Regarding the Holy Vote

Ray Suarez, Senior Correspondent for the Newshour with Jim Lehrer, was a guest on NPR's Diane Rehm show yesterday. They talked about religion and politics and Suarez's new book, "The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America."

It sounds like a good book. I'll order of copy of it. Suarez demonstrated a good grasp of the original intentions of the founding fathers.

I was disappointed, however, in Suarez answer to one of his callers. Someone asked him if he perceived any threat from Dominionists and Christian Nationalists to the First Amendment. In effect, Suarez's answer was that he felt confident the pendulum of public opinion would swing back to the middle and that the First Amendment would prevail.

Mainstream Baptists will find little solace and much to be alarmed about in Suarez's opinion. In the 1980's we were repeatedly assured that the pendulum would swing back to the middle in the Southern Baptist Convention. Today we ask "What happened to the Baptist pendulum?"

The same people who took over the institutions and agencies of the Southern Baptist Convention are working with others to take over the institutions of civil government throughout the country. Suarez needs to read Randall Balmer's Thy Kingdom Come and Michelle Goldberg's Kingdom Coming. If he needs a crash course on their tactics and the implications for the judiciary, he should read John Dean's interview of Michelle Goldberg on Findlaw.

Those of us who have been dealing with this movement for nearly thirty years are growing exceedingly weary of watching wave after wave of centrist leaders and thinkers underestimate the purpose, intentions and patience of the Religious Right. Their goals are not a secret. Moderates just refuse to take them at face value.