A measured reaction
by digby
Here’s how one right winger responded to the news from the new Pew Poll that more people are becoming religiously non-affiliated:
All of which goes to show that religious institutions in America have failed in response to what Dennis Prager calls the most dynamic religion of the last century: secular leftism. Softness on social acceptance of homosexuality isn’t a result of declining religiosity, it’s also a cause of it: secular leftism has challenged traditional religious morality on its own turf, ethics, and seems to be winning. That’s because religious institutions have for too long assumed that they would be able to rely on the overall religiosity of their fellow Americans as a bulwark against secularism – but once a hole appeared in the dam, the waters began to pour through with increasing force.
All of which suggests that religious Americans must not retreat into mere Bible study. They must instead make a muscular, forceful argument for their morality above the secular morality of the left, rather than buying its principles while simultaneously claiming the superiority of its own standards. Religious institutions, fearful of losing membership, have attempted to dilute their ethical preaching in order to keep people coming to church. It isn’t working. People want standards, eternal standards, and they won’t come to church to hear what they could get for less effort on NPR.
Is it any wonder, with religious observance declining overall, that the left has utilized government to finally put its boot on the throat of its longtime adversary? If you don’t get your morality from religion, you get it from yourself; you are your own god. And many who make themselves into a deity wish to reign over others by using the power of the government gun, tolerating no other gods before them, including God.
This battle is only beginning. If religious Americans refuse to take up the mantle of their morality – if they insist on ignoring the leftism eating away at the ethics of their followers – they are destined to lose that battle. And that battle won’t end with empty churches, but with religious people under the government’s thumb.
Keep in mind that these are the same people who also worship individual liberty and fly the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag without and hint of intellectual or emotional dissonance.
It’s quite impressive actually. If F. Scott Fitzgerald was right, these are most intelligent people on the planet.
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