Do not expect me to be tolerant of extreme religious fundamentalists

[RainDog]

20. but he's referring to modern day religious fundamentalists

not historical figures.

Lincoln was elected in 1860. Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. It would be entirely understandable for a religious person at that time to be a creation literalist in that context.

To believe in creationism at this time, as in a young earth creationism, is simply a refusal to accept reality b/c it interferes with belief. Even though those beliefs are a direct result of the Second Great Awakening, to hold such beliefs now is just tribalism.

If the OP wants to rant about fundamentalists and their beliefs AT THIS TIME - there is no need to chastise that such people do not represent the majority of believers, right? Because that's not what he said he was talking about.

Fundamentalists became involved in politics when our nation moved to respect the religious rights of others in the 1960s with court decisions that moved prayers out of schools, with the civil rights act of the 1960s, in the 1970s with rulings that respected the rights of women to make reproductive health care decisions (that followed the development of birth control and the right to use it in the 1960s), and with the rejection of military service and support for American militarism in the 1960s because of the lies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

Fundamentalist Christians are not a minority in the south. The reason the south now goes to Republicans in elections is because of the large fundamentalist voting bloc there.

Republicans won the Senate for the first time since 1952 because of Reagan's appeal to white racists in the south (i.e. The Southern Strategy.) If not for religious fundamentalists, Republicans would not win elections in the U.S.

Religious fundamentalists will not align with a party that is pro-choice and pro-equal rights unless that religious faction substantially reinterprets its idea of civic involvement.

If Democrats try to curry favor with religious fundamentalists by kowtowing to them on social issues - Democrats will lose their base. They'll also lose the future because greater progress is the arrow of political time in the U.S., even when politicians don't recognize this.

iow, I have no problem with someone ranting about religious fundamentalists because our recent history has demonstrated that they retard civil rights and economic justice. If you can demonstrate how this is not true - I'd love to see it. In the present - not a hundred years ago.