Anti-Climacus

QUOTE: Joe Carter

"When those of us on the “religious right” hear such paranoid ranting it naturally elicits a chuckle. After all, more than half of American evangelicals are either Baptists or non-denominational. We don’t even want a centralized church government much less a central government controlled by the church. So where does this silly canard come from?..."

As usual, it's the Presbyterians who ruin everything, I think (us and our silly system of heirarchical church government).

"This double standard is embarrassingly obvious. When the Religious Left supports abortion and gay marriage they are praised as compassionate and progressive. When the Religious Right opposes these same issues they are denounced as religious zealots who want to impose their morality on others. There’s a sense that these critics believe that the right to vote and influence legislation should be limited to the people who have politically correct religious views. The enthusiastic applause that followed Garrison Keillor’s plan to “pass a constitutional amendment to take the right to vote away from born-again Christians” is a shocking reminder of the bias against religiously orthodox Americans."

I've never taken as dim a view of paternalism as some, because it always seemed relatively obvious to me that so long as people are legislating, they're going to try and impose their morality in some sense, narrow or broad. And given that (and my preference for my own morality), why not try to legislate mine*?

*I am being, as usual, about half tongue-in-cheek there.