For those who are keeping track, the “living Constitution” just “evolved” again.
Up to now, we were assured that shushing public expressions of Christian faith was about maintaining the “separation of church and state” that the Supreme Court wished into the Constitution. To keep the ACLU’s finger off the lawsuit button — I mean, “to embrace diversity” — Christian public officials, in particular, were instructed to confine statements of faith to explicitly religious settings.
But the hyperactive condemnation of Alabama’s new governor, even after he followed the secularists’ guidelines to the letter, shows the rules have changed once more. And that, gentle reader, should be a lesson against taking advice on practicing your faith from people who don’t share that faith or who take a radically different view of it.
Robert Bentley was sworn in at the Alabama Capitol. After taking the oath of office, he left government property and entered a Baptist church. There, among primarily fellow believers, Bentley, a Baptist deacon, made a statement that reflects 2,000 years of Christian teaching: “Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”
That should have been as controversial as snarfing deviled eggs at a covered-dish supper in the fellowship hall — particularly since moments before, Bentley had painstakingly noted that he would be a governor for all residents of the state. But in today’s oddly jumbled atmosphere of militant diversity and easily bruised multicultural sensibilities, acknowledging that different religions hold views that are mutually exclusive is simply not done. Even retreating to the sanctuary of a church is no longer grounds for thinking you’re entitled to profess such beliefs, as the governor discovered.