Religious War

I was raised in a mostly relapsed Catholic home so when I married into an Evangelical Christian family it was definitely a different world for me. Over the years I have had opportunity to look at issues from a different perspective that is often misunderstood or portrayed poorly in mainstream media.

To me, the foundation of the Christian belief is not the Bible but rather the people teaching from the Bible are divinely inspired, guided by the hand of God, led by the Holy Spirit. Every position on issues taken by the Christian is based on this faith that they are being led by God through his preachers and church leaders. This has a two fold effect: internally there is not much room for debate and dissension, and externally "everyone else" is not being led by God at best or being led by Satan at worst.

When faced by a secular community (atheists, agnostics) who wish to keep religion out of public schools and government, the Christian community sees it not as keeping church and state separated but instead sees it as a religion versus religion struggle (egged on by their leaders) and in this context empowers them to fight on as they believe wholeheartedly that they are the side of "good" against the agents of "evil" (knowingly or not). They cannot morally back down from this struggle because to do so would be to let evil win and no good person would willingly let such a thing happen.

This differing frame of context between the secular and the religious will ensure continued conflict for a long time, and I believe it is not out of the question that United States will become more of a theocracy in the future as the religious side gains strength in the struggle. In the U.S. science and secularism are under seige and I hope Canada can avoid the same fate.