit, but obviously the liberal side isn’t quite so fussy. Rev Leon got his 15 minutes of fame, too bad he had to engage in hate speech to do it.

  5. Comment by Paul Zesewitz on April 4, 2013 at 3:36 am

    Well Skotiad I just have to laugh every time I read of the decline of the liberal church! Pretty soon they won’t have anyone to bash cause all the conservatives will have gone to their own type of church. As far as the term ‘fundamentalist’ is concerned, I thought it only applied to radical Islam and no longer to Christians, I’m surprised it’s still being used. But then again, maybe I’m not surprised. Liberal wackos like Leon don’t know the difference between a ‘fundamentalist’ and a ‘conservative’. A fundamentalist is one who believes in a set of prescribed doctrines, while a conservative is one who believes in the Bible as the written Word of God and Jesus Christ as his/ her Savior and Lord because the Bible tells them to! I guess the so-called Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy of the early 1900’s never really went away.

  6. Comment by Marco Bell on April 4, 2013 at 10:24 am

    Paul Zesewitz writes… “A fundamentalist is one who believes in a set of prescribed doctrines, while a conservative is one who believes in the Bible as the written Word of God and Jesus Christ as his/ her Savior and Lord because the Bible tells them to!

    I don’t see any difference between these two descriptions.
    Isn’t the Bible a collection of letters from a variety of Disciples and Scholars, who account for the Life of Jesus, and whose interpretation of God’s word, that was published for purpose of daily guidance for those who wish to believe, ie: Christians, and those yet to become Christian?

    And the Koran also being a collection of texts for the same purpose for it’s followers. These mutually archaic texts provide enormous enlightenment to people all over the world. It is my belief that followers of each, hold Truth to be the same. Only those fringe elements of both Religions seem to be considered “Fundamentalist”.

    Throughout President Bush’s terms many Americans were encouraged to fear, and even hate the Islamic religion. This was propaganda from the Religious Right, perpetuated by the Neo-Con Militarists that stood to profit from such oppositional attitudes. Sadly, there are still some folks who continue to endorse this prejudicial view. However, I’m NOT implying that anyone in this thread does.

    I truly believe that Jesus would want us ALL to find ways to come together for the benefit of Humanity’s perpetuation. Harmonious cohabitation if you will?

    Peace be upon you,
    Marco Bell

  7. Comment by skotiad on April 5, 2013 at 6:47 am

    When you walk through an airport holding your shoes, who do you blame for the situation? Bush? Neo-Cons? The Religious Right? I have read no stories about Bush, Neo-Cons, or Christians carrying bombs in their underwear, but perhaps you have other news sources, the same sources tjhat informed you that “throughout Bush’s terms many Americans were encouraged to fear, and even hate the Islamic religion.” Any evidence of that, sport? No. That’s propaganda crapola from the Left. You can’t cite one single case of any Christian pastor preaching hatred of Muslims – not one. Write yourself a reality check once in awhile, it’s very refreshing to deal with facts instead of figments.

    You can gush about “harmonious cohabitation” till you turn purple, it has no effect on the people who have rather openly declared war on America. The Muslim terrorisits do not share your affection for “humanity’s perpetuation.” It is cowardly to cave in to terrorism. You don’t “perpetuate humanity” by waving the white flag.

  8. Comment by Marco Bell on April 5, 2013 at 9:23 am

    No one is surrendering here.
    But we as a nation do need to tame our ambitions for conquest, at least for laying claim to another (sovereign) country’s natural resources.

    We will for generations, rue the day that Bush and Cheney wielded power.
    You don’t have to look very far to see the oppressive footprint of the Imperial leverage of the United States Military. Bases in over 126 locations worldwide. Seems like a new colonial era to most Americans with a heart.

    I have a dream, and that is that Bush and Cheney will face the Hague one day in my lifetime. Hey, justice demands to be served…
    and a guy can dream, can’t he?

  9. Comment by skotiad on April 5, 2013 at 6:07 pm

    Dream all you want, I’m sure Bush and Cheney couldn’t care less what some liberal pontificating know-it-all thinks about them. As a Christian, I believe in much fairer Judge than those bozos in the so-called World Court. I voted for Bush twice, not because I thought he was the Messiah (I leave the political Messiah thing to liberals, since they need a god), but because Gore is a megalomaniacal fool, and Kerry a close second. So I don’t “rue the day that Bush and Cheney wielded power.” They’ve been gone several years now, guess you didn’t notice, but it appears your worldview needs to include one or two Satans (or three, I guess, if you throw in Reagan, who’s dead, but you sure keep his memory alive). Odd theology, all the demons are Americans, all foreigners either angels or martyrs. As a Christian, I believe all human beings are sinners, but for liberals, only Americans are. So why do you live here?

    As far as “laying claim to another country’s natural resources,” here’s a news flash: the OPEC countryies don’t do diddly to develop their own resources. They have the oil in the ground, but no infrastructure, no technology, nothing. Ever seen a product labeled “Made in Saudi Arabia”? These medieval thugocracies export NOTHING, can’t even export their own oil without American or European help. They only export terrorism, so pardon me if I don’t get all weepy over those poor “exploited” rogue states, who don’t exactly pass on their oil wealth to most of their citizens. Their oil doesn’t do anyone a lot of good sitting in the ground, does it?

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