I’ve always heard that if you want to keep the conversation friendly, avoid the topics of politics and religion. Anyone want to have a friendly conversation? I didn’t think so. We talk about politics all the time on Local Views, and sometimes a little religion, although some folks seem to be working real hard right now to blur or completely obliterate the distinction between the two.

I started thinking about this in a different way a few days ago when I heard Amy Goodman interview a guy named Chris Hedges. The thing he said which struck me as keen insight was that throughout their history, evangelical fundamentalist Protestants have sought to distance themselves from secular society. Bolstered by the flagrant pandering to Protestant fundamentalists by the Republicans and the Bush administration, however, many current fundamentalist leaders have shifted into a different gear that looks and sounds a lot more like seeking to destroy secular society, or at least drive it underground. The hard core Bible thumpers used to use their pulpit to take verbal potshots at every sinful indulgence from a teenager’s haircut to pornographic films. These days, it’s not just verbal; they’re coming after their favorite targets and using the pulpit to tell their followers not just how to live, but also how to vote.

The fundamentalists now are publicly attacking the doctrine of church and state being separate entities. They say that it’s not in the Constitution and it wasn’t even the intent of the founding fathers, whom they regard as a bunch of fine, churchgoing Protestants who dropped the word "God" at every opportunity into the historic documents they wrote. These arguments are so false they need not even be rebutted, but they’re taken very seriously by people who think they exert a powerful influence, if not complete control, over the conduct of government in the U.S. right now. On that last point they may be right.

I’ve even heard a couple of elected officials, including a Congressman, say that government can’t even exist, legitimately, without being integral with the church. That would be their own church, of course. These are people who obviously don’t grasp the distinction between acting on ones principles and forcing those principles on others. They appear to be planning to turn us all into Bible thumpers the way primitive people were turned into Catholics with the wave of a scepter and a little dip in the water.

The rise of the new fundamentalists has given rise to a lot of ink, but little real discussion, of the old evolution vs. creation argument. That one was supposed to have been wrapped up about 80 years ago but the fundamentalists really have a burr under their saddle about this one. You see, these people insist that the parts of the Bible they like best must be accepted, word for word, as the literal truth. Literary metaphor escapes them. If you don’t believe, for example, that God created the heavens and the Earth from nothing in seven calendar days, you’re just not a person of faith. Although I’ve never heard anyone say which calendar month encompasses those seven days, many believe that God’s great week happened approximately 6000 years ago. Scientists may not know everything, but they’re pretty sure that 6000 years on God’s calendar is the equivalent of about 12 billion years on the calendar we’re using these days.

The fundamentalists are well-organized on this question. They’re Mau Mauing school boards all over the country to buy into their argument that the universe is just too damn complex to have evolved organically at random. There just has to be an omnipotent deity who mapped it all out and threw it together in his garage when he had a week off from his regular job printing U.S. currency. They call this theory "intelligent design." Ohio was the first state level government to drink that Kool Aid. If you want to sell a science textbook in Ohio, you must describe evolution as a controversial theory and mention the Biblical account of creation and its literal interpretation right along side. Kansas is expected to do the same next month.

A couple other recent stories which find the fundamentalist Protestants acting like government: First, of course, was the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate taking his politics to church with the pronouncement that Democrats are not people of faith. Just this week, the Associated Press reported that the pastor of a Baptist church in Waynesville, N.C. kicked out nine long time members of his church because they don’t support the Bush administration. Actually, this beef started before the election when Rev. Chan Chandler told the congregation that anyone planning to vote for Kerry needs to leave the church. Last week he acted on that warning, but after the fit hit the shan, he changed his mind and invited them back. They came back all right, with their lawyer and a demand that Rev. Chandler be the only one leaving the church.