Netroots Nation, the big lefty political/blogging meeting, is organizing sessions for their conference in August. Unfortunately, they seem have given up on the idea of a secular nation, because this one session on A New Progressive Vision for Church and State has a bizarre description.
The old liberal vision of a total separation of religion from politics has been discredited. Despite growing secularization, a secular progressive majority is still impossible, and a new two-part approach is needed--one that first admits that there is no political wall of separation. Voters must be allowed, without criticism, to propose policies based on religious belief. But, when government speaks and acts, messages must be universal. The burden is on religious believers, therefore, to explain public references like "under God" in universal terms. For example, the word "God" can refer to the ceaseless creativity of the universe and the objective validity of human rights. Promoting and accepting religious images as universal will help heal culture-war divisions and promote the formation of a broad-based progressive coalition.
That makes no sense at all. Separation of church and state certainly isn't discredited — if anything, the experience of the last few years makes it more important than ever. Voters can already propose policies based on religion, and they do, unfortunately…but whoever wrote this thinks there should be no criticism? That's insane. This is a progressive organization that is proposing that we shouldn't even criticize religious intrusion into government.
And then look what they do: they redefine "god" into a waffling, meaningless placeholder for anything anyone wants!
I'd like to know who came up with this garbage — it reeks of the Jim Wallis/Amy Sullivan camp of liberal theocrats, although neither is actually on the panel.
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