Evangelicals wondering why so many people don't take them seriously, well here's why.

[lees1975]

18. I was raised Baptist as well, and ironically...

Studying Baptist history and the foundations of the doctrine and theology, discovered that what Baptists historically and traditionally believed, as expressed in multiple confessions of faith, is quite different from the hard line fundamentalism that has crept in and taken over. Baptists were the primary influence with the founding fathers, both Madison and Jefferson, in bringing about the establishment clause and separation of church and state. Freedom of conscience is one of the foundational principles of Baptist confessions in America and the emphasis of church life wasn't on pointing out the sinfulness of everyone else, and the wrongness of other Christians, but on the enhancement and fulfillment of life based on the introduction to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

It's a long history, involving lots of events, that pushed Baptists from being much like Quakers, who see God as an "inner light," rather than an external deity like the Greek, Roman and Egyptian gods, into fundamentalism. Their structure, which includes churches that are independent and autonomous, rather than ecclesiastically connected, opened the door to infiltration and the influence of uneducated clergy, the Civil War and a lot of other factors turned most, not all, of them into conservative Evangelicals. I've found myself to be much more compatible with some Quakers. And the emphasis on values is what is so compatible with being a Democrat.