{"id":6776,"date":"2011-10-05T09:07:33","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T16:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=6776"},"modified":"2011-10-05T16:13:46","modified_gmt":"2011-10-05T23:13:46","slug":"christians-need-not-apply","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/christians-need-not-apply\/","title":{"rendered":"Christians Need Not Apply?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Christian by George J. Marlin –
\nChristians who spar in the political arena have grown accustomed to being pounded by secular ideologists who deny the spiritual and look askance at most traditional moral constraints. Though we have taken punches, we are still standing. But the secularists\u2019 latest offensive to eradicate all traces of our Judeo-Christian heritage from American society is, in my judgment, most disconcerting and may be the knockout blow.<\/p>\n

Secularists have moved beyond dismissing Christians as anti-intellectual and anti-rational. They are now publicly ridiculing them and questioning their fitness to participate in public life. They portray religious beliefs as nothing more than superstitions, old wives\u2019 tales, or legends, and claim anyone who believes such drivel is balmy. Is it any wonder, then, that agencies like HHS now think they can ride roughshod over the conscience rights of individuals and religious institutions? <\/p>\n

For example, Washington State University history professor Matthew Avery Sutton warned in a New York Times op-ed that the public must beware of crackpot Christian candidates who believe in the Second Coming and Armageddon. Catholics must be on the suspect list because we hold that \u201cChrist ascended into Heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, from thence he will come again to judge the living and the dead.\u201d <\/p>\n

Such people, the professor fears, are out to harm or destroy President Obama because \u201cnot since [F.D.] Roosevelt have we had a president of charisma and global popularity who so perfectly fits the evangelicals Antichrist mold.\u201d\u00a0 Sutton is convinced that in 2012 apocalyptic anti-statists will accuse Obama of preparing the nation \u201cfor the Antichrist\u2019s global coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n

And they call believers<\/em> delusional.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s New York <\/em>Times<\/em> editor Bill Keller, who demanded in the paper\u2019s magazine that Republican presidential candidates be asked tougher questions about their faith.\u00a0 The 2012 primary season \u201coffers an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life \u2013 and to get over them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keller wants candidates who belong to religions \u201cthat are mysterious or suspect to many Americans\u201d to receive the same level of scrutiny as those who believe \u201cspace aliens dwell among us.\u201d\u00a0 To prove he is open-minded, he concedes all organized religions have \u201cbizarre baggage.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cI grew up believing,\u201d he wrote, \u201cthat a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ.\u201d\u00a0 (It\u2019s fashionable in certain secular salons to refer to Catholics as believing in a kind of cannibalism.)<\/p>\n

Because presidential candidates Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann allegedly belong to \u201cfervid subsets of evangelical Christianity\u201d and Rick Santorum is a practicing Catholic, Keller raises \u201cconcerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.\u201d\u00a0 Hence, he demands that every presidential candidate be asked if they place fealty to \u201csome other authority higher than the Constitution and laws of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

If people are to be judged unfit for public life because they hold that God\u2019s law supersedes man-made civil law then most of America\u2019s most revered leaders would have been declared unfit.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a sampling of American icons who would have flunked the Keller test:<\/p>\n