Posted on 04/10/2009 11:32:24 PM PDT by Schnucki
Edited on 04/12/2009 11:03:20 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
America's religious Right has conceded that the election of US President Barack Obama has sealed its defeat in the cultural war with permissiveness and secularism.
Leading evangelicals have admitted that their association with George W. Bush has not only hurt the cause of social conservatives but contributed to the failure of the key objectives of their 30-year struggle.
James Dobson, 72, who resigned recently as head of Focus on the Family - one of the largest Christian groups in the country - and once denounced the Harry Potter books as witchcraft, acknowledged the dramatic reverse for the religious Right in a farewell speech to staff.
“We tried to defend the unborn child, the dignity of the family, but it was a holding action,” he said.
“We are awash in evil and the battle is still to be waged. We are right now in the most discouraging period of that long conflict. Humanly speaking, we can say we have lost all those battles.”
Despite changing the political agenda for a generation, and helping push the Republicans to the Right, evangelicals have won only minor victories in limiting the availability of abortion. Meanwhile the number of states permitting civil partnerships between homosexuals is rising, and the campaign to restore prayer to schools after 40 years - a decision that helped create the Moral Majority - has got nowhere.
Though the struggle will go on, the confession of Mr Dobson, who started his ministry from scratch in 1977, came amid growing concern that church attendance in the United States is heading the way of Britain, where no more than ten per cent worship every week.
Unease is rising that a nation founded - in the view of evangelicals - purely as a Christian country will soon, like northern Europe, become “post-Christian”.
Recent surveys
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Has Dobson Thrown In The Towel? Not Quite (FULL AUDIO)
A lot of those so-called "defenders" voted for Obama.
The right defeated is more powerful than evil triumphant.
Inman Ping
Watching my kids and their friends the last twenty years, they have developed BS detectors that work in " social studies " class just as well as when watching commercials on TV. I still enjoy remembering how, as tots, they laughed and mocked at "Captain Planet."
It is the deluded liberal parents who perpetrate child-abuse by role-modelling liberal depravity who are the worst offenders. The teachers are largely impotent to spread the virus if it is not supported at home.
“and as much as I love Palin... I would not vote for her if she was partnered with mitt... it would prove her decision making abilities were sub par.
WHAT YOU SAID!
“and once denounced the Harry Potter books as witchcraft,”
And they wonder why they lost?
“I’ll take a Mormon leader over a Muslim Socialist any day.
I think we’re talking about a mormon socialist - or at least a conservative poser
You were saying — I have kinda had my doubts about Rick Warren. Just an inkling but I can’t put a finger on why. I really know nothing about him. But if this is true, then my suspicions are right.
—
Well, I did have my serious doubts a long time before this. It had to do with many problems with his “Purpose Driven” agenda and book and what was being accomplished with it.
This “gay fiasco” simply “seals it up”....
Of course it has. Outside of a select few who actually go out and DO something, the rest sit in their pews and whine.
2. The "Yes Jesus Loves Me"/footwashing/handclapping brand of Christianity remains highly concentrated in the South and lower Midwest. Elsewhere, the population is growing more secular.
3. An increasing number of evangelicals and Pentecostals are Hispanic and black, and in places like New York and New Jersey, they constitute the majority of members of that movement.
The "religious right" is a regional movement that has little appeal outside of the Scots-Irish Pale of Settlement.
Reagan was a product of his times. We are in the 21st Century, and waiting for Mosiach Reagan aint going to cut it.
The GOP isn't exactly lighting the world on fire with Catholics, Lutherans, or secular gentiles (who may call themselves "Christians" even though they neither pray, nor go to a church).
You’ve heard of RINOs... there are also CINOs, too... :-)
Yep. We are surrounded by them here in the northeast, and my family (both the white collar and blue collar branches) are largely CINOs as well.
I really don't see what we can do if the base can't expand beyond a certain demographic group that is concentrated regionally.
It simply may be that Christians are going to be the “remnant” as that’s the group that God seems to work with...
“And they wonder why they lost?”
It doesn’t occur to you that they may be misrepresenting Dobson’s remarks?
I’m guessing over 90% of Conservatives are Christians...a few agnostric libertarians and Jews and that’s the mix religiously..maybe a Shinto-Hindu-Buddhist here and there
Oh, yeah, you mean Amnesty supporting, socialized medicine supporting RINO Romney? That Romney? You can have him, I sure as he** don't want him on the ticket!
“It doesn’t occur to you that they may be misrepresenting Dobson’s remarks?”
Not when it appears on his website.
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