It isn’t that cut and dried. Christians have played into the hands of their enemies.
The “Great Revival” and temperence movements of the 1880’s provided necessary support from the right for government control. Ever since, the government has had this schizophrenic propensity to regulate drugs and business in innocent enterprises, to put God in the Pledge of Allegiance and take him out of school, to raise the age of consent in steps from 10 or 12 to 18 and make exhibition of adult sex, sometimes even to children, affecting their behavior, a civil right.
The government must be divested of its authority to regulate from the left or right in order for Christianity and freedom (which sometimes will be decidedly unchristian) to flourish according to the individual and the family, even if you, or even an overwhelming majority at some point in time, don’t like some people’s choices for themselves.
If you think you can have a democratic governnent that only enforces and promotes your point of view forever, then you are unclear on the definition of democracy.
Unfortunately, the Bible and Christians preach freedom of conscience but then a Constantine comes along and Christians themselves become the persecutors.
I’m not down on Christians. I am a Christian. I am simply saying that the enforcement of Christian orthodoxy opens the door to progressives and other enemies of true Chritianity in an unholy alliance necessary to create the conditiions for government control in which each gets part of what they want in a bad mixture.
Of course you are correct. I think you misread my point, and that’s ok as I kept it brief and that left it open for misinterpretation. No way I’d want an enforced Christian view and never suggested that.
Actually, the real origin/source of the problem is.....Christians! The church has failed to be ‘salt & light’ to the world, looks just like the world, thinks/acts just like the world. The vast majority of Christians believe in their heads, but their lives don’t support their beliefs. It is this contradiction that has allowed the Marxist/atheist world view to take over.
I didn’t want to get into that in my post as that opens a whole different subject....
I differ with your causal relationship, and see the effects of the evangelical gospel of regeneration as being conducive to smaller government, by bringing souls to be controlled from within so that they need not be controlled from without*, as well as being less prone to give implicit trust in man**, or victim mentality socialism***, while promoting individual volitional charity****.
*Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them, or by a power without them; either by the Word of God, or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or the bayonet. - Robert Winthrop (May 12, 1809 – November 16, 1894), and Speaker of the House from 1838 to 1840, and later president of the Massachusetts Bible
** “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.9 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.” (Psalms 118:8-9)
Society,
***”For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” (2Thes. 3:10)
****”As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” (Galatians 6:10)