Will the Last Religious Politician Please Turn Out the Lights?
Photo Credit: istolethetvIf at one time being a member of a church was almost a requirement for anyone running for office, that time has long since passed. These days, portraying a candidate as a “fine, upstanding Christian” is enough to send any potential office seeker to the political graveyard. Due to constant stereotyping by liberals, such a description now conjures an image that is a combination of Boss Hogg, Huey Long, and Elmer Gantry.
The result, among others, is that the openly Christian candidate is out of favor with the political establishment here and abroad.
Across the pond in England, antagonism toward those who are churched and who openly express their religious beliefs has long prevailed. According to “Erasmus” a columnist for The Economist, Margaret Thatcher may well have been the “last British prime minister openly and emphatically to acknowledge the influence of Christianity on her thinking, in particular terms not fuzzy ones. […] In her religious origins, she was informed by a passion that was foreign to the English establishment.”
Erasmus goes on to explain that openly professed religious sensibilities evoke such revulsion from the British establishment that former Prime Minister Tony Blair experienced a great deal of pressure to keep his faith to himself: “Tony Blair is passionately religious but was famously discouraged by his advisors from ‘doing God’ in public because of the fear he might sound nutty. ”
The feelings of revulsion toward “nutty” people of faith certainly have not been confined to Britain. Most Western establishments, political or otherwise, are hostile toward openly Christian politicians, reserving their most vicious attacks for those who frankly profess their faith in Christ. In America, the vice presidential candidacy of Sarah Palin, to whom liberals assigned the perspicacity of Elmer Fudd, was a prime example of how worked up leftist wolf PACs become at the prospect of a conservative Christian running for high office.
When did the political tide turn against Christians and other people of faith?
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