Al Mohler hopes Sa-rah Palin will soon be pounding the vice presidential bully pulpit.  But Dr. Mohler would be the first to condemn America’s favorite Hockey Mom if she had the temerity to step behind a Christian pulpit.

Who is Al Mohler, and why should you care what he thinks?

Dr. Mohler is president of my Alma mater, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville Kentucky.  He rose to that position at the tender age of 33 while I was working on a PhD in Theology and Church History at “Southern” in the early 1990s.  In 1994 Dr. Mohler handed me my diploma and I haven’t seen him since. 

Back in the day, Mohler was a staunch supporter of women preachers, but he also dreamed of being president of Southern Seminary.  Like John McCain, Mohler altered a long list of opinions so he could rise in a world shaped by Christian fundamentalists.  Gradually, “agents of intolerance” morphed into benefactors.  Al has his thirty pieces of silver; it remains to be seen whether John will get his.

Dr. Mohler’s spelled out his position on the  proper role of women in response to questions raised by Sally Quinn in the Washington Post’s “On Faith” section.  Quinn wanted to know why conservative evangelicals were applauding Ms. Palin’s selection when they had just a low view of womens’ abilities.  If Sa-rah is under the thumb of “the First Dude” in the home and is barred from teaching men at church, why do the likes of Al Mohler think she’s capable of running the country?

Mohler couldn’t let such an weak and misinformed question stand.  Like NFL football players, Southern Baptists have a rule book, Mohler explains.  It’s called the Bible.  Defensive linemen can’t rush the quarterback until the ball is snapped.  No reason, it’s just a rule.  Similarly, God says in the Holy Bible that women can’t preach and that’s just the way it is.  It may sound arbitrary to us, but it makes sense to One who left us with a fallen world and a perfect Bible.

Dr. Mohler assures his readers that the diminished role of women in the family and in the church has nothing to do with native ability.  God just wants it that way.  If you’ve got a problem with that, take it up with the Creator.

Mohler, like most conservative evangelicals, only appeals to the teaching of Jesus when it suits his purpose (and it almost never does).  The Gospels tell us that women followed Jesus wherever he went, bankrolling his operation out of their own purses.  Women stood at the foot of the cross when the male disciples had fled into the night.  Women were the first to encounter the risen Christ because they refused to abandon the crucified Jesus. 

None of the biblical restrictions on the role of women can be ascribed to Jesus.  As I have suggested, the picture of Jesus wandering the Palestinian countryside with twelve male buddies doesn’t square with biblical testimony; his entourage ranged from hundreds of people at the height of his popularity down to a handful (of women) at the bitter end. 

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that women played a major, and largely unrestricted role in the early mission of the church described in the Acts of the Apostles.  The Pentecostal movement that shaped Sarah Palin’s religious world welcomed women preachers when it first exploded on the streets of San Francisco back in 1906.  “If God calls a woman to preach,” Pentecostals liked to argue, “who are we to ask questions?”

The God card can be played in a variety of ways.

Jesus lives in a world where over-under, who’s-in-charge questions can’t even be asked.  Jesus calls people to a life of sacrificial service in which “the first shall be last and the last first.”  When his disciples raised the “which of us is the greatest” question, Jesus set a child in the midst of them and hoped they’d get the point.  

They didn’t.

When Christians divide over authority issues they betray their Master.

What do we do when a passage of scripture appears to contradict the teaching of Jesus?  If you aren’t a Christian it’s a non-issue; but if you’re Al Mohler you can’t dodge.  What is the source of ultimate authority for Christians: the Bible, or Jesus?

Al Mohler calls this a non-question.  The Bible is the Word of God; Jesus is the Son of God; therefore Jesus and the Bible agree on every point. 

The argument goes a step deeper.  Because Jesus and the Bible agree on all points, it is said, Jesus is cool with every word in the Bible.  We don’t need a red-letter Bible (with the teaching of Jesus given special emphasis); Jesus wrote the whole book. 

Al Mohler knows it isn’t this simple, but he pretends it is for the same reason John McCain pretends to march in lock step with the Religious Right–political survival demands it.

Theological hair-splitting may seem out of place in a blog dedicated to criminal justice reform, so let me explain myself.  Friends of Justice formed nine years ago because a small group of people felt compelled to stand up for the victims of a corrupt drug sting in Tulia, Texas.  God didn’t give us any choice in the matter.  At the end of the road, when Jesus asks us how we treated the least of his brothers and sisters, we wanted to have an answer.

The United States of America is an officially secular republic, but the Christian faith has always been the default religion of our nation.  It matters how that faith is interpreted, especially when preachers are calling the political square dance.

The recent surge in John McCain’s political fortunes can be attributed to America’s newest political celebrity, Sarah Palin.  Democrats thought the country was sick and tired of Republican policies.  Sarah shows it ain’t so.  Everything we are supposed to hate about Dick and W. applies to Sarah in triplicate. 

So why is America so tired of Bush-Cheney and suddenly so enamored of Palin-McCain?  Because, as the McCain campaign says, this is a campaign about personalities. 

And what is it about Sarah Palin’s personality that we like?  Simplicity.  When Rick Warren asked John McCain how America should respond to EVIL, the well-coached candidate gave the right answer: “Destroy it!”  Buoyed by a sudden rise in popularity, McCain set his eyes on Alaska. 

The war hero was briefly thrown off-stride by a polite and well-orchestrated Democratic Convention celebrating unity and diversity.  As the fireworks exploded over Mile High stadium, voters believed in a country where everyone belongs, color doesn’t matter, and words like justice, mercy and humility meant something.  With Barack Obama wielding the brush, all the rich hues of America were flowing together in one glorious portrait.

Then Sarah Barracuda burst on the scene.  Suddenly everything was either/or; black and white; GOOD and EVIL; strength and weakness; Pit Bulls and Poodles.  Dick Cheney thought Sarah Palin’s speech was terrific.  It was precisely what the current VP would have said were he not a national embarrassment.

I am reminded of an old story they used to tell at the seminary that both Al Mohler and I call home.  The great Baptist preacher CH Spurgeon was listening to a young seminary student deliver a sample sermon on “the full armor of God” (Ephesians 6). 

“And now,” the young man cried, “with my loins girt about with truth, encased within the breastplate of righteousness, my feet shod with the holy gospel I am encased in the full armor of God and ready for the firey darts of the Devil.  Where is he?”

Spurgeon bellowed his answer from the back of the room: “He’s in the armor.”

How should we deal with evil?  Paul the Apostle puts it this way: “Do not be overcome with evil; but overcome evil with good.”

We have been fighting fire with fire; evil with more evil.  That’s the lesson of Abu Graib and Guantanamo.  That’s the retributive principle behind mass incarceration. 

We’re asking Jesus to sit this one out.  His philosophy will do fine after the trumpet sounds and history draws to an end; but while we live in this fallen world we can’t afford to think like Jesus–it could get us killed. 

I have no quarrel with non-Christians who jetison the teachings of Christ–it’s a free country.  But I do have a problem with Christians who trample on the cross.

Al Mohler is right; Christians don’t get to pick and choose.  If Jesus tells us that God is on the side of the poor, the weak, the outcast, the blind and the broken, we have no choice but to live as if it were so.  In the words of the prophet Micah: “He hath shown you, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” 

Is that what we’re hearing from Al Mohler, Sarah Palin and the religious right?  Can anyone explain why not?

My religious friends will accuse me of cherry-picking my biblical quotations.  To keep things real, I urge you to read the Gospel of Luke from beginning to end in a single setting (it won’t take more than an hour, probably less). 

Am I suggesting that you will find Jesus endorsing the official platform of the Democratic Party?  Not a bit of it.  Luke’s Jesus can’t be tossed into the blender and transformed into the thin ideological gruel served up by our major political parties.  

You may dismiss Luke’s Jesus as a sentimental idealist.  That’s your right.  But if you take that view, please don’t call yourself a Christian.  It’s embarrassing.