Who is Trying to Create a "Religious" State

It's coming and we're looking the wrong way!

An SDA pastor friend of mine who is clearly a card-carrying Democrat justifies his defense of DNC talking points by raising the old Adventist fear of the oppressive religious state and Sunday Laws. His arguments seem really thin to me - at least Biblically. I don't see it. President Trump and V.P. Pence, if they are creating an oppressive religious state, seem to be doing a really lousy job of it. Trump has been reducing federal power at every turn over the past year and has given Americans permission to believe in God without being jumped on with the full approval of government by an anti-religious or at least anti-Christian establishment. 

There is way more potential for an oppressive government to create a quasi-religious state under progressive principles than under constitutional conservatism. Conservatives, for one thing don't believe in abolishing amendments. Progressive Democrats advocate this all the time - the second amendment repeal would simply establish the clean-up-the-Constitution-by-eliminating-the-Bill-of-Rights principle. This is necessary to prepare government to rule over all during the events of the last days.

 The religion that will dominate, of course, will be an unchallenged twisted cocktail of atheism, spiritualism, Marxism, apostate Protestantism and Catholicism with support from international corporate powers and trade unions. Of course, left-leaning SDA friends say that can never happen with modern progressivism in charge.  That's been demonstrated clearly as progressives chip away at the Constitution and give more and more intrusive power to the federal government.

 Houston's hard left Democrat mayor has already shown open hostility toward conservative Christianity, even going so far as to demand copies of pastors' sermon notes. The justification?  Mayor Anise Parker, the city's first openly lesbian Democrat mayor wanted to see if they were speaking out against her bathroom ordinance that forced all public facilities including churches to allow trans-gender men to use women's bathrooms. This was an illegal "fishing expedition" that even leftist judges wouldn't sign off on. The intent was to use the IRS to end conservative churches' nonprofit status. 

The lid was clearly off the not well progressive hidden agenda in Houston. The left tolerates high-church liberal churches (the ones that have already signed memorandums of understanding with the Roman Catholic Church). Dude, I am not afraid of conservative Christians. In the religious liberty realm, the folk who support Trump by and large have been pro-religious liberty all along. Evangelicals - the prosperity gospel, televangelist crowd - don't really count as conservative fundamentalist churches. They've been picking and choosing Bible passages for years with all the dexterity of a South London pickpocket. Evangelicals of that ilk have already sold out and begun signing on with the new and improved global church movement and have banded with high-church (read "apostate") Protestant churches to reunite with the Roman church which is led by a very very progressive socialist papacy.

Throughout our history most presidents have been open about their religious beliefs. Because Trump has received support from Christian groups doesn't mean he's going to establish a theocracy. Democrats have been trying to lay the charge of authoritarianism at Trump's door since before he took the oath of office, but it doesn't seem to stick. Trump's been busily deregulating and freeing up business. He's allowed religious institutions to freely practice their beliefs. It was the Obama administration that tried to force religious institutions and religious people to violate their own beliefs. Dems even tried to make the Catholics pay for abortion insurance for their nuns and teaching staff at schools. They tried to force Christian bakers to use their art to support practices that run counter to their religious beliefs.

At every turn, Trump is reducing the power and limiting interference by government in the lives of Americans. That's kind of the opposite of the sort of religious authoritarianism leftists have accused conservatives and Trump of being in favor of. I know of no real conservative who favors forcing anyone to go to church on Sunday. I have seen European socialist governments cooperating with high church Protestant denominations and the Catholic Church and trade unions and corporations to pass Sunday Laws. In Germany you can be fined or arrested for washing your car or mowing your lawn on Sunday. Europeans, as Democrats will tell you, are so much more advanced than we are.

If you ask me, they are advancing directly toward hell and American progressives are marching along behind them wondering after the Beast. Let us be careful, then, what mast we nail our flag to.

Tom