Another Religious Fanatic Mixing Religion & Politics

From Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe:

He was a man of faith who didn’t hesitate to mix religion with politics. He headed an assertive political organization with the word “Christian” in its name. He believed his moral values should be reflected in US law and legally imposed on those who resisted them. He invoked “God Almighty” in his speeches and compared himself to Moses, the prophet Amos, and other biblical heroes. He condemned public policies he opposed in overtly religious terms -- as “a blatant denial of the unity which we all have in Christ,” for example. He shrugged off those who called him an extremist. “Was not Jesus an extremist?” he asked.

He wasn’t one to fetishize church-state separation. “I want it to be known . . . throughout this nation that we are Christian people,” he declared. “We believe in the Christian religion. We believe in the teachings of Jesus.”

He was what some today might call a religious fanatic, a theocrat, or (as a US senator said of the president last year) a “moral ayatollah.” He was, in many circles, decidedly unpopular.

He was also a Nobel laureate for peace and a champion of human dignity. He was an American hero. He was Martin Luther King Jr.

King, of course, had every right to use religious rhetoric and appeal to Christian ideals to promote his political agenda.

But so do the Pope, and Jerry Falwell and President Bush.

Liberals, of course, never mind “mixing religion and politics” if it’s done to achieve liberal results. Which means, of course, that they don’t really mind mixing religion and politics at all. They just don’t like conservatives.