via Gavin , a rabbi worries about what he sees as “anti-Christian” backlash. He seems unable to distinguish between “anti-Christian” and “worried about fundamentalists”. The books the rabbi cites as evidence that there is a “war against Christianity” are books that are wary of the Christian Right. The same rabbi also worries about the curtailing of “freedom” by the banning of smoking in public places. He also seems to associate the Christian Right (the target of the books) with “fervent Christianity”. When “fervent Christianity” is indistinguishable from having a “W” sticker on your car, or even better, staunchly defending Bush against all evidence to the contrary, and associating such fervor with “keeping the faith”, it seems that the rabbi’s harkening back to unheeded warnings against Nazi Germany has it backwards. It seems it was the backing of the most of the German Christian establishment that obscured the true nature of the Nazi plan from the rest of the world.
But I don’t turn around and then come up with a “Church-State separation” dogma that warns against “mixing religion and politics” because of the “dangers”. There are “dangers” with secular ideologies (and I would contend that much of the Christian Right political ideology has more in common with secular ideologies of Liberal Democracy than it does with Biblical Christianity, so then are we to wail against “mixing bad politics with politics?”
