Sunday, April 5, 2009

The End of Christian Politics in America?

Kathleen Parker's got an interesting piece up at the Washington Post, "Political Pullback for the Christian Right?" I don't trust her, though, considering her turncoat politics vis-a-vis the GOP. But Robert Stacy McCain gives her a pass on this one, "For once, Kathleen Parker has a clue."

Also, Jon Meacham has a big story on religion and politics at Newsweek, "
The End of Christian America" (via Memeorandum). I don't trust Meacham, either. He's turned Newsweek, already liberal, into a mainstream mouthpiece for the radical left.

Dan Riehl, however, says the Meacham's essay is worth a read:
Certain elements on the Right need to make up their mind as to whether they want to have primarily a political discussion, or a religious one. Certainly they can have both. But they are not the same thing. The "Christian Right" over-stepped in instances where it failed to realize that. Still, that doesn't mean one's faith can't, or shouldn't influence one's politics at all.

For me, the only real issue is this: in what force or power do you want to source your sense of "rights." The Founders understood the importance of that question, which is why they sourced them to Nature's God in
the Declaration of Independence, and acknowledged them as blessings in the Constitution itself. They never invested them in any Church, Christian or otherwise.

But there's a baby with the bath water problem in a mostly juvenile over-reaction against whatever the Christian Right is, or was. The Founders had enough sense to not simply invest our rights in our political processes alone. Processes, as with most anything of man, can be corrupted and co-opted. It happens all the time.

Bottom line, if you want to tear down anything and everything beyond man, then man is the only concept you have left in which to invest your rights. And once you do that, rest assured, one day some man is going to come along and take them away.

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