http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_02/the_secularist_menace049050.php
THE EVANGELICAL MENACE
More to the point, as Damon surely understands, the developments in the U.S. he is worrying about—the contraceptive coverage mandate and the rapid trend towards legalization of same-sex marriage—create gray areas in church-state relations, not some sort of “attack.”In the former case, aside from the Obama administration’s many efforts to accommodate religious organizations, there’s an inherent conflict between respecting the religious views of employers and those of employees—not to mention employees’ interests in obtaining health services.And when you get right down to it, much of the heat over the contraception mandate has involved the claims of religious organizations aboutscientific facts—particularly the claim that IUDs and Plan B birth control cause abortions rather than prevent pregnancies—where they are straying well into secular territory.With respect to same-sex marriage, until we have clear-cut real-life examples of all the hypothetical cases of people losing their livelihoods for failing to participate in gay marriage ceremonies,I don’t see why this particular religion-based form of discrimination should gain more respect than prior (or contemporary) assertions of the inferiority of African-Americans or women.
they claim a war on religion but deny their own wars on pretty much everything except, bearing false witness, rape, racism and bigotry all racist are bigots but not all bigots are racist.
they try to force their beliefs which bear no resemblance to what i learned in Sunday School on everybody else and when their Godless teachings are rejected there is a war on it, are all republicans dyslexic, they always put the wrong party on the right infringement. pun intended.
In any event, these are conflicts, not acts of religious persecution, and the idea that it is liberals who are being intolerant here strikes me as partaking of the kind of “floodgates” argument that eventually leads one to equating exposure to “Happy Holiday” greetings to the stake and the cross.
Beyond Linker’s groundless (IMO) fears, there is the very old but much-forgotten historical fact that secularism has been very good for religion in America. TNR’s Isaac Chotiner notes that America’s uniquely “pluralist” form of secularism has encouraged the faithful to adjust to changing circumstances and respond to challenges to the faith. In the same magazine in 2005,
Alan Wolfe made a powerful argument that the very types of conservative evangelical Protestant Christians most agitated about “liberalism” today owe their existence and growth to liberal church-state separation doctines. Here’s a sample (do read Wolfe’s entire essay if you are interested in this topic, and as it happens I alsowrote a gloss on it back in the day):
America’s free air and free soil worked to the benefit of all American religions, but its truly special blessings flowed to conservative Protestantism. Protestantism’s greatest source of strength has been its capacity to re-invent itself.
As older modes of worship lost their power to attract, new modes rushed in to fill the gap. In the nineteenth century, the urban revival hall and the rural camp meeting drew crowds away from the staid chapels of the more upper-class faiths. In the twenty-first century, the megachurch brings in those more exposed to Oprah than to Amos, as organ music and hymns give way to contemporary Christian rock, and the diet book is studied more carefully than the Bible, and Sunday attire is replaced by aisle-rolling and spirit possession.
Listen to the sermons in the sprawling, dynamic, and theologically incoherent world of conservative Protestantism, and you may hear liberalism denounced from the pulpit; but these jeremiads are philosophically and historically blind, since they are oblivious to the fact that without liberalism, there would not exist the vibrant voluntary sector, the responsiveness to popular taste, or even the freedom to attack the Democratic Party that serve as the homily’s backdrop.
I think what bugs me most about Damon’s piece is that he’s reinforcing the conservative view that the greatest threat to American religion is from the hostility of unbelievers, while I continue to think a larger peril flows from the confusion of belief with fundamentally secular efforts to advance laissez-faire capitalism, American nationalism (and sometimes militarism), partriarchal family structures, and what God-hater Ayn Rand called “the virtue of selfishness.”
this is a very prolific article as it touches on realities not before brought to the table, it shows the influence on many by the few, those so desperate for leadership don't recognize it because they have yet to experience it. being nurtured by those with a single agenda of domination and all it infers spot them as easy marks and the right wing base has proven that to be true, reason 1 they still support that which has never been in their interest. this has been a decades old plan by republican supporters to influence you and your vote.
G W Bush, "you can fool some of the people all of the time and those are the ones you want to concentrate on".
