[katiedidit1]

darrellmaurina, read this on Akin.org. “One thing liberals always try to do is drive a wedge between “social” and “fiscal” conservatives. Well, when you look at the numbers, social conservatives are some of the most fiscally conservative! Check out this chart showing Right to Life ratings next to fiscally conservative National Taxpayer Union (NTU) ratings and LIKE if you believe fiscal issues ARE social issues and vice versa! Todd Akin”
Chart is on his site.

[darrellmaurina]

We agree, Katie — Christian conservatives should be fiscal conservatives because charity is the business of the church and family, not the state. The primary purpose of the civil government, according to Romans 13, is to bear the sword — i.e., administering justice and dealing with police and national defense issues.

While that's clear to Akin, unfortunately, it is not always clear to Christian conservatives. Over the years, this website has seen lots of attacks on Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and other prominent Christian conservatives as so-called “Christian socialists.” Unfortunately, some of those attacks on SoCons by economic conservatives and national defense conservatives have been legitimate, and as a strong social conservative, I need to admit that. We need to get our own house in order.

Over on a different website, I've been having an argument with some fellow Calvinists who appear to have been seduced by political liberalism in graduate school. One of them is the son of a well-known Reformed minister who helped lead the secession from the Christian Reformed Church. He's actually writing a doctoral dissertation claiming that John Calvin held views on politics and on economics which fly in the face of the last two hundred years of secular evaluations of the role of the “Protestant Work Ethic” and the rise of capitalism.

That website’s most recent thread is focusing on Christian views of private property, and he's advocating a position which would be unrecognizable to most Protestant evangelicals, though it definitely does have roots in the church of the Middle Ages. Who would have thought that I would have to be defending basic Christian principles of private property rights to a man who is otherwise a solid conservative on principles of Reformed theology?

Unfortunately, as evangelical Christians, we have not always done a good job of teaching Christian principles to our next generation of young evangelicals, and we are reaping the bad fruit of the seeds we have sown.