Could Religion Change The Presidential Election? Written on March 7, 2012 by David L. Goetsch
The last time religion was an issue in a presidential election was when John Kennedy sought the office. That might change in the 2012 election. Consider the current scenario. The Republican candidates include a Mormon and two Catholics. The incumbent, President Obama, is hard to pin down on religion but seems to adopt the religion of his audience—including Islam. Will religion become an issue in the 2012 presidential race? Interestingly, it probably will but only because the liberal media will try to make it an issue.
Writing for the The Washington Times Wesley Pruden had this to say about religion in the current presidential election: “The pundits are parsing religion again…Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, thinks the nation is in peril because several Republican candidates…are men …of faith. It’s not easy for liberals like Mr. Keller to live in a corrupt, rotten society like ours, where every four years right-thinking citizens who read the New York Times, vacation on Martha’s Vineyard and eat their organic peas have to take a primer on what the crazy church folk, with whom they are doomed to share the planet, believe is important.”
While it is true that the views of conservatives often drive liberals to distraction, it is the views of Christian conservatives that transform otherwise meek and mild members of the left into snarling attack dogs—so stand by. Expect the anti-Christian rhetoric to fly and the volume to increase as the presidential campaign heats up. Few things frighten liberals more than the prospect of a president who looks to the Holy Bible for moral guidance and who, Heaven forbid, prays.
No individual personified the attitude of the left toward religion more than the late atheist, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens referred to the Christian beliefs of one Republican candidate as “…idiotic religious rhetoric.” The thing that Americans need to understand about Hitchens and other anti-religion liberals is that they are just as religious as the most dedicated Christians. The difference is that they worship at the altar of secular humanism instead of the throne of Christ. Whereas Christians worship Christ and subscribe to the Holy Bible, secular humanists worship man and subscribe to The Humanist Manifesto. To secular humanists man is god—a convenient belief system for people who wish to be their own judge of what is right and wrong.
Because the left is likely to invest so much energy in attacking religion during the 2012 election campaign, it is important for Americans to understand what liberals are really saying with their over-the-top attacks on Christianity. Liberals are not really against religion, just the Christian religion. Even Christopher Hitchens, who opposed all religions including Islam, reserved his most venomous attacks for Christianity. What liberals really mean when they attack religion in general and Christianity specifically is that they want the world to subscribe to their religion—secular humanism.
Conservatives should expect the anti-religion rhetoric of the left to be in full blossom once the primaries are over and the presidential election begins. Consequently, they should be prepared to challenge liberals who attack religion by pointing out that they are just as religious as the most committed Christians. The difference is in that they worship man instead of God.
