On May 17, Christian Century, a Protestant magazine, published a remarkable editorial equating conservative evangelicals like Dr. James Dobson with the Nazis. Dobson, along with many others—including the Catholic League—has been angry over attempts to exclude people of faith from the judiciary. So how does this strike the Christian Century? “The National Socialists removed judges who didn’t go along with the party program.”
According to this logic, demands that pro-life Christians not be denied a seat on the bench is the equivalent of Nazis who threw decent judges off the bench (that’s if they didn’t kill them). The editorial ended with a bang by saying that conservative Christian leaders need to ask whether they “want to be remembered as faithful followers of Jesus or as those who adopted the rhetoric and tactics of Nazi Germany?” For the Christian Century, it’s hardly a tough call: “It looks like they have already made their choice.”
Interestingly, the first line of the periodical’s mission statement reads, “The CHRISTIAN CENTURY magazine believes that the Christian faith calls Christians to a profound engagement with the world—an engagement of both head and heart.” Now they should either apologize to conservative Christians who want to engage the world or change its mission statement to say that it only applies to liberals. But neither is likely given that it has obviously lost its head.
