Here are three failures we can begin highlighting:
1. The near equal failure of Evangelical and Fundamentalist marriages as non-Christain marriages.
2. The tragic failures taking place in the ex-gay movement, a prime recent example is Michael Johnston.
3. The retrenchment in the status of women within many conservative denominations, the Southern Baptists and The Christian and Missionary Alliance, for example.

The fight for traditional-marriage is a front. Why, because heterosexuals are the ones who have brought traditional-marriage to its knees. Those who are conducting this campaign are not fighting for traditional, heterosexual marriage. If they were then they would be campaigning as strongly against divorce, adultery, and against whatever attitude has infected even Fundamentalist and Evangelical marriages, since they fail on par with non-Christian marriages. They are not putting the time and money into such campaigns – only against gay-marriage. No, what all this is about is simply hatred towards homosexuals. They won’t admit that, and legitimately not all harbor hatred in their hearts, but way too many do. The fight is to deprive homosexuals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of equal consideration and protection under the law. Couching their anti-homosexual attitudes and feelings in positive “save-marriage” language only gives them a feel-good justification for hatred and self-righteous indignation.
This is not humility and is not the love of God, or for neighbor and self. It is motivated by anger, fear, ignorance, and their impurity, haughtiness, pride, and for some vainglory. The desert fathers and mothers would not be proud, and would not recognize the Religious Right’s attempts to be Christian.
Now that their zeal and numbers have won the election and constitutional amendments, their continuing crusade to define Christianity after themselves will go forward. They will attempt to deny the moniker “Christian” to those who disagree with their own particular and narrow view of doctrine and Scriptural interpretation. They will now, feeling even more embolden and justified, push forward in demanding that society capitulate to their concept of living as an American.
Nationalism is an idol. Patriotism is an idol. If we give ourselves over to this idea of “America,” we are abandoning completely the “other” that Christ calls us to. The idols of nationalism and patriotism have caused many within the Church to redefine what “Christian” really is. They are giving themselves over the spirit of this age, to the world. Unquestioning belief is a liability to discerning the will of God. Gathering around oneself those who scratch one’s itching ear is spiritual death. Far too many Christians are only willing to have their ears scratched, rather than have their minds and consciences pricked, challenged, and changed by the enduring Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Here is more viewpoints from blogger Adam Yoshida:
But, whatever, we won: to hell with the rest of them. Those who didn稚 support Bush can go and perform a certain anatomically impossible act. They lost, now they can sit in the back of the bus.
Thank God Almighty.

The election is over. The speeches have been made. Anyone can tell you that I do not lean very far to the left or right, but I am truly sad. You know, it isn’t so much the man – Bush is just a man – but it is what so many Americans attribute to and give the man that is scary.
“He is God’s man; he does God’s will; he speaks with/for God, and whatever he does is God’s will” – this is what so many are giving to this man.
I read stories yesterday from gay people across the country. I have no problem with people advocating their positions against gay-marriage and the like. It is their right in this country to express their opinions and desires. However, all the acrimony generated by the Religious Right against gay people (not just against gay-marriage or civil-unions, but against the people themselves) is giving so many the justifications to be bold and forthright about their hatred for gay people. It will be a long, dark night for the average gay person in the red-states, and even in some blue-states.
We will look back on this time and shake our heads. It was the “moral issues” that won this election. The primary moral issues are gay-marriage and homosexuality-in-general. It may have been couched in “family values” language, but it was anti-homosexual sentiment that got out the vote in many places. In the same way a majority of Americans look back on the 60’s and shake their heads at want went on in the South, so will we look back and shake our heads at what went on in the red-states. Look for much more violence and discrimination against gay people. It is inevitable.
Here is an example from an e-mail to Andrew SullivanÂ’s webblog:
“I wonder if you noticed that yesterday all eleven states that considered the question of gay marriage voted to ban it. ALL ELEVEN. I think this sends a very clear message — true Americans do not like your kind of homosexual deviants in our country, and we will not tolerate your radical pro-gay agenda trying to force our children to adopt your homosexual lifestyle. You should be EXTREMELY GRATEFUL that we even let you write a very public and influential blog, instead of suppressing your treasonous views (as I would prefer). But I’m sure someone like yourself would consider me just an “extremist” that you don’t need to worry about. Well you are wrong — I’m not just an extremist, I am a real American, and you should be worried because eleven states yesterday proved that there are millions more just like me who will not let you impose your radical agenda on our country.”
And then, another e-mail:
“I’ll tell you, being a 16 year-old gay kid in Michigan just got a hell of a lot worse. When I woke up this morning and saw the anti gay marriage proposal had passed, I was shocked. I realized the situation I’m faced with everyday in school – the American people have just shown my classmates that it’s perfectly fine to discriminate. A direct quote from a ‘friend’ at school today: ‘It’s so cool that all these states just told all the faggots to eat shit and get the hell out…’ Because of the above events, I am at a crossroads … I’m the youngest card-carrying Republican in the county, and am constantly asked to get others involved for Bush/Cheney. Herein lies a problem, I can’t bring myself to do that. Bush totally lost all my support (I know I can’t vote – but I make a hell of a campaigner) when he supported the amendment to ban gay marriages, and I felt bad that in straying from Bush, I was abandoning Cheney, who I have an amazing amount of respect for. Many would say go Democrat… but I can’t do that (that signals the absence of a spine up here), and in the next year, I’m considering dropping my membership to the party. Especially this year, despite how undercut and violated I feel as a gay person, I couldn’t be happier that I am. I’ve got a stronger will because of it, and will lead my life just as strongly.
What more can be said.
Yes, we are at war and we truly need to be gravely concerned with the intent and actions of the Islamic Fundamentalist terrorists. Yes, we do need to be strong and forthright in protecting ourselves. But the answer is not “find ‘em and kill ‘em.” This attitude, expressed by both candidates, may be very American and may make us feel a little better, or stronger, but it is not the way of a Christian. Bring them to justice, bring them to trial, put them away for life, but to simply say we are going to hunt them down and kill them no matter what is against the call of Jesus Christ. It just is. Scripture and reason cannot, CANNOT, justify this kind of attitude, although perhaps it can be justified through tradition. Bush may steadfastly stay on his course and think that it shows resolve and strength, but if that course causes more people to become terrorists, increases terrorist activities across the planet, and alienates our allies whom we desperately need, then all the show of strength and resolve will simply add to the problem.
If he cannot see how his actions are counterproductive to truly solving this world-wide crisis, then it is not God who is directing his thoughts and actions!

When our leaders, and those who handle them, continually degrade discussion and debate, continually attempt to manipulate the truth for their own ends, and continue to cause all things to degrade into even more severe verbal violence, it isn’t long before we can descend no lower without taking up physical violence.
Read this:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2004/story?id=201736&page=1

An interesting article from The Independent, a British newspaper, on one Brit’s attempt at assessing current American culture through Broadway musicals.
Here is a few paragraphs about the musical, Wicked.

“It’s a strangely infectious way of looking at the United States. I decided to check out the politics of Broadway’s current box-office breakers – and I learnt more about post-September 11 America than in a thousand yellowing copies of The New York Times.
First stop Wicked, the bizarre political fable that has sold out the massive Gershwin Theatre until the summer of 2005. It’s a prequel to The Wizard of Oz – a reinterpretation for everybody who instinctively despised that self-righteous little bitch Dorothy, a retelling for all those kids who sided with the lonely, bitter, brilliant Wicked Witch of the West.
Wicked begins where Wizard ends. The Wicked Witch Elphaba has been melted into a pool of green gunk by the Kansas crusader; Dorothy has returned to the black-and-white banality of home. “Isn’t it nice to know that good really does conquer evil?” witters Glinda – the Good Witch of the North – with a dim-witted twinkle. The Ozian masses dance around their new queen, congratulating themselves on living in “the most wonderful place on earth”.
But something is wrong. “Is it true you knew the Witch when you were young?” somebody yells from the crowd. Glinda’s beaming smile droops – and in flashback we begin to learn how these women became polarised witches pining for each others’ deaths. It turns out that it’s not easy to be a girl with luminescent green skin in Oz. Elphaba repulsed her own parents, and she had been shunned by the other kids. She was only sent to school at all by her pompous father, the Governor of Munchkinland, to look after her paralysed, idealised sister Nessa Rose.
As she waded through the insults and bullies, Elphaba gradually realised that Oz was not the Paradise its citizens endlessly, brainlessly chant about. The talking animals who performed all the tough, tedious jobs in Oz were being increasingly blamed for everything that went wrong, from the Great Drought to vague “subversive activities” known only to the Wizard. The ordinary residents of Oz reassured themselves by deferring to the Wizard and muttering: “No, no, it couldn’t happen here. Not in Oz.”
Oz is not, the audience slowly realises, the Munchkin-filled land of magic that Dorothy imagined; it is a Technicolor tyranny. The dictatorial Wizard tried to co-opt Elphaba – and her magical powers – into his police state. “The way to bring people together is to give them a really terrible enemy,” he told her. Elphaba rebelled – and became the perfect propaganda foe, an Emanuel Goldstein for the Yellow Brick Road. The Wizard falsely accused Elphaba of having elaborate weapons and evil intentions – but far from being “wicked”, the late Witch was a freedom fighter trying to rescue the people of Oz. Confronted with his crimes, the Wizard insists: “[You can call me] a traitor or liberator/ Is one a crusader or ruthless invader?/ It’s all in which label is able to persist.”
Wicked is not perfect. Stephen Schwartz’s score doesn’t match the brilliance of the concept (“Defying Gravity” is the only really hummable tune), and the script is a weak adaptation of Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel. But this is a show that is connecting with American audiences today, and it’s not hard to see why.
If South Pacific was a musical for an America finally confronting its racism, Wicked is a musical for a frightened, confused, suspicious America that can no longer believe its leaders. Is the grand Wizard in the White House lying to us? Is black, white and green good? Whatever you think the answers are, it is revealing that this is the Great White Way’s sell-out success of 2004.
Americans can, it seems, bear to hear subversive messages so long as they are told to them by cartoon characters, storybook witches or puppets. Isn’t the most politically subversive show on American TV The Simpsons? (Compare it to the saccharine propaganda of The West Wing.) This is the lesson not only of Springfield and Wicked, but also of the show that collected an Aladdin’s Cave of awards at the Tonys this year: Avenue Q, playing at the John Golden Theatre.”

About 20 of us gathered in our apartment last night to watch the debate. Most were politically liberal and supported Kerry. One was a conservative and supported Bush. A few others were more moderate and wanted to see what went down.
I think it is undeniable that Kerry won the debate. Bush came off quite bad, I think. The man just does not instill confidence in me.

Sojourners has produced a new Flash video commercial about our glorious election process to date.
Here is the URL:
http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=action.election&item=petition_flash2

Here is a small piece of what David Batstone wrote in Sojourner’s latest e-mail update. He is commenting on the recent Jimmy Swaggart sermon in which Swaggart said that he would kill any man who would look at him in an amorous way. See for yourself what Swaggart said. (You will need Windows Media Player)
As much as I defend Evangelicals to most of my more liberal fellow seminarians, I am afraid that this is truly were we are headed.

“How has it become so possible today for Christian leaders to twist Jesus’ teaching about loving all of God’s children? The pattern is transparent in many sectors of the church. Too many Christians have turned Jesus into a warmaker, not a peacemaker, and justify their position by the same logic. Our enemies in the Middle East are an “abomination.
“On a more personal note, I recently received a note from a SojoMail reader full of profanity and insults. My attacker closed his note wondering how I could call myself a Christian, taking the position I do of waging peace in the Middle East at the expense of partisan support for “freedom fighters” in Iraq and uncritical support for the state of Israel. I usually do not take the time to respond to such letters (believe it or not, I get a few hate letters…:-), but this time I did write back a short note asking how he, in turn, could call himself a Christian and use such profane, violent words toward another human being. His e-mail back to me was revealing, albeit shocking: ‘I can write to you as I like, for you are not a human being. You have forfeited that right; you are nothing but pond scum.'”
“That’s the theological loophole for what passes as Christian morality these days. Simply demonstrate why the other person, or race of people, has forfeited their status as a human being, and you can do with them what you will. By the way, that is the same theological loophole used by the church in Latin America to justify the massacre of millions of native Americans during the Conquest; they were not deemed human beings. ”

Read David’s whole piece: click here

This from Duke Magazine from 2002. The article presents questions asked by an audience to Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School.

[Another member of the audience asks:] What’s the point of defending a society that’s built on spending? We’ve been terrorized by Madison Avenue for how long, through the television and such?
Be careful with that kind of language. You’ve been manipulated by Madison Avenue–I’m not sure you’ve been terrorized. And it’s very important to get the description right. As a response to September 11, for academics to roll out all the things that they’ve thought have been wrong with America and American foreign policy is–the word I’m close to is “duplicitous.” It is morally inappropriate. Nothing that America has done in the world justifies, excuses, or explains September 11.
It is therefore all the more important for us–and this is the use of the word “us”–to try to understand why it is that many people in the world find it satisfying that this has happened to America. On September 11, America was dragged kicking and screaming into the world. We think of ourselves as global, but our globalization has remained safe within the boundaries of our ocean, and now the reality of the world has been brought home. We’re mad as hell because we didn’t really want to deal with this kind of world on an everyday basis. It’s a very important moment for national self-examination, and I would like to be as helpful to that as I can as a Christian. If you are a pacifist, you don’t want to withdraw–you want to be as helpful to your neighbor as you can.