George Soros's Evangelicals

[Geee]

Weekly Standard:


For nearly 30 years Richard Cizik represented the National Association of Evangelicals in Washington, D.C. During the George W. Bush administration, he tilted increasingly left and embraced global warming as his iconic issue. A Vanity Fair magazine spread admiringly portrayed him walking on water, just like Jesus. But in December 2008 Cizik stepped too far by endorsing same-sex unions during an interview with Terry Gross NPR. He was forced to resign from NAE.

This summer, Cizik was back with Gross on NPR. He has created a left-leaning New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good. Initially after his NAE departure Cizik was affiliated with Ted Turner’s United Nations Foundation. Then he became a fellow at George Soros’s Open Society Institute, concurrent to his creating the new liberal evangelical group. With Gross, Cizik was unrepentant about his evolving views on same-sex unions, and possibly marriage. And he was very grateful to the left-wing billionaire philanthropist who made his fall from NAE a soft bump.

“These wonderful people at the Open Society Institute evaluated me along with a lot of other applicants and decided to endow me with a fellowship for the past year, so I haven’t been without means,” Cizik explained to Gross. “My friends at the Open Society Institute. We have much more in common than we have that divides us.” Perhaps not fully comprehending Cizik’s own leftward journey across the political spectrum, Gross seemed surprised about an evangelical finding such camaraderie with Soros’s philanthropy. Cizik explained: “In the Old Testament there was an unbelieving, in other words non-Jew, king by the name of Cyrus who was responsible for the rebuilding of the temple. And so my friends across the pond in Great Britain, they once said to me, ‘Richard, Soros is your King Cyrus.’”