Presidential appointments such as Supreme Court nominees are crucial to our religious liberties. Therefore, having a President who is a Christian believing in the divinity of Jesus Christ is most important to us…regardless of which denomination the candidate belongs. This should preclude a Muslim or a Mormon being elected in either party.

dlw

It does come down to a matter of ecumenicism, where we love/respect our enemies/opponents by accepting that we need to compromise and agree to disagree on matters of significance.

I fear your language comes across as too inflammatory and fails to help improve inter-cultural communication so as to reduce the faith-based political acrimony in our country. At least, that’s the tack I take at the Anti-Manicheist.
dlw

I think you misread my intentions.

Of course religious views underly the political involvements of many
if not most in history regardless of what thier political positions
may have been. As I said in my essay, the framers made thier decision
not because they were irreligious. (One can only cover so much in one
essay.) .

I am also not opposed to religion or to churches, and there is nothing
in what I wrote that could be remotely construed that way.

Our main area of disagreement may be that there have always been those who also advocate theocratic politics and governance. That tradition continues
to this day. To ignore that truth, is to place at risk the errosion of
religious freedom for everyone, in my opinion. I would invite you to
look into it further.

As for the hapless Democrats, they just don’t know how to defend
themselves against viscious Republican smears on thier personal
religious character, and the values of religious pluralism and
equality that the party professes.

–FC

As I understand it, the US did become more religious as a Country with the early 19th Ctry evangelistic revivals and that religious impulses for social and political reform have historically been important for us.

The separation of Church and State has meant their autonomy, not their segregation, historically. The prevalence of the segregation motif has grown in the 20th Ctry with the ascendancy of the liberalism of the Democratic party.

I’m against revisionism, but I think it is important to bear in mind that Christianity as it developed in the US was always involved with politics, but did so in a way that was not theocratic. Churches were among the first intermediary institutions between people and the state and they have every right to remain as intermediary institutions.

The problem with the religious right is the general lack of highly-developed habits of political deliberation, which are in part theologically-discouraged. This, and the perception that Democrats are not faith-friendly and insensitive to Red American culture, makes it so too many people give their votes too easily to the Republican party.

dlw