With the final stages of this year’s presidential election starting in earnest, Clay Farris Naff sees a profound reason to be concerned in the way that religion is emerging as a wedge issue. He’s written an essay in the Huffington Post that discusses the spreading rhetoric of what we calls a “reactionary rhetoric of Old Time Religion”; something that he’s seeing happen in all the major faith voices in the West. Even the atheists are reacting with their own version of uncompromising rhetoric.
“There’s not much of the ancient wisdom of the Middle East that speaks to modern times, but one old saw surely rings true today: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Nevertheless, arrogance, self-congratulation, and self-induced idiocy continue to fracture the secular and religious left.
Meantime, as those who have a, um, vested interest in Old Time Religion grow more desperate to preserve their power, they are making unholy alliances to tear at every stitch of progress made in the last 50 years. I do not exaggerate when I say the entire fabric of our society is at risk.
Despite the efforts of the GOP to put a few black faces before the cameras, racism has had a big resurgence on the right. After President Obama’s election, UCLA research psychologist Eric Knowles did careful work to bring it to light.”
[…] The real divide today is not between the Judeo-Christian West and the Islamic East, but between the reactionary forces of Old Time Religion and the rest of us. If we don’t see that in time, in November we will have our second straight historic election — but this time it will be for all the wrong reasons. People of good faith, we have just a few months to recognize, rally and unite.
The full article is found here.