Thursday, March 29, 2007

Archbishop Dobson Excommunicates Thompson, Canonizes Gingrich

Nontitular Evangelical Pope James Dobson is reported to have offered important ecclesial dicta yesterday:

  • Of ex-Senator/TV actor/radio newsreader/possible GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson: "I don't think he's a Christian."
  • Of ex-Speaker of the House/political pundit/serial adulterer/possible GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich: "the brightest guy out there" and "the most articulate politician on the scene today."
Thompson's people report that he's a baptized member of the Church of Christ, something that will surely pique the interest of many gentle readers. Gingrich's people aren't reporting whether the marital-fidelity-challenged, once-and-future politician has been on the Damascus Road as far as his practice of any particular faith is concerned.

In response, we ask the following:

  • Of Dr. Dobson: please, please, please stick to what you know (i.e. the ideas that made Dare to Discipline a hugely helpful book for parents of young children) and get out of the political arena where your incompetence seems to know no bounds.* Granted that your remarks were prefaced with the caveat that you aren't endorsing anyone and that you said nothing about Gingrich's faith per se, your ability to sound ridiculously inconsistent on these matters is obvious to everyone but, apparently, yourself.
  • Of evangelicals: please, please, please don't listen to Dr. Dobson on any subject except those that he knows, excluding especially politics. See the paragraph above for our reasoning on this subject.

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*We also ask Dobson to stay out of discussion of Bible translation, but that's another subject.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oddly enough a friend of mine and I were talking about this exact topic two days ago. I think Dobson's work in family matters is great. I began to wonder if he's gone off the deep end though when I hear him speaking on politics.

With great power comes great responsibility. It just seems to me that Dobson is responsible when talking about the political side of moral issues such as same sex marriage, the war on "terror" (somehow also know as Iraq) and the whole situation with Terry Schiavo - just to name a few.

Anonymous said...

Presumably, Gingrich's marital problems are reason to worry about his fitness as commander-in-chief. Perhaps you could share with us Giuliani's stats in that department--to help us make an informed decision, of course.

Jon A. Alfred E. Michael J. Wile E. SWNID said...

We'll freely confess that we overlook Rudy's moral weaknesses, displayed in two failed marriages though no confessions of infidelity of which we are aware, in favor of his git-'er-dun record on law and order in New York. Gingrich, on the other hand, has no executive experience and a demeanor that suggests he would have grave difficulty commanding the loyalty of staff in an executive role.

We do not make Rudy the moral superior of Newt, though we think him by far the executive superior by a very wide margin. We simply point out that the grounds of Dobson's moral discernment, displayed in his comments, is less than coherent.