Standing For The Five Pillars

Editor's Note: Tom Minnery is Vice President of Public Policy for Focus on the Family. His staff produces Citizen magazine, a monthly issues magazine with a circulation of 75,000; Family News in Focus, a daily information and analysis radio program broadcast on approximately 1,600 radio outlets; Teachers in Focus magazine; Boundless, an online “webzine” for college students; and Citizen Issues Alert, a weekly fax on hot issues. In addition, the Public Policy Division trains people for effective grassroots involvement via state-based family policy councils, which now operate in 40 states, and through field seminars on specific issues. The staff also researches and publishes books, videos and position papers on a variety of public policy issues. Prior to coming to Focus on the Family, Minnery was senior editor at Christianity Today magazine in the Chicago area, and prior to that was a Capitol Hill correspondent and a manager in the Washington Bureau of Gannett Newspapers. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from Ohio University and Master of Arts in Religion from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Charlotte World Publisher Warren Smith recently talked with Minnery about Focus on the Family's public policy priorities in his office in Colorado Springs.

Warren Smith: As the head of public policy issues at Focus, how do you decide what issues you are going to make a core part of your activism?

Tom Minnery: The issues that we deal with emanate from one of our five pillars. (For Focus on the Family's Five Pillars, click here.)

WS: It's interesting that evangelism is one of your five pillars, given that Focus is not directly involved in evangelistic ministry. Rather, Focus's involvement in evangelism is more strategic, in supporting parents who want to raise their children in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.” This kind of a strategy require biblical worldview thinking, you might call it. The church hasn't done a very good job at instilling a biblical worldview in its members, it seems to me. Eighty percent of the American people call themselves “Christian,” but when start asking them about really simple stuff, like “Who is God?” or “Who is Jesus?” you begin to discover that they really haven't embraced a Christian theology.

TM: The failure of the church to inculcate a Christian world view is a big problem. Generally, Jesus has asked us to be righteous, and all that really means is what is right, and the first thing one needs to be right is that people need to be right with God. But that doesn't exhaust the issue of what needs to be made right. Being righteous means standing for truth, and Christian people ought to be able to stand for God's truth in whatever sphere it occurs.

Right now we are having great problems with lack of righteousness in entertainment, popular culture, and in the sphere of government. That is where the battle is raging. Too often people think of creation as Adam and Eve and the Garden, but a proper understanding of the old testament shows that creation involves everything. God has not allowed any part of creation to escape his mandate. The city of Detroit, Niagara Falls, The Rocky Mountains, are all part of God's creation, whether it's a natural creation or whether it's the creation of the community that subdues the Earth, which is to say, civilization. So Christians have a duty, a mandate, and to be involved in every aspect of creation.

WS: How do we do that in an era where there are few or any honorable choices left? I am reminded of what I believe Adlai Stevenson said about being involved in presidential politics. He said any man who would do the things necessary to become president is automatically unfit to serve. I was thinking about George W. Bush's decision on stem cell research in that context. The evangelical community was split significantly around that decision.

TM: It is troubling, but let's look at the larger picture. First of all, for whatever reason, God has mandated civil authority to be the authority we should respect. The first seven verses of Romans 13 simply says “respect authority” and the authority he was writing about -- the Roman authority -- was much more corrupt than we have seen today. Now, civil authority has the freedom to reject the gospel. And the civil authority not only governs Christians, but also governs non-Christians.

WS: I understand and respect that, but does that mean that we as Christians still can't stand for God's truth?

TM: Absolutely. It means that Christians should stand because we have been given the gift in this era of being citizens in a country that defines government as “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We are the who have the inner gyroscopes to make the right decisions. Moral standards come from the Bible, and when you lose that the only other way to have an ordered society is to point a gun. That is not freedom, but tyranny. So there is a strong connection between biblical truth and freedom.

You asked about stem cell research. Just look at where the debate is now. In the last administration we were debating about partial birth abortion. Now we are talking about life beginning at conception. This is the most powerful position that a politician of Bush's stature and profile has ever taken in American life regarding abortion. It isn't perfect because existing stem cell lines can be used for research, but he has advanced the pro-life argument profoundly, and that is why we salute him for it even though we are not fully satisfied.

Our problem is that as Christians we hold everything we believe absolutely. We believe in absolute truth, and occasionally we are not wise as we translate that into the political sphere, and I think we hurt ourselves in the pro-life movement because we have stood for what is pure. Every child has the right to life no matter how that child is conceived and so we want to see that become law. Well, it isn't going to become law. We need to have incremental gains to get back where we used to be. We have to be willing to settle for little gains at a time. Millions of children have died. We have to stop the killing where we can, and not say “we won't save one baby until we can save them all.”

WS: Focus on the Family is in the midst of a lot of transitions partly because of the economy, because giving is a little bit off in ministries. You have also implemented a transition plan for Dr. Dobson's eventual succession from the top spot. What do you think is the future of the ministry?

TM: I deal with public policy and I deal directly with it most days, and in terms of succession the board of directors has been planning for that for years now. With Dr. Dodson's blessings, I think in the next little while people will hear voices of those who may or may not be considered to be the successor, depending on the audience. It would be inappropriate to give names now, but a year from now people will be hearing guests on the program. Dr. Dobson encourages that, because obviously he is not going to be around forever. None of us are.

WS: There seems to be an inter-generational shift in the evangelical movement in leadership. Do you see the evangelical movement, those of you who are involved in it, trying to shape the culture with a biblical worldview and not just being separatist or what have you. Are you hopeful about what you are seeing?

TM: I am very hopeful for the next generation. For the quality and quantity of Christian leaders that will be pouring into the movement. As we sit here in 2001 there are probably 25 people in the House of Representatives, who are younger, and who are there because they answered Dr. Dobson's call for Christians to be involved. Twenty years ago we didn't have that many people who are outspoken evangelicals and that careful seeding of the landscape with qualified people is continuing on a lot of fronts. We have a Focus on the Family Institute in which top college students -- undergraduates -- come here for a semester's worth intense worldview training. We have graduated hundreds of students and the Family Research Council has a fellowship program for undergraduate students. The Alliance Defense Fund is a defending religious freedom across the country, and doing so very effectively. They have started a fellowship for the brightest law students from secular law schools. None of this stuff existed 5 years ago.

WS: You are on the board of the Alliance Defense Fund which, as you said, is involved in legal matters. I interviewed Ken Connor of the Family Research Council a couple of weeks ago and I asked him what was next and he said judicial appointments, and it seems to me that what the ADF is doing in the legal arena is a “frontline” effort.

TM: If the ADF can influence law students into careers in the judicial branch that would be wonderful, and that is the purpose of that program.

WS: We had eight years of Clinton presidency, and a lot of liberal and revisionist judges were appointed in that time. What is to keep the left from simply stonewalling, from delaying the appointment of conservative judges almost indefinitely?

TM: That could happen. But we have been amazed at how much good we can do in hostile courts just by showing up and being prepared. For many years the ACLU has had the battle to itself, not because they have beat us every time, but because we have not shown up. Now a network of lawyers has been trained and money has been raised for good research and cases are being funded selectively. We have been surprised at how much ground we gained by being.

WS: You have well over 1000 employees here at Focus and it's obvious that great work is going on. You guys were instrumental in putting the Family Policy Councils together at the state level. You did this in part because in the 80s there was a devolution of power to the state level, and the state became the “front lines” in many cultural battles. We saw this in Vermont recently, in the same-sex “civil union” issue. Where do you really think the frontline battles are going to be in the years ahead, and how is the Christian community doing in response?

TM: I think without a question the frontline battle is going to be whether we can preserve marriage as an institution between one man and one woman. Who would have thought five years ago we would have been battling that, but we are -- especially with the rising cases of same sex marriage. It's going to be a state by state battle, and if we lose that then I see no hope. However, I have great hope that we will not lose that battle. Who knew two years ago the State of California would have passed Proposition 22, which protects marriage. A more liberal state than California is Hawaii and that is why the gays took the battle over marriage to Hawaii. When the people of Hawaii finally got that question presented to them, they passed by a larger percent, so I have great hope that we will win that vote. I think the gays have made so many gains that they have come too far too fast and they are going to lose in the battle to destroy institution of marriage.