Fine print: GOP tax bill repeals a law barring churches from endorsing political candidates

[Hortensis]

10. Politics is intensely corrupting to religion. This is a huge

problem that many churches have been worrying about for a long time now, some speaking out against it and trying to withdraw their congregations from political involvement, but most have been unable to stop what is happening. The result of politics in religion is that millions of people have developed a huge disconnect between the precepts of their religions and their political beliefs and behaviors. Fox thumps a closed Bible but doesn't teach Proverbs.

I see it all the time because this is the Bible Belt, and religion is a huge part of people's lives. Ours is also one of the most conservative districts in the nation. Lots of people around here believe Satan literally walks the earth, almost all believe in immortal souls and that narrow gate, but most also clearly seem to believe that God doesn't hold violations against them that are committed out of partisan fervor. Or perhaps just somehow that they're saved and those rules are for others.

And a Democrat asking "what would Jesus do" is useful only for putting an immediate end to discussion. The very question reveals the asker to be a hostile outsider who could never understand their righteousness--conveniently obviating any need to answer. No, I've never been that Democrat , but I've witnessed it a few times over the years and gotten the same smug, glance exchanging, clamming up response a couple of times to other queries.

I've a few times rather delicately asked people talking public issues what their church has to say, and each time the feeling was their pastors or ministers support and share their attitudes. Most southern denominations don't require formal college-level theological training, and religious leaders who lack the understanding necessary to give guidance on moral issues and even the religious doctrines of their own churches are common.

But even when they are, given the extreme political partisanship that's taken so many over, I strongly suspect that attempting to provide proper guidance at most or all of the local conservatively oriented churches would lead to firing of ministers and board members and flight of angry parishioners to other churches. It would also likely break apart the congregations the lives of their parishioners have been built around as events revealed the private beliefs of those who've also felt a need to mostly be silent in the face of what's happening.