A Brilliant Examination of Danforth's Anti-Christian Rhetoric

Dr James Hitchcock writes:

Scarcely a day goes by without some new warning that religious fanatics are destroying American liberties. One of the most widely publicized is by former Sen. John Danforth of Missouri, who is both a lawyer and an Episcopal clergyman and also speaks as a Republican who longs for the good old days when the party was interested in things like balancing the budget, before it was “captured” by religious fanatics.
. . .
Danforth the clergyman and Danforth the politician are difficult to separate, because he proposes things that he claims are both right for the nation and good for the party, which he warns will ultimately suffer at the polls for its “pandering” to believers...

The Terri Schiavo case woke him up to the dangers of the “religious right.” But... Danforth appears to see no moral issue at all, only a violation his party’s supposed traditional commitment to limited government and state’s rights.

He professes also to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman but that government should stay out of the issue of homosexual “marriage.” (His Republican principles forbid that the U.S. Constitution be amended to define marriage but require that the Missouri constitution be amended to insure tax subsidies for stem-cell research.)...

Danforth is simplistic in attributing such issues solely to religious belief...

Danforth...[urges] believers to be charitable and tolerant in their public utterances even while almost hysterically condemning the “religious right” as a threat to the Republic...

A standard criticism of conservative believers is that they “intrude” issues into the political process that are “divisive.” But once again, the critics offer their own view as the only correct one — favoring homosexual marriage is not divisive, opposing it is...

Danforth clearly seems to believe that, despite his own one-time pro-life position, conservative religion has no legitimate place in the public square...

Danforth praises his own church because it “holds within itself a variety of views. And I think that is good,” thereby implying that the remedy for religious divisiveness is for everyone to emulate the Episcopalians.

Hitchcock-1, Danforth-0
Hitchcock does a great job dissecting Danforth's unfortunate disconnect with reality.

John and his brother, William, are both hyping and extolling the "promises" of embryonic stem cell research...at the expense of ethics, morality, and representational government. And as mentioned earlier, these men need our prayers - we need to pray for their conversion.