Overheard

The idea is that if you were a good Christian--eating gruel and meat--you wouldn't indulge in anything that called for a fork. It's impossible now to think about the controversy that a piece of flatware could stir up, but the Church really saw the fork as an evil implement.

Curator Sarah Coffin
Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum
New York City
Smithsonian, May 2006

Are we on the road to fascism? Clearly, we are not on that road yet.

But it would not take much more misguided authoritarian leadership, or thoughtless following of such leaders, to find ourselves there.

I am not sure which is more frightening, another major terror attack or the response of authoritarian conservatives to that attack.

We have returned to the imperial presidency. We have an unchecked presidency.

Author John Dean
Conservatives Without Conscience
Associated Press, July 26, 2006

. . . a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless.

Columnist Paul Krugman
Class War Politics
New York Times, June 19, 2006

I am suggesting . . . that there are American Christians for whom the adjective is more important than the noun. I am suggesting that some Christian churches in our country have become political temples and that some clergy have embraced willingly the title of 'patriot pastors.' I am suggesting that theocrats have an eye on the machinery of the national and state governments, and they make no apology for it.

It can happen here because there are religious ideologues rampant in our country, and they mean business. They are sincere.

Baptist historian Walter Shurden
Mercer University, Ga.
June 23 address to Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly, Atlanta
American Baptist Press, June 26, 2006

His [Ralph Reed's] defeat by no means suggests a loss of power for a small group of vocal activists who wish to force all Americans to live according to their benighted religious views. They still have an extraordinary ally in the Oval Office.

The theocrats thrive. Though they represent only a fraction of the country's voters--indeed, a minority of GOP voters and of Christians in general--they are a powerful force in GOP politics, especially in the Deep South . . . Like right-wing Muslims, they rage against modernity itself.

Don't be fooled by Reed's defeat. The extremists are still winning.

Cynthia Tucker
Editorial Page editor
Atlanta Journal Constitution
July 23, 2006

Right now, the seesaw between faith and reason is unbalanced because the media give a mighty megaphone to the loudmouths, the dogmatists, the people who turn their beliefs into bumperstickers and sound bites.

The Islamists want a world ruled by Allah. The fundamentalists in Israel want a nation ruled by Jehovah. And right-wing Christians in this country want God--their God--to take charge here, no matter what that means to democracy, pluralism and dissent.

I think we're on a collision course that only leadership and a resurgence of common sense, of faith in democracy, can prevent. Tolerance is such a good thing. Whatever happened to it?

Bill Moyers
Dallas Morning News, June 24, 2006

The moment evangelicals began tearing down the church-state wall, the rubble became their shoals. The wreck will be ugly. It will take years to mend because, as one of their own, Minnesota's Rev. Gregory Boyd, recently put it: "Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn't bloody and barbaric. That's why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state."

The evangelical assault on secular values at home is no less dangerous than its Islamic variant.

Columnist Pierre Tristam
"America Struggles with its own Evangelical Taliban"
Daytona Beach News-Journal
Aug. 1, 2006

[R]ight-wing zealots have distorted the gospel of Jesus Christ, defaulted on the noble legacy of 19th-century evangelical activism, and failed to appreciate the genius of the First Amendment. [The Religious Right hankers for] the kind of homogeneous theocracy that the Puritans tried to establish.

Author/evangelist Randall Balmer
Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament
Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 8, 2006

In Their Own Words

I am here to say I love Israel and that Christian Evangelicals in America stand with Israel in its struggle for freedom against Islamo-fascism, which is directed against Israel and all civilized nations of the world.

Rev. Pat Robertson
Praying with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for victory in Lebanon
Jerusalem press conference
Jerusalem Post, Aug. 9, 2006

Destroying an embryo is equivalent to abortion. Excommunication is valid for the women, the doctors and researchers who destroy embryos [for stem-cell research].

Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo
New York Times, July 1, 2006