Screw it - let Rome burn

Christians look to form 'new nation' within U.S. (via Blogdigger News):

Calling the approval of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts "the straw that broke the camel's back," a group of Christian activists is in the beginning stages of an effort to have one state secede from the United States to become its own sovereign nation.

"Our Christian republic has declined into a pagan democracy," says Cory Burnell, president of ChristianExodus.org, a non-profit corporation based in Tyler, Texas. "There are some issues people just can't take anymore, and [same-sex marriage] might finally wake up the complacent Christians."

Burnell is leading the charge for a peaceful secession of one state from the union, and after originally considering Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina due to their relatively small populations, coastal access, and the Christian nature of the electorate, Burnell says South Carolina has been selected as the target location.

This is obviously an extreme position, but it does seem indicative of a growing despair within Christians in the US. The perception is that there is no real debate on issues such as sexuality and abortion, only demonization of the Christian perspective - Canada being an extreme case. Even when Christians do begin to try to exercise influence in politics, cries of theocratic conspiracies abound.

Still, one has to wonder if apocalyptic, Left Behind-style theologies are not at least partly to blame for such a severe fatalism.

May 25, 2004 02:55 PM
2 Comments

Ummmmm.....woah....I'm not sure about this. I'm a big fan of work within to improve and change. This takes the "in but not of" and changes it to "beside, but not in or of".

The scariest thing he (president of Christian Exodus, Cory Burnell) said was, "Independence first, details later." This seems like a pretty big deal and I think the details are just as important as the independence. But that’s just me, I guess.

Pondered by Jeff Price at May 25, 2004 03:30 PM

I'm working on a post that deals with some of these issues as well, in relation to some current goings on in the Orthodox Jewish world.

I think that there is a possibly unbridgeable gap between religion and secular culture when it comes to issues that question the autonomy of the individual. Despite our countries openess to religion of any kind, the nature of the context created by divorcing religion from the state makes it impossible, eventually (once all the taboos have come into question), to have religion be anything more than a set of personal moral guidelines - any hope or attempt at a broader moral vision for society will be fruitless.

The people in the article you bring here are probably a bit before their time, but I think what they are doing is the probable end point of all this.

Pondered by Greg at May 25, 2004 04:24 PM