When defensive becomes offensive

Growing up and into my early adult life I heard about the insidious nature of the secular humanists, those godless culture destroyers. We heard about how this movement had put an end to prayer in schools and moved evolution into the schools. Other hot buttons included abortion and homosexuality. The goals of churches were to train good soldiers in the fight for faith. If the godless won, we would lose all we held to be most sacred.

The evangelicals are now embedded in the government, there is no doubt. Ironically, while they moved in under the idea that they wanted to protect their own values, what has surfaced is intolerance as well.

I suspect that if “creation” or “intelligent design” was allowed to be taught in the schools, most of the evangelical politicians would leave no room for evolution. What started as a defensive or protective movement into politics at the beginning now looks pretty militant and offensive.

Tolerance and acceptance are very hard for us to maintain. When it gets mixed in with religion that espouses the “one true way”, and has political power backing it up, it becomes even more complicated.