{"id":6644,"date":"2010-10-06T05:30:36","date_gmt":"2010-10-06T09:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geneveith.com\/?p=6644"},"modified":"2010-10-06T05:30:36","modified_gmt":"2010-10-06T09:30:36","slug":"government-as-force-for-secularization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2010\/10\/government-as-force-for-secularization\/","title":{"rendered":"Government as force for secularization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Conservative Christians used to be all over the map politically, with probably more of them in the Democratic camp.\u00a0 What happened?\u00a0\u00a0 Why are they now tending towards small government political conservatism?\u00a0 I think Michael Gerson, in the context of a column on another issue, hits it exactly:<\/p>\n

Among conservative Christians, government is often viewed as a force of secularization \u2014 a source of both bureaucratic regulation and moral deregulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

via Michael Gerson \u2013 Obama\u2019s new culture war over government\u2019s role<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Government, including liberal governments as in those who followed the New Deal, left religion and traditional morality alone.\u00a0 Then the government\u00a0 outlawed prayer in public schools, legalized abortion, scrubbed the public square of religious references, says that homosexuality is OK, etc., etc.\u00a0 Christians started seeing their government, as Gerson says, as a force for taking religion out of consideration and for promoting secularism.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying that some of those changes might not have been necessary.\u00a0 I\u2019m just saying that this is why so many Christians are now alienated from their government.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conservative Christians used to be all over the map politically, with probably more of them in the Democratic camp.\u00a0 What happened?\u00a0\u00a0 Why are they now tending towards small government political conservatism?\u00a0 I think Michael Gerson, in the context of a column on another issue, hits it exactly: Among conservative Christians, government is often viewed as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,36],"tags":[442,1985],"class_list":["post-6644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-government","category-politics","tag-christian-conservatives","tag-secularization"],"yoast_head":"\nGovernment as force for secularization<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Conservative Christians used to be all over the map politically, with probably more of them in 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