Last week I received another expression of a very common sentiment in the comments box at Philosophical Fragments \u2013 and the commenter wished it known that she was \u201cnot a libertine\u201d but a 50-year-old former-Christian woman with a long marriage and three children, two in the military. She wrote:<\/p>\n
George Bush and his supporters were a large reason that I left Christianity and have become quite hostile to the evangelical agenda. I vote against it at every opportunity and make sure none of my money goes to organizations who support the evangelical desire to control everyone else and shove their views down the throats of people who aren\u2019t interested.<\/p>\n
She went on to write that \u201cthe large majority of my friends and colleagues agree with me.\u201d Later that day, I read a piece at The Washington Post in which Sally Quinn lamented that Republicans have \u201chijacked\u201d God for political purposes. \u201dI do not believe religion should play any role in politics,\u201d she said. It\u2019s \u201cdepressing and unAmerican\u201d that faith \u201ccontinues to make a big difference in how people view candidates,\u201d but Republicans in particular \u201cuse the dog-whistle of God every chance they get.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quinn fails to see that the Obama campaign has done just as much as, if not more than, the Romney campaign to leverage religious belief. Since she thinks that Romney is using religious language in the service of selfish (non-religious) ends, she views his words as \u201cpandering\u201d and deception and manipulation. But since she believes that Obama is using religious language in the service of the true and good and beautiful, then he is merely explaining his heart to the American people, merely doing what is necessary.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week I received another expression of a very common sentiment in the comments box at Philosophical Fragments \u2013 and the commenter wished it known that she was \u201cnot a libertine\u201d but a 50-year-old former-Christian woman with a long marriage and three children, two in the military. She wrote: George Bush and his supporters were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2251,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n