Although White tries to play them down, his book rightly highlights the similarities (many more than the ones I noted recently on my blog<\/a>) between the religious right and the historic rhetoric of fascism. Perhaps the most moving moment in the book is when he tells how an elderly Jewish woman came to show her support for gays because \u201clast time they came for you first\u2026never again\u201d. The way homosexuals are being demonized and made scapegoats for all our social ills is precisely the way the Nazis started<\/a>.<\/p>\n There is also a wonderful treatment of the question of the founding fathers and their intentions. The big concern most of us have is not that somehow the religious right will manage to rewrite the constitution or remove the first amendment \u2013 I doubt that the majority of Americans would ever agree to that. But our fear is that they may not need to do that \u2013 it may be sufficient for them simply to convince a majority of Americans (or the majority of those who care enough to vote) that the first amendment never intended what historically all except the modern religious right have assumed, namely that it protects all religions from all others and from the state, as well as the state from religious dominance, and does not just protect Christianity from the state\u2019s interference. There is a wonderful statement by James Madison<\/a>, which can be read online<\/a> and which is quoted in part in the book. Read it for yourselves. All I\u2019ll say is that it is as clear as can be that the founding fathers foresaw precisely the sorts of maneuvers the modern religious right is attempting to use and they set in place in our constitution and in their own writings safeguards against them. As long as we have their bulwark protecting our freedoms, we ought to be safe, but the great fear is that while we finght wars allegedly defending our freedoms, individuals and groups in our own country may themselves succeed in undermining them, again not overtly and in obvious moves such as an amendment revoking the bill of rights, but in an attempt to persuade public opinion to ignore or reinterpret the foundational structures that keep us free and safe.<\/p>\n In our day and age many Christians, including very prominent ones, have chosen a lifestyle that is fundamentally at odds with their claim to be Christians. This is a lifestyle choice I am talking about \u2013 it is not something genetic, something innate, something inevitable. It is a sin that is so abominable that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-1390443839397959220?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\")