{"id":65,"date":"2006-10-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2006-10-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html"},"modified":"2006-10-03T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2006-10-03T12:00:00","slug":"tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html","title":{"rendered":"Tony Campolo: Duplicity on the Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Tony Campolo\" hspace=\"5\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sojo.net\/images\/about_us\/portrait_campolo.jpg\" align=\"left\" vspace=\"5\" \/> <\/p>\n<p>Do those on the Religious Right understand their duplicity? <\/p>\n<p>For years they have argued against situational ethics. They have stood for absolutes and contended that those absolutes should never be compromised. With conviction they have declared, loud and clear, that the end never justifies the means. Now, with the war on terrorism on our hands, they support torture when interrogating suspects.<\/p>\n<p>A prominent scholar recently polled a dozen top leaders of America\u2019s Religious Right, who were unanimously in favor of using torture \u201cgiven the situation at hand.&#8221; When it suits them, it turns out, the end does indeed justify the means. <\/p>\n<p>If they have changed their minds and are ready to refute the golden rule, then it is time for them to say plainly, \u201cFor the most part we agree with Jesus, but there are special circumstances when we must ignore His teachings.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Of course, these leaders ought to recognize the implications of their decision to support what they might call \u201cnecessary evils\u201d in special circumstances. For instance, can they still tell a teenage girl who is pregnant by rape or incest that abortion is always wrong? <\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not ready to answer such questions, except to say that the Religious Right can\u2019t have it both ways. They can\u2019t say that righteousness must never be compromised, and then add \u201cexcept in certain situations\u2014like torturing our enemies in times of war.\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"clear:both;padding-bottom:0.25em\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do those on the Religious Right understand their duplicity? For years they have argued against situational ethics. They have stood for absolutes and contended that those absolutes should never be compromised. With conviction they have declared, loud and clear, that the end never justifies the means. Now, with the war on terrorism on our hands,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tony Campolo: Duplicity on the Right - God&#039;s Politics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tony Campolo: Duplicity on the Right - God&#039;s Politics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do those on the Religious Right understand their duplicity? For years they have argued against situational ethics. They have stood for absolutes and contended that those absolutes should never be compromised. With conviction they have declared, loud and clear, that the end never justifies the means. Now, with the war on terrorism on our hands,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God&#039;s Politics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-10-03T12:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.sojo.net\/images\/about_us\/portrait_campolo.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"jmcgee\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Tony Campolo: Duplicity on the Right - God&#039;s Politics","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Tony Campolo: Duplicity on the Right - God&#039;s Politics","og_description":"Do those on the Religious Right understand their duplicity? For years they have argued against situational ethics. They have stood for absolutes and contended that those absolutes should never be compromised. With conviction they have declared, loud and clear, that the end never justifies the means. Now, with the war on terrorism on our hands,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html","og_site_name":"God&#039;s Politics","article_published_time":"2006-10-03T12:00:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.sojo.net\/images\/about_us\/portrait_campolo.jpg"}],"author":"jmcgee","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html","name":"Tony Campolo: Duplicity on the Right - God&#039;s Politics","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.sojo.net\/images\/about_us\/portrait_campolo.jpg","datePublished":"2006-10-03T12:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2006-10-03T12:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/bdb748767d0f27ba523435391c927150"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.sojo.net\/images\/about_us\/portrait_campolo.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.sojo.net\/images\/about_us\/portrait_campolo.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2006\/10\/tony-campolo-duplicity-on-the.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Tony Campolo: Duplicity on the Right"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/","name":"God&#039;s Politics","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/bdb748767d0f27ba523435391c927150","name":"jmcgee","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b07\/b071769d942178df26e06d8859867b37x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b07\/b071769d942178df26e06d8859867b37x96.jpg","caption":"jmcgee"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/author\/jmcgee"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}