Why Do Evangelicals Ignore Ron Paul?

[Johannes Ernharth]

You may or may not have friends and family who are of the conservative Christian type who supports a lots of unusual things from republican candidates. If so, this might be a helpful article to send them.

[Johannes Ernharth]

I don't think his objective is to insult all Christians. I, for one, was not. However, I am not an evangelical type nor a dispensationalist who believes our foreign policy enables the second coming, either. There's lots of hypocrisy coming from very powerful Christian groups on the Evangelical front, and I don't have a problem with this article being used to to let more mellow Christians know that the evangelicals and their anointed candidates don't have to speak for them in politics..

[Gordo]

Why on earth would you send that article to any Christian at all?

"As it is, evangelicals continue to call George W. Bush "one of us," they continue to drink Kool Aid from the faucet of Republican propaganda, and they continue to ignore Ron Paul."

First and foremost, he doesn't seem to understand what an "evangelical" is (I personally prefer the term Christian). An evangelical (or Christian) is someone who KNOWS they are a sinner and has accepted Jesus Christ's free gift of salvation through the forgiveness of sin. How do you know if someone is a Christian? Well certainly the way they behave is an indication, but you can never truly know because you can never tell what is in a person's heart. But I see no reason to believe that GW is NOT a Christian, and based on his words and actions it is pretty clear that he is in fact a Christian even if he has done or said some things that you don't think a Christian would do or say.

To insult Christians (i.e. the kool aid drinking propaganda suckers) for believing GW is a Christian is just stupid in my opinion, and it CERTAINLY will not help the cause.

Just for the record, I AM a Christian, and I DID vote for Bush - and honestly, even with 20/20 hindsight, and fully acknowledging that GW has made mistakes, I STILL would have voted for him over the alternatives (Gore and Kerry)!

That said, I WHOLE HEARTEDLY support Ron Paul and I will do my part to tell everyone I know about him. He will get my vote and I hope he wins.

But getting back to the question - why do evangelicals ignore Ron Paul. I think you could just as easily rephrase that as "Why does EVERYONE ignore Ron Paul?". OK - here's a little test you can do - go up to 10 random people (or friends and family) - and just ask them if they would vote for Ron Paul for president.

I HAVE DONE THIS. The most common response I get (nearly 100%) is "who the heck is Ron Paul?"!! If you don't understand why this is a problem, then YOU are the one drinking too much cool aid! Besides the small group of constitutionalists, libertarians, and gold bugs, hardly anyone knows who Ron Paul is!

I have proposed creating form letters that people can use to email their friends and family describing who Ron Paul is and why you should vote for him (and encouraging them to pass on the word). I think it would be nice if someone created a website just for this purpose, and perhaps the form letters could even be "wiki's", and you could just type in your email addresses and hit a send button. I have already created one such template letter targeting Christians, and others should be created targeting different groups (Democrats, Republicans, Independents,etc.). I think if people understand who Ron Paul is, he could actually win this thing! But since the mainstream media largely ignores him, we need to do this job ourselves. This could be the FIRST presidential campaign where the internet REALLY makes a difference.

And let me just reiterate one more time in case it hasn't gotten though - INSULTING CHRISTIANS IS NOT THE WAY TO GAIN SUPPORT.

Final thoughts on "evangelical" leaders...

Ronald Regan was asked once, "When you die, if you must stand before God and he asks you 'Why should I let you into heaven?' what would you say?" The result:

"He was silent for a long time. Finally, after about 30 seconds he answered in somber tones that I shall never forget, 'I dont deserve to go to Heaven. The only thing that I could say would be, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'" (John 3:16).