>>>>The Protestants have too much invested in the habit of forming 22,000 mutually incompatible doctrines,
I don't know that this is the problem, so much as the liberalism of a couple denominations/preachers, etc. I think the churches that have been pushing to have gay marriage, etc. are pushing their parisioners into the arms of politicians like kerry. They are quite naturally applying what their preachers taught them. 30 years ago no one was teaching the things that would have encouraged them to vote for an extreme lib like kerry, but today that's precisely where these denominations are going.
>>>>to immediately recognize that Mr. Kerry, with his separation of religion and politics, is only fit to legislate in a farm of animals.
LOL.
The lack of unity and authority leads many -- of course, not all, -- Protestants to the "I believe what I like to believe, and you believe what you like to believe" type of liberalism. It is not a new phenomenon: Luther could not find a common denominator with Zwingli. This is why Kerry's refusal to, seemingly, push his Catholic beliefs onto non-Catholics resonated well with the Protestants.
In other words, a Protestant would typically react to Kerry's blunder as just another statement of him being pro-abortion, combined with an attractive to him lack of doctrinal rigidity. So a Protestant would form his judgement as a balance between his own pro-life conviction, and his distaste for universal proclamations. A Catholic would, of course, also see in it a pro-abortion statement, but a Catholic would also see an utter misunderstanding of the role of religion in civic life, -- a root of more abominations than abortion alone.