Why bother? Can they even win? Don't the nuts outnumber the normals? It's a tight race.
According to this ABC poll, Evangelical Protestants believe abortion should be illegal at 63 to 35. That's 27% of all Americans total. Non-Evangelicals think it should be legal at 69 to 29. That's 17% of the population.
Total it up, and we've still got 22 out of 42 Protestants who want to make abortion illegal. So why should we trust liberal Christians to take back their churches? Why shouldn't we demand that rather they work to delegitimize the influence of their churches on our government? Why shouldn't we ask that they all just quit, if they want to be respected members of the Progressive movement?
Because we certainly can't trust them to take control of their Churches and THEN relinquish power, and the endgame will be the same, with liberals in charge... assuming they represent the wishes of their members. Now is the time for liberal Christians to finally "get" what it means to be an American, and to accept the secular nature of American politics; NOW, not AFTER they've won their sisyphean battle.
So let's have it out. I want to see the arguments of liberal Christians who believe their Churches have a right to influence American politics. Because it's my view they don't, liberal or conservative.
Would liberals throw away all that power? Judging by the comments of fellow Kossacks, no... they'd try to use it in the same Theocratic way that the right would.
Judging by posts here at Kos, liberal Christians see a big part of their "mission" (the latest version of it anyway) as winning back their Churches from the radical right groups that have taken them over.
But why? What would they do with them if they won them back? Why shouldn't they just start new smaller Churches, that don't intend to influence politics?
Why? They want the power. And sure, that's better than nothing, them taking them back, but is it good enough? Are liberal Christians being good enough Progressives here? Or are their principles too... Christian, too Theocratic, and too unConstitutional regardless?
Now that these churches have grown to the scale where they've become almost whole communities unto themselves, with outright political aspirations and influence? And the denominations themselves hold vast social and political powers... these Churches have become dangerous weapons of mass deception.
Because the problem isn't that liberal Christians have lost their Churches, the problem is that liberal Christians (because they are Christian) aren't able to admit that organized religion has no place in American politics. That's not monolithic, but it's been surprising how many Kossacks seem to believe it. In fact, they argue many of the same strawman "Constitutional" arguments that the right makes: They have the right to assemble and speak out, etc. Sure they do, but not in politics. That's why preachers can't endorse candidates, even though they do.
So, I say why bother winning back the churches? The goal should be to delegitimize them as political voices, not just change ownership. Their scale and power make them tools for unConstitutional evil in America regardless of whether they are run by conservatives or by liberals.
I say it's the wrong strategy to win them back. I say it's smarter for liberals to quit en masse, and to deligitmize the idea that religion has a place in politics.
It's like Dems and corporate contributions. We need a platform that gives us the right moral standpoint, the right moral highground. And liberal Christians will take that away, if we let them. They don't know it, but they are hurting the Progressive movement by insisting that non-secular groups should have a political voice.
