Evangelicals, at one time elated because Their Man was seated in the Oval Office, are now orphaned.

There are those evangelicals who, no matter what President Bush does or doesn’t do, still consider him noble and trustworthy. No one knows their numbers. But they are there.

However, there are other evangelicals who conclude they have been let down most certainly by President Bush. He who spoke evangelical language has not proven himself to be the most outstanding leader. Instead, he has taken us into hell’s black hole in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Further, the data now coming forth regarding Walter Reed Hospital and elsewhere is disheartening. This is particularly so to ethically sensitive evangelicals. The latter are persons who are tuned into kindness, compassion and helping others. What is going on in health care to America’s uniformed wounded cuts these evangelicals to the heart.

Of course, there are other fronts that sting evangelicals who once were in the front row with loud applause for President Bush. Now these evangelicals have slipped to the back of the room. Some have left the room entirely, their heads hanging low. Feelings of betrayal? Yes, with some. Feelings of disenchantment with White House promises made and not kept? Certainly so.

Evangelicals, by and large, feel left out in the cold.

This is not the first time. Most of their American lives they have felt left out in the cold. But they expect this. That is what their Christ warned them it would be once claiming the name "Christian." Christ had told His first-century disciples that they would be hated by the world, just as He was hated by the world. Therefore, evangelicals consider that to be a part of discipleship in any generation.

However, once they came upon President Bush — speaking about Christ, prayer, worship, the Bible, personal devotions, and married to a spouse of like no-questions-asked biblical commitment — evangelicals were quite encouraged. They had two on Pennsylvania Avenue who not only spoke their language but lived their kind of spirituality.

Now much of that has been shredded in the spirits of untold numbers of evangelicals. Not all. But too many.

To add to the "orphaning of the American evangelicals," there is no one on the political horizon who aligns himself with the evangelical expectations. There are those trying to be "evangelical." But they fall far short. Newt Gingrich is the latest fake, though Jerry Falwell seems so impressed by him as to ensconce him as this year’s Liberty University commencement speaker.

But the host of evangelicals are not easily fooled. They can spot a newcomer on the make for personal advantage. They know the hypocrite. They can spy out the fraud.

Bill and Hillary Clinton could mouth a good biblical line when called for. Both were brought up in the Bible belt. Hillary, an old-fashioned Methodist, knew the biblical language. Bill, a "hard shell Baptist," knew it far better. With his Southern drawl, he could come off quite convincingly as a true believer. Then what happened in both of their lives was enough to expose their hypocrisy. They basically endorsed that which is anathema to God — abortion and homosexual lifestyles, for two issues.

Jimmy Carter and wife likewise gave forth with the Southern Baptist Bible impress, but they too revealed themselves as traitors to God Himself. These two endorse abortion as every female’s right.

Now to the present: There is not one person who grandstands for the presidency in 2008 who even begins to be of evangelical conviction. Not one. They try to sound as if they are of evangelical morality; but they are not.

When researching these contenders’ pasts, they are not biblically sound concerning ethics. Further research concerning their personal lives leaves much to be desired in too many cases.

Can one trust, for instance, a Mitt Romney, Mormon, who proclaims himself as pro-life and anti-homosexual lifestyle when in the past he was ardently pro-choice and pro-homosexual lifestyle? Yet can a person progress in what is called "evolution of thought" so as to shed old ethics for new ethics? The answer is of course Yes.

However, when it comes to a politician who is given daily to personal opportunism, how can a seasoned evangelical trust that evolution of thought from liberal to biblically conservative to be real and lasting? Evangelicals have been had so many times that presently they are quite wary. And that they ought to be.

Orphaned they are.

And it appears that unless there is a miracle in America’s political scene, evangelicals are going to be orphaned for quite some time to come.

POSTSCRIPT:

NEWT & JERRY = DUO-MEDIA BAITERS

J. Grant Swank, Jr.

It is well known that Jerry Falwell salivates to media attention.

Of course, political savvy Newt Gingrich is cut from the same cloth.

Therefore, is it any wonder that Gingrich confesses to the Reverend Gingrich’s immorality list? Likewise, Gingrich confesses his immoral biography via Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family radio broadcast.

Surely Gingrich is covering the evangelical / fundamentalist waterfront for pulling ahead in his yen for the White House.

Falwell, smelling a startling story before it’s even finished, falls right in line with Gingrich’s game plan. They both relish the media center stage.

As I read the AP report concerning these two, I could not help but think of former Pastor Ted Haggard’s personal testimony that in three-weeks counseling he turned from active homosexual to total heterosexual. He declared himself healed.

Now Falwell claims Gingrich healed. "’He has admitted his moral shortcomings to me in private conversations,’" Falwell informed the Lynchburg VA press.

Now isn’t that sweet? And is it not cheap grace?

Falwell, fundamentalist maximum, knows far better than to believe in that kind of instant soul fame. That does not discount Jesus’ grace power to redeem and set free from sin. But it does expose Falwell’s lack of pastoral wisdom in hanging a new testimony out to dry before it’s had a chance to drip free from the wash tub.

When a person of Gingrich’s moral / immoral complexity comes forth with a public confession in an election season, acting repentant, contrite and broken in soul, it is time for a seasoned spiritual leader to take him aside.

In taking Gingrich aside, the spiritual counselor then advises Gingrich to hide out with Jesus for a good long time in order for the conversion seal to attach itself with no doubt.

When murderer, persecutor of Christians Paul of Tarsus was slain by ascended Jesus on the Road to Damascus, the Holy Spirit tutored Paul in the Arabian desert for three years before Paul moved out into the Judeo-Christian public. After all, all Paul had known prior was misdirected religious fanaticism. That was not cleared from his head in a short stint in Damascus. Time was needed to redirect thoroughly a mortal once headed pell-mell in the devil’s direction.

So it is with three-time married, sexually promiscuous Gingrich. This man is complex, to say the least. For not being a Hollywood debonair type, he surely has had his illicit sexual encounters on numerous occasions.

Further, he knows how to deceive with aplomb. While Bill Clinton was playing his own tawdry games with Monica Lewinsky, Gingrich played the holiness role of castigating the President. All the while, Gingrich was hiding his own sexual immorality behind closed doors.

At the same time, to feed his political opportunism, Gingrich went on and on to the press on how America needed leaders who were morally unsullied. The country was in a moral crisis. It was pleading for men and women of character, according to lay preacher Gingrich.

Gingrich has already showed us that he can compartmentalize his brain and soul. He can call on one compartment to preach morality while at the very same moment use another compartment to unzip his trousers.

Now he’s bowing at the mourner’s bench, crying repentance to an evangelical leader Dobson and fundamentalist leader Falwell. I would not be surprised if his next stop is to some well-known pentecostal spokesman. By then he will have networked with the Protestant biblical community on all three fronts — evangelical, fundamentalist, and pentecostal. One cannot get any cleverer than that if he wants to suck in the biblical believers’ vote in a few months. But I really don't think the three fronts are that stupid. I believe that Gingrich and Falwell are in for their own grand awakening.

Now back to Falwell: Falwell has been so "impressed with Gingrich’s spiritual maturity" that Falwell has invited him to be the featured speaker this year at Liberty University, Falwell’s academic flagship.

"Spiritual maturity"? Surely Falwell has lapsed from his Bible thumping preaching style and content. Certainly Falwell has compromised the editorials appearing in his publications as well as his stiff ethical stance in the old Moral Majority days.

Spiritual maturity cannot be come upon until one has a chance over time to prove that maturity. Falwell knows in his heart that Gingrich presently simply lacks that time frame. In that, Falwell is making a mockery of conversion, confession of sins, and genuine restitution.

"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has ‘come to grips with his personal failures,’ the Rev. Jerry Falwell said Friday as Gingrich acknowledged his own infidelity while he led the charge against President Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky affair," per AP.

Talk about fools in the pulpit, we’ve got a few left over from the days of PTL and Swaggart. It’s sad that fools seem to resurrect from time to time. Is it the current political winds that blow these breezes up for ethical compromise?

Could be.

NOT NEWT FOR MORALISTS

J. Grant Swank, Jr.

Newt Gingrich is not what true moralists want in the Oval Office.

He is too smooth at double-talking and double-ethics.

He has a history of sexual antics while being married. How can one trust a person at his age with a total ethical turnaround, even when confessing his immorality to Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family.

Evangelicals who are deeply seasoned over years have come upon many complications in living with those professing Christ as Savior, Bible as moral guide and the Christian testimony as valid.

Evangelicals — including fundamentalists and pentecostals — have endured Jim and Tammy Bakker as well as Jimmy Swaggart. Devout, moralist Roman Catholics have endured molesting priests who posed as spiritually kind and holy.

Therefore, in 2007, biblical believers are no longer as quick to trust as they once were. The world is complex, especially the personalities within it.

Many turn to President George W. Bush as an example of a complicated person of Christian profession. Is he? Or isn’t it? Do we believe his words of biblical, evangelical content? Or do we consider them pandering to the evangelical block?

There are those who would swear atop a stack of Bibles that Mr. Bush is totally pure in his profession as Christian and his moral ethic. There are others who express their suspicions, though regrettably.

Therefore, when Newt tells Dr. Dobson on the latter’s radio broadcast that Newt prayed while at the same committing knowing sin, that raises the moral flags in many grassroots’ believers’ souls.

And very much it should. Is Newt morally compartmentalized, as various psychologists analyzed Bill Clinton as being in professing a Southern Baptist Bible belt lifestyle while repeatedly philandering at the drop of a flirtatious suggestion?

I personally would not trust Newt any further than I could throw his large frame.

He sees now that there is a possible opening for running for the presidency. There is no clear-cut front-runner at this moment.

Newt knows of the influential numbers who call themselves "evangelicals" in America. Therefore, he has got hold of one of the most respected personages in evangelical Protestantism — Dr. Dobson.

Yes, Newt has done just what evangelicals believe what God calls every mortal to do — that is, confessed openly his sins in an attempt to clear his soul before God and make restitution before his public.

But is this simply another political opportunism of Newt’s strategy for future return to political front page? Very could be.

Newt was married. He told his wife as she lay lying a patient in the hospital that he scheduled a divorce from her. While married to still another wife, he was philandering with still another woman.

In case this labyrinth is confusing, as of this date Newt has had three wives.

When confronted back then by reporters seeking to figure out his moral biography, he put them off by saying that what was private was private and so forth.

All the while he severely criticized then President Clinton for his sexual antics with Monica Lewinsky.

How can a person who sincerely seeks daily to live the Christian morality even hope to trust this sort of fellow?

I have ministered for over forty years. I have had to deal with parishioners and fellow clergy who were playing the game, talking one thing and walking another.

Those of us in the ministry have developed a particular sense of psyching out frauds. The Scriptures refer to this as the "gift of discernment," available not only to clergy but laity as well.

My discernment antenna this evening tells me without much strain that Newt is one to put aside for his day in retirement where if he does another wrong it won’t impinge The System.