Time to shut down this POS Christian-bashing thread?
Thanks for your "Christian" tolerance. Personally, I like to know the professed religious makeup of the assholes who govern me.
Perhaps you can create an Atheist Party... then you would not be on the outside, looking in.
As to my "Christian tolerance", at best, I'm a Christian-leaning Agnostic (Doubting Thomas), but my ethnic and cultural and spiritual heritage is European Christian in nature, and I have zero "tolerance" for little wankers who look for any excuse to throw rocks at Christians.
Jesus of Nazareth preached the turning of the other cheek... personally, I fall short of that lofty ideal, and refuse to turn the other cheek, when my heritage is under assault by dimwitted shit-stirrers who phukk with Christians just for the fun of it.
I was raised in a strict southern Baptist home and I never miss an opportunity to point out how modern political Christianity is an abomination and a danger to liberty. I do not attack anyone's personal faith but they need to keep that shit to themselves in the arena of politics.
Disagree.
Ultimately, politics is the art of relationships, on a collective scale.
Religion is an integral part of the collective psyche - part of how we relate to each other - and cannot be separated within the domain of Politics.
What we do need to do is to ensure a continued practical and reasonable separation of Church and State within the confines of our government and laws.
But Religion continues to have a very valid place in American Politics.
Not when there are powerful groups who hold the bible above the constitution and it's case law as a guide to governance. These people do not give a damn about the constitution if it stands in the way of their dominionist dreams of an American theocracy.
Perhaps religion does have a place in politics but some people want it to be the only thing in politics. How do you separate those who are run of the mill live-and-let-live Christians from the truly dangerous Christian nationalists with their PACs and wealthy donors bent on domination?
The concession that religion
does have a place in politics is sufficient.
Thank you.
Everything else is a matter of degree.
You do, indeed, pose interesting questions, about where to draw the boundaries, and, of course, our Republic is still struggling with that.
Hell, I don't have the answers, but the questions are valid, and deserve exploration, as a matter of live-and-let-live.
Mind you, there are also lines to be drawn with respect to morality or decency, and that's another area where Religion can serve as a valid baseline or point-of-departure.
As things stand now, we live in a society that has secularized the morality and decency and ethics of our more religious ancestors, although some of that has degenerated or dimmed or faded a bit, as society at large seems to become more licentious and libertine in character.
And, of course, Religious Folk feel obliged to protest and to point-out such degeneration, more frequently and stridently than non-believers.
But, for the most part, Religious Folk in the United States hold Separation of Church and State in esteem equal to that manifested by non-believers.
And, collectively, and in most individual instances, they do not merit scorn or ridicule.
You just have to give 'em a nudge, once in a while, to keep that pesky Separation of Church and State on everybody's scope, without getting obnoxious about it.
The agenda of a Minority (atheists, agnostics, et al) is usually better served through activism that does not become obnoxious and thereby inviting of ridicule by way of counterpoint.
Or so it seems to this observer.
