#005: "Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America?" by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson

Michelle analyzes Blinded by Might: Can the Religious Right Save America? by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson. She covers religion, politics, the Kingdom of God, and more.

From the back cover: "Authors Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson once believed the best way to fight the 'liberal agenda' was to beat them at their own game. Mobilize voters. Organize boycotts. Get invited to the White House. And raise a ton of money to keep the war chest full. Not anymore. Blinded by Might takes you inside the early and heady days of the Moral Majority, tracing its well-intentioned but fatally flawed battle plan aimed at reversing America's slide into a moral wasteland. It shows how groups like the Christian Coalition, which stepped in when the Moral Majority ran out of steam, have not changed, cannot change, and will not change the trajectory of America's culture. Written by two conservative Christians who worked closely with Jerry Falwell in the 1980s, Blinded by Might explains what you can do for your country that twenty years of heavily financed political activism has failed to do. When Ronald Reagan won the 1980 presidential election by a landslide, conservative Christians discovered what could happen when they flexed their electoral muscles. Suddenly, faith and politics seemed a promising match and before the eyes of the astonished media, a new movement called the Moral Majority and its leader, Jerry Falwell, rocketed from obscurity to national prominence. The Religious right was born. Today with luminaries including Pat Robertson, James Dobson, James Kennedy, and Ralph Reed, the right remains a powerful political force. Yet, despite nearly twenty years of vigorous and sophisticated activism, it has failed in its mission to end abortion, eliminate pornography, restore the shattered American family, and usher in a better world built on 'traditional values.' Why? Few know the answers better than Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson. Former insiders with the Moral Majority, they share never-reported information on a movement they helped shape in order to show why it could not and did not succeed. And they tell what it will really take to stem the ungodliness that is sweeping our nation. 'Whenever the church cozies up to political power, it loses sight of its all-important mission to change the world from the inside out,' writes Thomas. In blurring the lines between politics and Christianity, the Religious Right has traded the only power that can truly change America—the Gospel's power to transform hearts—for the methods of a kingdom that is of this world. What, then, is the alternative? Given such critical issues as abortion, gay activism, are Christians to simply disengage from the political process? Hardly. Uninvolvement is not the answer, say the authors, but a shift in perspective. As Christians, they insist we must realize that God's agenda does not rise or fall with political causes; and that we must rediscover our most potent influence is not the ballot booth, but lives that extend God's grace in the home, in the workplace, and in all spheres of our culture. Blinded by Might calls us to realign ourselves with a kingdom infinitely more powerful and certain than politics, that advances initially through changed hearts that inevitably must change and impart government."