Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Back Into The Religious Fray

Since traditional media prefer to promote right wing blowhard Christian activists on a mission to remake our government according to their limited interpretation of morality, I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to help publicize the works of Christian people and organizations fighting to take their religion back from the conmen/women who are peddling a warped Christianity in order to manipulate people and attain political power. I’m going to start with Randall Balmer, an Evangelical taking on the religious right.

The kind of religious plurality that Randall Balmer describes in his essay, “Jesus Is Not A Republican” excerpted from his soon to be released book, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America: An Evangelical's Lament, is appealing, even to an atheist like me. This is the kind of work that I hope Christians will read, especially those that are uncomfortable with the public face that has been put on their religion by the loudest spokesmen for the religious right. Repairing the damage that the religious right has done will not be a passive endeavor.

There is a very real and powerful movement in this country that is intent on creating a theocratic state, ignoring it simply because it is too uncomfortable to discuss will not do us any good as a society. In this media crazed environment, thoughtful religious voices are being marginalized while loud-mouthed religious right activists are given more airtime than the rest of us should have to endure. I have heard over and over from self identified Christians that the religious right doesn’t speak for them and I take them at their word, but the religious right, in conjuncture with the GOP, is using Christianity as a means to gain political power and Randall Balmer makes a great case that it’s time to reclaim your religion and begin marginalizing the political faction so that the ties between religion and politics can be broken for good. That would be great for the country, and as Balmer argues beautifully, better for religion as well.

I may not have any use for religion in my life, but I have no desire to restrict its practice. I honestly believe in religious tolerance, I just don’t believe in tolerating a movement that seeks to legislate the morality of one particular religion. Thank the Founding Fathers for the First Amendment!

5 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Liberal girl next door. I have an idea for a clever website. "Republicans Anonymous" A website for disillusioned fiscal conservatives, recovering fascists, blinded loyalists, cowed slaves, misdirected spiritualists, or whatever. It could be entertaining and enlightening. Regular pundits, honest republicans, psuedo-republican wannabees, comics, clowns and nere-do-wells could write about current events in the context of conservative insanity. I'll never put it together cuz I'm hardly computer literate. Well, what do you think?

BTW, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of that which is unseen", (a bibble scripture), determines the Doctrine of Faith, which we can conclude to mean: we can neither to prove nor disprove the existence of God. 'Evidence' is not proof. And, if God's existence were provable, what would then be the meaning of faith and hope? Only frick'n fundamentalists enforce an absolute assurity, even though this is not scriptural.

"Republicans Anonymous", a Help website for those who were once blind but didn't know it.

Huh? Huh?

4:46 PM  
Blogger Graeme said...

I think many of these people have already drank the kool aid

10:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yuh, an like whatever, man. They drunk the cool aid, so like uuuh... the cool aid... uuh, like, you know, whatever.

11:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Interesting essay, and I wish Mr. Balmer well in his efforts to wrest Jesus from the clutches of Jerry Falwell and his ilk.

1:49 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am reading American Theocracy at the moment and find it an essential read on oil, radical right, and debt.
My view of the reasons for the Iraq war has changed. I am still opposed to it today, but I have a better understanding of why they did it and why they lied about it to further themselves.

4:37 AM  

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