Christian Pastor's New Book Tackles Social Problems With Biblical Truth
by Allie Martin
July 18, 2005
(AgapePress) - A well-known pastor is encouraging Christians to speak out on critical issues of the day. In his new book Silent No More (Charisma House, 2005), author and pastor Rod Parsley shares truths about education, poverty, racism, abortion, homosexuality and numerous other subjects.
Parsley, who pastors World Harvest Church in Columbus, Ohio, believes Christians today need to be more concerned with following biblical truths than with following a certain political party. He says "to be morally consistent is often to be politically unpredictable."
"The first person I heard make this statement was former Democratic Senator Zell Miller," Parsley notes. "He said, 'I'm not a Democrat. I'm not a Republican. I'm a Christ-ocrat.' And that's what we need to be."
And that is where believers in America should find themselves, Parsley contends, "like ancient Samuel, standing in the middle of the Left and the Right and saying there are times you both get it right and times you both get it wrong."
The only way to be morally consistent, the Ohio minister adds, is to adhere with unwavering loyalty to the word of God. "The B-I-B-L-E ... that's the book for me," he says.
World Harvest Church's pastor is also the founder of The Center for Moral Clarity. He founded the CMC last year as a resource center to educate and mobilize believers to think about, speak out on, and take action concerning contemporary social issues.
Parsley says for years the Church in America has been silent on some crucial issues, such as poverty. "People in America want to work," her asserts. "But how is a young man in Washington, DC, going to go work at McDonalds when he can sit at home and play GameBoy and, from social welfare programs, collect more than double what he would [earn] working at McDonalds?"
The answer to this social quandary, the pastor insists, is simply that "the Church must step up." Certainly, he says, "God places a tremendous blessing upon those who will give to the relief of the poor." But historically in America, he adds, "as the Church stepped aside, the government stepped in, and things went downhill from there."
In Silent No More, Parsley states that prayer, information and activism are three primary tools Christians can wield to shape their culture, to grow healthy families, and to empower America's moral base.
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
