Theft, Murder, and Sexual Perversion and the Churches of Christ

I receive email updates from the “Official News Blog of The Christian Chronicle.”  The Christian Chronicle reports on news of the members and congregations of the non-instrumental Churches of Christ.  I affectionately call them my “non-fiddlin’ brethren”.  The typical stories are often about the details of life among the non-fiddlin’ brethren, and it is nice to see what is going on there.

I think of the non-fiddlin’ brethren as being very “conservative.”  I suppose I assumed that they would tend to be politically conservative to some extent, at least.  So I was a bit shocked to see a story today about a Church of Christ member named Janice Hahn, who recently won a special election in a California U. S. House of Representatives district.

When I saw a “D” behind Janice’s name, I became curious.  Maybe this was a conservative Democrat.  There used to be some of those creatures around here and there, and I thought I might have stumbled upon one here.  I was a bit shocked to visit Janice’s website and find that she is a dyed-in-the-wool big welfare state leftist of the Obama persuasion.  (Check it out here.)

Being a big welfare state leftist necessarily means you have no respect for the Eighth Commandment.  If I were the non-fiddlin’ folks, I wouldn’t want to brag about a church member who studiously avoids the Eighth Commandment.  But so be it.  Unfortunately, it didn’t end there.

As I poked around some more, hidden among here “other” issues section I found these statements:

“Janice supports a woman’s right to choose” (i.e., wants to legalize and most likely use tax dollars to pay for murder) and “Janice will be a fighter for the LGBTQ community” (i.e., wants push the political agenda of sexual perversion).

How do we so easily pretend that Christian ethical matters can just be ignored once a Christian enters the realm of politics?

I was very surprised that a Church of Christ would want to advertise a prominent member who pushes for theft, murder, and sexual perversion.  And that made me think about this matter in general.  Church discipline is, it seems, almost non-existent in all kinds of churches today.

Perhaps churches should reconsider this.  When a prominent church member behaves like Janice, perhaps the elders of the church should talk to that person and say, “Of course, you can behave any way you like.  But you can’t behave anyway you like AND be a member-in-good-standing of this congregation.”  Imagine that!

Are churches that ignore this sort of thing really doing their duty?