Evangelical leaders urge step back from politics

[kuzadd]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24506486/

DALLAS - A group of U.S. evangelical leaders called on Wednesday for a pullback from party politics so that followers would not become "useful idiots" exploited for partisan gain.

well, better late then never.

One in four U.S. adults count themselves as evangelical Protestants, giving them serious clout in a country where religion and politics often mix. Conservative evangelicals have become a key support base for the Republican Party.

interesting percentage. Particularily noted for the fact that some deny their influence.

"Christians from both sides of the political spectrum, left as well as right, have made the mistake of politicizing faith," the manifesto declares.

"That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes 'the regime at prayer,' Christians become 'useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form," it said.

politicized christians, being used and abused for political reasons?

well only if you let yourselves be.

It appears some leaders are realizing it's an issue.

[WIP]

The "Christian Nation" folks who've taken over the Republican Party in the U.S. can't seem to figure out that the more involved their ministers are with party politics, the more opportunities for corruption and collusion. The influence can go in both directions, and this is why the Founding Fathers of the U.S. Constitution wanted church and state kept separate from each other. They were aware of how corrupt the official state churches were in Europe, and they also wanted to the new states from adopting official churches since the abuses of the theocratic governments of the Puritan colonies was still fresh in their minds.

If people feel oppressed by their government, and the state church acts as an adjunct of that government, many people begin to reject both. An old friend of mine who came from Spain told me that there was a common expression over there that roughly translates as "half of the people follow the priest with a candle, the other half chase him with a torch." The leading evangelists in the U.S. are probably getting a little antsy right now about how their parishoners see them now that the Bush Administration and the Republican Party are being rejected by more and more Americans, and fear that they are being seen in the same light as the Catholic Church in Franco's Spain.