"Creeping Fundamentalism" Watch II

Jimmie at The Sundries Shack has a great response to William Raspberry's editorial last Sunday, and I wish I'd written something like this instead of just giving Raspberry a mild raspberry.

Raspberry, going off the study mentioned in this news item, is certain that Christians will divide the nation because of an unwillingness to compromise that stems from their belief that compromise is a sin. Yes, it's ridiculous. Jimmie explains it to you.

Believers haven’t changed what they believe, nor have they measurably changed how they express that belief. The idea that, in the last four years, Christians of every stripe have suddenly come to think that compromise on their beliefs in the public arena is sin is certainly one theory, but not one that’s very plausible.

Here’s a better theory. People of faith have seen their own beliefs discounted, eroded by legislation, and shoved to the backwaters of public discourse and public policy. They’ve been increasingly treated as ignorant hicks for their faith and told that their personal beliefs have no place in public while watching others’ personal beliefs becoming the law of the land. The problem, in their minds, has been that they have been too willing to compromise. They’ve been willing to give ground on all sorts of issues because they believed that the entire point of compromise was fair play. Except they didn’t get compromise in return. They got derision. They got condescention. They got insults. And they’re tired of it.

These folks can read a Constitution as well as anyone else and they don’t see a single thing in there that prevents their moral beliefs being less valuable, or less legal, than the moral beliefs of others. And they’re sick and tired of compromising on their beliefs and getting nothing in return but a public society that’s openly hostile to them and their beliefs.

Go read the whole thing.