From: keiner@earthview.cms.udel.edu (Louis Keiner)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: "Christian Politics"??
Date: 30 Aug 92 06:16:02 GMT

(I think that this subject is very interesting and relevant to discussions
on religion, provided we don't get too far afield. |)........)

I have watched with interest the activities of evangelical Christians on behalf
of the Republican party. I can only respond with observations of what has
transpired in my own Baptist denomination. I think the recent political 
activity has to do with Christian's perception of government, and the roll it
should play in regards to religion.

In colonial days, groups such as the Baptists were persecuted because they were
not a part of the state church; what that was depended on what state you were 
in. Because of this, they developed a great distrust in government involvement
in religion. Roger Williams was expelled from the Massachusetts colony for 
disagreeing with official doctrine; he went and set up the Rhode Island colony.
When this country was formed, Baptists were very vocal in their demand for a
bill of rights that would prevent any government sponsoring or intrusion into
religion. As long as government was seen as a threat to their freedom to 
worship freely, there was distrust and a desire to keep government completely
out of religious life.

A funny thing happens, though, when a group finds that it is no longer the
minority in danger of being opressed by government. When Baptists, especially
in the south, found that they formed a majority most places, they ceased to
think of government as a threat, and started to think of it as a means to an
end. They started seeing government as a means to stop what they saw as a 
movement of society away from their positions, or values.

In recent years, the Southern Baptists have pulled out of the Baptist Joint
Committee on Public Affairs, which is a lobbying group in Washington set up
by several Baptist denominations to lobby Congress to protect religious
liberty. They pulled out because the BJCPA refused to lobby against abortion
and for school prayer, because BJCPA felt that abortion was outside of it's
religious liberty scope, and that lobbying for school prayer would be against
it's purpose of religious freedom. The Southern Baptists set up their own
lobbying agency to press for the issues that they felt were important. In
all this, there is a shift from seeing government as a threat to seeing
government as a way to enforce what they see as important societal values.
There is a shift in lobbying Congress for religious liberty to lobbying
Congress to pass their own program.

I personally feel very betryed by this, (you can tell which end of the Baptist
spectrum I'm at). 

I'm afraid that this has been rather sketchy, but out computer network is 
going down in five minutes and I had to get this out.......As I said, these
are just observations of my own denomination. I would be interested in hearing
of others.

Peace,

Louis

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Louis E. Keiner - College of Marine Studies        "Let be damned for eternity
University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716            only those who would make
keiner@earthview.cms.udel.edu                       themselves gods." Voltaire
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