Raptured to irrelevance
by David Atkins
This is funny:
he Boy Scouts of America’s decision last month to allow gay members was made with the blessings of many churches and religious groups—but not all of them. And here’s a pretty significant opponent: The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America with 45,000 congregations and 16 million members, says it will now urge its followers to leave the Scouts, reports CNN. The Boy Scouts says Baptist churches currently sponsor nearly 4,000 units, containing more than 100,000 kids.
The Southern Baptist Convention will vote on a resolution to disaffiliate with the Scouts this month, and a spokesperson says he expects 99% of people to vote in support of it. “Southern Baptists are going to be leaving the Boy Scouts en masse,” he says. The resolution will be non-binding, so it will still be up to individual congregations to decide whether to stay or leave. Southern Baptists have their own youth organization called the Royal Ambassadors, which awards merit badges for mission work and memorizing bible verses, in addition to camping and hiking. The denomination says it’s expecting a surge in new recruits.
I know it’s usual practice to wring one’s hands at developments like this, fearing the inevitable backlash of the religious right. While I can often be a grousing pessimist, I’m not so downcast in this instance.
There was a time in America not so long ago that people like this were mostly apolitical, choosing to devote their attention more to their warped version of the divine than to earthly affairs. It has only been in the last few decades that the religious right has been mobilized into an electoral force.
But now on every subject except perhaps abortion, they find themselves on the outside of civil discourse in America. Not even the Boy Scouts will abide by their prejudice anymore. The Republican Party is trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to rebrand itself in a more libertarian vein, even as politicians like Bachmann and Santorum find cold shoulders within establishment circles.
As the reality of their defeat in the culture wars becomes increasingly apparent, I expect that many of them will abandon the political arena entirely, clinging bitterly to whatever fairy tales they tell themselves and grousing about how their glorious John Galt benefactors were subverted by those uppity hippies.
It hardly matters what they do in their own homes and communities, as long as they abandon the public square to the sane people. It was once thus, and shall hopefully be so again.
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