This week in god.... (Maddow blog)

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/week-god-42515?cid=sm_fb_maddow


"First up from the God Machine this week is an aggressive push from likely Republican presidential candidates to characterize social conservatives as a “victims” of a secular American government.

If this seems like a cyclical problem, it’s not your imagination. Four years ago, Newt Gingrich delivered one of my favorite quotes of all time, warning that if conservatives “do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America,” his grandchildren might one day live “in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists.” The contradiction was apparently lost on him.

Four years later, it’s Rick Santorum reading from a similar script. Right Wing Watch reported this week:
Santorum told [the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins] that, for the first time ever in U.S. history, religious liberty is under assault from a new secular theocratic system:

“For the first time in the history of our country, the government is attacking people, prosecuting people, calling for people to be rehabilitated…. We have the state establishing a new religion, a secular state religion…. We have now the secular church that is being imposed on this country and anybody that defects is subject to persecution and prosecution.”
For the record, I haven’t seen any evidence of any government agency “calling for people to be rehabilitated.” The notion of “secular churches” and a “secular religion” also seem misplaced, if not oxymoronic."