Conflating Religion With Morality

David Gushee seems to have trouble following the train of thought he himself initiates. In "Do the Democrats have a moral agenda for 2016?" he does note how superficial politicians can be when talking about religion. Sadly, that's about the only thing Gushee gets right. Throughout the piece he tacitly accepts the all to prevalent view that religion automatically translates into morality. It doesn't. He never seems to realize that his conflation of the two only serves to reinforce a blatantly false and dangerous myth. It should also occur to anyone with any sense of history, reason, and decency that mixing religion into politics has almost always made things worse.

"5 Things Christians Should Remember This Election Cycle"

I'm pretty sure that Benjamin Corey means well in his September 17th blog post. A few of his points have some merit, though in a superficial and somewhat self-serving manner. However, he fails to note the most important point for any theist to remember during any election cycle.

The United States of America is NOT a theocracy! We live in a democracy. Religion should not be imposed on anyone. All Americans are free to worship or not as they see fit. Religion has no place in public policy. Period. So all his nonsense about Christian standards and criteria is misguided, even arrogant. He seems to think, like far too many Christians, that he really knows the true Jesus and the essence of Christianity.That there even was/is a Jesus or an essential Christianity is in itself a myth.

Righteous Vote Rigging?

Republican, Conservative, Religious Right; these terms are not synonymous but there is a considerable amount of overlap. All three are certainly interested in gaining power by any means. Over the past few years they have routinely pushed for restrictions on voting. Sometimes these restrictions are in the form of regulations (which they usually oppose rather vocally) or laws. Sometimes it is in the form of social activities. They have pushed politics in the pulpit. It is also not uncommon for many voting wards/precincts in "red" states to be locating in places of worship. This seems to contradict the view that the "almighty" is actually all powerful. After all  if God wanted a specific politician elected or law passed why would they need to try rigging the results?

An article in this month's American Prospect, "Who Stole the Election?", summed up the Right's need for vote tampering pretty well. The quotation from Paul Weyrich is quite telling, "I don't want everybody to vote. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

If you don't know who Weyrich is I would encourage you to look him up. He was a longtime Republican/Conservative activist and a founding figure in the rise of the Religious Right.