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PROGRESSIVES SHOULD BE SKEPTICAL OF ANY PROPOSAL TO EMBRACE RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM. These people just destroyed the Republican Party – why should anyone take them on board? That said, there may be reasons such proposals could survive skepticism. Evangelicals are having some success marketing their own fundamentalism in the current environmentally-conscious market, and I do appreciate this unusual alliance in order to save planet Earth.  But for issues that don’t involve impending global disaster, I think fundamentalists should be left to brood over the End Times in the quiet comfort of their own organizations.

There is no question that when Christian organizations practice the actual moral teachings of Jesus Christ through various charitable activities and environmental activism, this is helpful to the recipients of said activities.  Should the government finance said practices?  Why on earth should it?

As I understand it, the presence of religious charitable organizations is an important justification for the horrors of free-market capitalism – a major constituent of a very small private sector of organizations that help those who are sacrificed to the creative destruction of a free-market system. So, why should they need any money from our secular government? The ‘moral sentiments’ of the capitalists ought to keep the churches bankrolled. Keep the government out of economics but subsidize the churches? Ridiculous.

Funding religious humanitarian activity gets us into some pretty awkward decisions about what churches can do with government money. And, as in the famous case of abstinence-based education for people dying of AIDS in Africa, funneling aid money through religious organizations can be fatally problematic.

I say we show our respect and appreciation for the charitable work of religious organizations by saying “Thank You!” After all, doesn’t something so cheap as money offend their lofty morals anyways?

Despite (or rather because of) his disturbingly adept ability to speak in tongues with his fellow Christians, I am put off by Obama’s ideas about religion. Obviously, I appreciate their sheer brilliant cunning. There was no question that his rhetoric was right for the time. But I hope that time will soon pass and religious fundamentalism will fall into another slumber, as it’s done before in America’s young history.

-- Jacob Levine

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