Street Prophets: The dangerous facts of religious politics

Street Prophets: Faith and Politics: "Lots of establishment types like to say there's nothing new under the sun with respect to religion and politics. In December 2004, White House speechwriter Michael Gerson told journalists that George W. Bush's religious rhetoric was the same old thing we'd always seen: 'I don't believe that any of this is a departure from American history.' Three months earlier Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, editor of the ecumenical journal First Things, declared of Bush's religious politics: 'There is nothing that Bush has said about divine purpose, destiny and accountability that Abraham Lincoln did not say. This is as American as apple pie.'

If this is apple pie, the fruit is rotten.

Both of these men were wrong, and their position is dangerous. As in end of the American experiment in democracy dangerous. How do I know? My colleague, Kevin Coe, and I ran the numbers."