There's an old saying in <insert name of your home town, state, or country here> that there are two subjects which ought not to be discussed in a polite conversation: religion, and politics.
I've made my first two diary entries on my religious background, as an 'escaped' fundamentist. Of course given the nature of this forum as a place for the exchange of political information, I don't want to take it for granted that my intentions are clear about mixing religion and politics.
Of course they're mixed already, given the scale and intensity of the fundamentalist minority who have sadly conflated their religious faith with a political destiny. Manifestly so, unfortunately.
However, this effort is not Christian, except in self-identifying reference to the members of the political religious (religiously political?) right in this country.
There, see they go showing up right next to one another as modifiers of their actual position on the spectrum of political ideologies: on the political religious right. The domain of fascism.
I'd like to suggest that the reason for the conversational etiquette leason from posterity is that, there is seldom an opportunity for a polite disagreement on matters of individual passion. So perhaps it is more appropriate to a constructive dialog to point out that this movement is a right-wing extremist, i.e., fascist, group.
Fascism is fostered by religious fervor. The Glorious Entity of the State is modelled to the people as a higher being than individuals. The police are the immune system of the State. This is essentially the model of the Christian Church, whose members idealize themselves collectively as the 'Body of Christ.' The fervent participation in this collective Being is what animates the passions of the faithful. They are subsumed by a larger whole, and give themselves up to it eagerly.
It is possible as was demonstrated during the last century in German and Italian approaches to fascism, to use nationalism as a basis for the resurrection of the pagan concept of the spiritual homeland in Germany and for something more reminiscent of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy. This is a harnessing of the religious impulse to the spirit of nationalism, which naturally includes an element of land, the homeland and its spirit.
But this template also fits Christianity very well, if the idea of the 'Body of Christ' can be somehow equated to the entity of State. Which is what the religious right is attempting to do. Make no mistake; what they would institute is jack-booted benevolence, lording their self-righteousness over our sinful and unsaved, and therefore inauthentic, citizenhood. He is the Vine, and We (the believer-citizens) are the branches. The dissenting branch is to be pruned, the consenting branch husbanded, to produce the Bride of Christ (another more forward-looking reference to the collective of believers, presumably the Jungian anima aspect).
All of this tosses aside the clear demands of Christian discipleship. Let a neoCon fundamentalist explain to me why he considers himself a disciple when he has not walked away from everything he owns? This was a requirement laid down by their beloved Lord Jesus in Luke 14:33. Right after He pointed out the absurdity of going to war without first counting the cost in terms of troops. Deliciously impolite.
'Jesus is just alright with me.' -The Dooby Brothers