-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a prelude to war! Christian Leaders Aren’t By Chuck Baldwin February 18, 2000 The "Washington Post" ran an interesting story earlier this week. In a nutshell, the article reported that conservative Christian activism has "gone cold." Where thousands of evangelicals and conservative Catholics had before rallied to the cause of the Republican Party, today they sit dormant and uninvolved. There is a very simple reason for this: Many Christian leaders have failed to provide the kind of principled leadership necessary for such activism to continue. Perhaps we were spoiled with the success of Ronald Reagan. Today’s Christian activists cut their teeth on the Reagan campaigns. The Carter years had left America weak and vulnerable. Thousands of clergymen and millions of Christians stood in the gap for principle and truth. Throwing aside a Republican Party full of stale and lifeless country club fat cats, millions of conservatives and hundreds of Christian leaders took a principled stand for faith, family and freedom. The result: two landslide presidential victories. Suddenly, Christian leaders were politically powerful. They were sought out by the media and by the political elite. Their names became household words. They brought Christian influence from the back street to Main Street. Cameras and microphones followed us wherever we went. We were somebody. Why? Because we won! Since we were now on the inside, we had the advantage of listening to well educated and intelligent experts tell us how to keep winning. We attended and conducted seminars and conferences on how to win. We learned how to organize. We learned how to take opinion polls. The first thing we learned was that winning is the most important thing. >From that moment on, winning was all that mattered. Winning was fun. Winning was exciting. Winning took us places. At all costs, therefore, we must win! The second thing we learned was that in order to win we must compromise. Compromise, we were told, was the only way to keep our influence and power. Besides, it was the smart thing to do. Imperceptibly, pragmatism replaced principle. The Waterloo for Christian leadership came in 1996 when it openly rejected the burgeoning candidacy of the principled conservative candidate, Pat Buchanan, for the known compromising candidate, Bob Dole. Voting for Dole was considered the smart thing to do, however. It was the pragmatic thing to do. Only Bob Dole could win, we were told. So, we threw Buchanan to the Dumpster. Something went wrong, though. Dole lost! More than Bob Dole lost, however. Christian leaders lost their principles and their courage. They had been effectively neutered. We were now part of the establishment. We acted like the establishment. We thought like the establishment. We compromised like the establishment. The things that caused us to win before had been totally forgotten. I say they have been forgotten because we are still making the same fatal mistake. We continue to reject principled candidates like Alan Keyes who, we are told, cannot win, in favor of compromising candidates who, we are assured, can. The result is millions of frustrated, uninspired, turned-off conservatives who feel betrayed. And they have been! There is one more result: another GOP defeat at the polls in November! Maybe sooner or later, Christian leaders will again awaken to the fundamental principles that first gave them victory. Maybe they will eventually get over the perfidious puffery heaped on them by disingenuous politicos and once again stand courageously for truth and righteousness, win or lose! Absent such courage, a Republican victory means not a victory for the country. **COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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