Many Christians seem to be shocked that they are requested, demanded actually, to keep their faith to themselves. Religion is a private affair, unless it benefits whatever the current cause du jour might be. This trend was well illustrated when US president explained the first amendment (of the US constitution) as “freedom of worship” rather than “freedom of religion. Big difference. The former is pietistic, which is acceptable to a secular ruler; the latter is too broad, and might lead to people actually acting as though they believed their faith to be true! This helpful article uncovers Pietism as the problem.
Libertarian Dogma: How Liberalism Became Intolerant
“From the dawn of the modern age, religious thinkers have warned that, strictly speaking, secular politics is impossible — that without the transcendent foundation of Judeo-Christian monotheism to limit the political sphere, ostensibly secular citizens would begin to invest political ideas and ideologies with transcendent, theological meaning.
Put somewhat differently: Human beings will be religious one way or another. Either they will be religious about religious things, or they will be religious about political things.
With traditional faith in rapid retreat over the past decade, liberals have begun to grow increasingly religious about their own liberalism, which they are treating as a comprehensive view of reality and the human good.
But liberalism’s leading theoreticians (Locke, Montesquieu, Jefferson, Madison, Tocqueville, Mill) never intended it to serve as a comprehensive view of reality and the human good. On the contrary, liberalism was supposed to act as a narrowly political strategy for living peacefully in a world of inexorably clashing comprehensive views of reality and the human good.”
Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a consulting editor at the University of Pennsylvania Press, a contributing editor at The New Republic, and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.