Davey Henreckson is afraid I've missed his main point:

I am not try to whine-out about how the left behaves as badly as the right (though that, again, may be very true). I am trying to point out that partisans of both sides of the political spectrum use civil religion for their own purposes. And I would like to suggest that Senator Obama is just as guilty of this sin as Pat Robertson. It’s the whole plank-in-the-eye syndrome that plagues right and left-wingers.

Well, no, I got that. I'm no expert on these issues, but I'm not sure it's safe to say that "both sides of the political spectrum use civil religion for their own purposes." Yes, Obama, yes, Bill Clinton started the Faith-Based Initiatives under a different name. But then who? Carter was open about his evangelical Baptist beliefs, but he was also the one who signed into law the prohibition on religious academies receiving federal tax breaks. LBJ actually slipped the requirement that non-profits abstain from political activity into a bill, literally in the dead of night. You'd really have to go back to FDR's relief efforts to find anything comparable to what Obama's proposing.

All that being said, I'm happy to stipulate for the sake of argument that Democrats would use civil religion for political purposes, if it suited their needs. It's just that we have differentiate rhetorical strategies - which both parties have definitely used, ad nauseum - from actual governance. On the latter score, Republicans almost certainly come out ahead.

All that said, that wasn't even my point, which was mostly aimed at Dreher. Rod, as usual, sets up a false equivalence here, then charges Democrats with not living up to their end of the wankerrific structure he's built for them.

While there are legitimate concerns with Obama's proposal, no responsible commentator that I've seen so far has charged him with creeping theocracy. That, counter to that cretin Dreher, is not because they're hypocrites, but because they understand the difference between actual theocracy and a simple but troubling blurring of the lines between church and state.

Like Davey, I'm tied up in holiday weekend activities, but if you want to know more about the unsavory characters the Bush administration has associated with, and their fundamentally anti-democratic bent (all puns intentional), go read Talk to Action, then read up on the Blogs against Theocracy. It's all very educational and not a little bit creepy. Those guys really are theocrats, as they'll occasionally admit. By comparison, Obama has good intentions but is possibly on the wrong track.

So sure, that might be a speck in liberals' eye compared to the plank in conservatives' oracular apparatus. But the problem with that setup is that while liberals are fretting over their sins of judgment, conservatives are wrecking the joint. There are times when "a pox on both their houses" is the appropriate response, and there are times when you just have to call the B.S. for what it is. Or as Reinhold Niebuhr put it:

Men who are equally sinners in the sight of God need not be equally guilty of a specific act of wrongdoing in which they are involved. It is important to recognize that Biblical religion has emphasized the inequality of guilt just as much as the equality of sin.

Part 2 by Omar on a collaborative book-review on one of most important book addressing Muslim opinion. The following is quoted from him.

| Intro | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

One needn't be a theophobe to believe that government ought to be conformed to the will of the people, not of the divine.

This comment really ties together a number of ideas I have been writing on for awhile - and I think you are NOT a theophobe because you believe that. You are a theophobe if you believe that those who do not have this divided, "enlightened" view of the secular and the divine realms are trying to take over the government for Christ (or Allah) - and you irrationally fear that. After all, as Joe Carter contends:

 My people resisted the Nazis in Holland, yet were no radicals. To us, Eisenhower was almost Moses. The John Birchers will hold their noses as they grudgingly support McCain or Romney. Whoever our next president is, they will tear him/her up as a liberal after the November election.

 I won't waste my vitriol picking on the "nice" Republicans. Furthermore, we country folks have a lot of work to do as the weather warms up: growing pumpkins, 3 acres to mow, etc.

 I'm taking a vacation from blogging until November. I'll be around now and then as a lurker, handing out cookies. Here are a few thoughts that I'd like to share.

A saying I have used a lot is that I think being on opposite sides of the fence from another should be a process where both folks get closer and closer to the fence, until both folks are leaning on the fence chatting - rather than screaming at each other from a distance. Then, maybe, occasionally, one of them can see whether it is possible to kick some of the slats out of the fence that separates them.

That obviously makes me a moderate - a position in which I am quite comfortable. Now, the ideologues on both sides view those folks leaning on the fence chatting as less than pure, and less than right. They, of course, are pure and right - and a bit hoarse.

There are a couple of posts over at the Stand to Reason blog that warmed my heart - because they both point to the dialogue occurring in the middle. The middle is, of course, where dialogue occurs.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.--Eric Hoffer, the Longshoreman Philosopher

When my daughter, who's about to cast her very first vote for Barack Obama, was 6, she told me I couldn't be an atheist, because I had no faith. What I have, dear girl, is a healthy cynicism.  So healthy, in fact, that it often too vigorously cares, and should shut up.

 I Peter 3 commands Christians "If someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it. But do this in a gentle and respectful way." (nlt) See also Acts 1:8.

 I was raised Baptist in a Lutheran/Catholic neighborhood where people of diverse faiths got along well. Witnessing to another person is against my nature, but the Holy Spirit has given me the ability to do so. Not to toot my own horn, but I have seen five professions of faith.

At the last of our Dryden candidate forums, in the middle of an ugly campaign, a well-known member of the community attacked our Town Supervisor candidate for comments on her blog that suggested that she didn't believe in God.  I was astonished both by the attack and by the not particularly accurate letter that followed it, but this creates another problem for me personally.  This kind of attack makes it much more difficult for me to present my faith-based reasoning for many of my own political positions.

Fortunately, our candidate won on Tuesday anyway, but there is still a lot to think about here.

"Max Blumenthal takes us on another shocking trip to the far shores of the Christian right, this time to the 2007 Value Voters Summit. Starring Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani (momentarily in drag), James Dobson, "Lucky Lou" Sheldon, Star Parker, Phyllis Schlafly, Frank Gaffney, and many more of the wingers we know and don't necessarily love."

In Max's eight minute video, Theocracy Now, religious right radio talk show host Janet Folger rails against Mitt Romney's Mormonism; Lou "Lucky Louie" Sheldon raves about homosexuality; Star Parker wants to "quarantine sodomites"; Mike Huckabee compares abortion to the Nazi holocaust and claims that banning abortion could help solve the problem of illegal immigration; James Dobson calls Rudy Guiliani "evil"; Bob Knight worries about segregating rest rooms; and Brandon Vallorini, a spokesman for the Christian Reconstructionist think tank American Vision gets put on the spot regarding capital punishment for blasphemy and homosexuality -- and there is much, much more but...

One of the interesting things about contempory politics, and discussion of theology, is that we all love sex. For me, the Jeremiah passage and even Falwell's words did not raise the issue of actual adultery, or homosexuality, or any of the non-sexual ways the United States as a nation might have turned from God and incurred God's wrath.

Certainly, in the Old Testament God used one nation (even ones he didn't like) to wreck vengence on another nation (even the one He favored) He wanted to punish. Then, He would turn around and punish the weapon for allowing Him to wield it.

In our modern age, we are loathe it seems to even think of ourselves as part of a nation, or tribe, or even a family group. We are individuals. The idea that we bear collective responsibility as a people and that we might, as individuals, suffer God's punishment for what our corporate group did is almost alien to us. Now, that might be one of those ways we turn from God . . .

That isnt the focus though - go below

 The Supreme Court is hearing arguments about whether public school students in Juneau, Alaska can say "BONG HITS 4 JESUS." What Independent Baptists are saying today is just as nonsensical.
 On July 1 at Berea Baptist Church in Athens, Alabama, Pastor Pat Lawrence opened his sermon quoting Nehemiah 2:11: "... for I was the king's cupbearer." He deduced from this that the church should dominate the state, and that the barrier to this earthly paradise of theocracy was desegregation.

The following is my contribution to the Blog Against Theocracy blogswarm
Also posted at my blog

I grew up in a religiously plural society: Trinidad and Tobago. Our last three Prime Ministers were Methodist, Hindu and Anglican, while our last three Presidents were Muslim, Methodist and Anglican. The Inter-Religious Organisation tends to offer prayers at the opening of official functions - sometimes Roman Catholic, sometimes Bahá’í. And while they jostle for position, overall the IRO serves a useful role as a conscience for the politicians. So while it’s fairly easy to see that a state religion is a threat to religious liberty and free thought, what’s wrong with giving all religion some amount of special status in society?