At a press briefing in Washington early last March, the Natioanl Association of Evangelicals declared its intent to lend a hand in the making of an American politics faithful to the will and wisdom of God. Taking into account the amny and atrocious proofs of God's incompetence as a politician, the announcement in less troubled times might have been seen as a clounish hallucination or a bleak postmodern joke, but the association numbers its membership at 30 million exalted souls, one fourth of the nation's eligible voters, and so the new media in attendance were careful not to laugh when the telegenic pastors, smooth-faced and smiling, distributed a twelve-page manifesto for a Bible-based public policy entitled " An evangelical Call to Civil Responibility." The words were pretty enouh, but to read the document with any car for its meaning was to recognize it as a bulling threat backed with the currencies of jihadist fervor and invincible ignorance. Like the prohet Isaiah, who beheld the foul sewer of the earth "polluted under the inhbitants therof." the latter day bringers of joy and righteousness from the suburbs of Los Angeles and the mountains of Colorado believe themselves obliged to cleanse the world of its impurities-to render justice, reward, merit, mete out punishments-and the first few sentinces of their joint statement stand as fair indictors of the tone in which they describe the res of the program:

We engage in public life because God created our first parents in his image and gave them dominion over te earth. Genesis 1"27-28...We also engage in public life because Jesus is Lord over every area of life...to restrict our stewarship to the private sphere would be to deny an important part of his domion and to functionall abandon it to the Evil One. To restrict our political concerns to matters that touch only on the private and the domestic spheres is to deny the encompassing Lordship of Jesus (Revelation 19:16)

Elsewhere in the document the pastors complain of the bias of aggressive secularism so entrenched in the liberal new media that the presence and role of religion in public life is attacked more fiercely now than ever.

Would that it were so. No citizen can stand for public office in the United States withou first pledging allegiance to the King of Kings.  Far from being scornful of the messages blown through the trumpets of doom, the new media make a show their civility and a virtue of their silence; here to please and not to think; every American free to worship the reflection of his or her own fear; no superstition more deserving than another, no imbecile vision in the desert that can't be  sold to a talk show , a circus. or reupblican caucas in the House of Representatives.

Republicans are weird individuals. Their ideas and behavior is difficult to explain. Their influence over politics it to great and very deterimental.

A Pastor belongs in a church not influencing public policy.