Why the Biggest Obstacle to Fixing the Economy is Religion

When the oh-so-"moderate" evangelicals whom President-elect Obama is working so hard to please turn on him and attack his efforts to repair and modernize the social safety net, don't be surprised.

Order this copy of Free Inquiry and read the print-only article by Gregory Paul: The Big Religion Questions Finally Solved.

In that article, Paul demonstrates why the relgious must oppose social advancements like progressive taxation, universal health care, strong unions and free public education or else face their own extinction.

Because in every industrialized nation on the planet, low levels of economic disparity, high middle-class economic security and a strong social safety net correlate strongly with widespread secularism.

In other words, the more dysfunctional a society is, the more religious it tends to be.

Analyzing numerous large surveys of world populations, Paul finds:

Among the first world's 19 prosperous democracies, all but the United States have adopted pragmatic, progressive and secular socioeconomic policies that maximize the financial security of the middle class (that is to say, the majority of citizens.)

In most first-world countries, it is hard to lose middle-class status - no western European or Australian goes bankrupt due to overwhelming medical bills. These high levels of financial security, lower levels of income disparity, and more modest rates of societal dysfunction reduce personal stress levels to the degree that middle-class majorities in western Europe, Canada and Australia feel secure and comfortable.

This security and comfort being achieved, the number of citizens who feel the need to seek the aid and protection of supernatural deities has sunken to historic lows and citizens abandon their former churches in droves.

In addition, comprehensive governmental social assistance programs displace much of the faith-based charitable complex that churches have historically used to extend their influence over the lay population.

Moreover, secular societies tend to favor other pragmatic social policies such as extensive sex-education and domestic violence intervention that further surpess societal dysfunctions.

The popular secularization these pragmatic policies induce is accidental, but nonetheless the effect is so powerful that is has occurred in every progressive first-world democracy. it has occurred despite the absence of a large-scale organized atheistic movement and has yet to be reversed in any country by a major religious revival.

Wonder why "religious leaders" so admantly oppose economic support programs that would help their own congregations? Because they know, at least subconciously, that the greatest threat to religion is a strong, successful, secure society.

To thrive, or even survive, religion needs a frightened, insecure population and a weak, incompetent government that drives people to seek succor in religion.

So when Rick "I have unlimited compassion for the poor and sick" Warren exhorts his congregation to fight Obama's economic stimulus plan and universal health care, read Paul's article and you'll understand why.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

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What You Should Know About Rick Warren

Whether you think Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inaugural is a stroke of genius or a fatal mistake, it's important to make sure we know who Rick Warren is.

Warren vocally opposes gay marriage, does not believe in evolution, has compared abortion to the Holocaust and backed the assassination of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Warren has done a masterful job at marketing himself as a "new" kind of evangelical with a "broader agenda" than just fighting abortion rights and gay marriage. He dispatches members of his congregation to Africa to perform AIDS relief and has positioned himself as a great crusader for bringing his "purpose-driven" pabulum to the world.

Beneath the sheep's clothing lurks a culture warrior wolf. After the Saddleback forum, he told the Wall Street Journal that the only difference between him and James Dobson was that of "tone." After insisting that his agenda was "broad," and holding himself out as an impartial arbiter of the forum, he declared that voting for a "Holocaust denier" (i.e., someone who is pro-choice) is a "deal-breaker" for many evangelicals. Obama was pressured to talk about "abortion reduction," but Warren likens such rhetoric likening it to Schindler's List: an attempt to save some lives but not end a "holocaust."

In the world of the "broader agenda" evangelicals, when liberals advocate for gay marriage, they're stoking the culture wars; when a "broader agenda" evangelical crusades against it, he's merely upholding biblical standards. In that tradition, Warren in October implored his followers to vote for Proposition 8 because "there are about 2 percent of Americans are homosexual, gay, lesbian people. We should not let 2 percent of the population...change a definition of marriage that has been supported by every single culture and every single religion for 5,000 years." Warren called opposition to gay marriage a "humanitarian issue" because "God created marriage for the purpose of family, love and procreation."

Warren, a creationist, believes that homosexuality disproves evolution; he told CNN's Larry King in 2005, "If Darwin was right, which is survival of the fittest then homosexuality would be a recessive gene because it doesn't reproduce and you would think that over thousands of years that homosexuality would work itself out of the gene pool."

Warren protests that he's not a homophobe; it's just that two dudes marrying, in his mind, is indistinguishable from an adult marrying a child, a brother marrying his sister, or polygamy. He thinks his AIDS relief efforts represent an elevated form of Christianity over those non-evangelical do-gooders whom he compares to "Marxists" because they're more interested in good works than salvation. The rejection of the "social justice" gospel in favor of the salvation-focused evangelicalism that has come to dominate the definition of "Christian" lies at the heart of the religious right agenda to marginalize liberalism and harness its political power.

Warren represents the absolute worst of the Democrats' religious outreach, a right-winger masquerading as a do-gooder anointed as the arbiter of what it means to be faithful. Obama's religious outreach was intended, supposedly, to make religious voters more comfortable with him and feel included in the Democratic Party. But that outreach now has come at the expense of other people's comfort and inclusion, at an event meant to mark a turning point away from divisive politics.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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