Traditionally, American evangelicals are enthusiasts for the country’s founding principles. Sometimes, in their zeal, they get carried away, exaggerating Christianity’s influence among the Founders. But evangelicals are largely correct to honor the principles of human equality and liberty that ultimately originate in the Bible’s view of humans imaging God. American democracy, although of course littered with human sin, has providentially gifted unprecedented freedom, prosperity, and opportunity to hundreds of millions of people of all faiths and no faith.
So, evangelicals and others should be concerned about growing challenges to the founding premises of American democracy, not just from secularists but also from conservative Christians preferring some form of theocracy or confessional state. Likely you have never heard of integralism, but you need to know about it.
(Read article here.)
Comment by Tom on January 13, 2022 at 5:29 pm
The Catholic church has not set a particularly good example of moral behavior lately. While I was not molested during my days as an altar boy, my Catholic high school had to apologize to us twice–twice–in recent years for some of my classmates who were.
Also, their message seems to veer around 180 degrees depending on who exactly the Pope is.
For example, would the integralists ban air conditioning as sinful (as stated in Laudato Si)? That might not be too popular in the South and Southwest. Would they discriminate against Protestants as inferior bodies (as described in Iesus Dominus)? What other actions would they advocate.
Comment by td on January 15, 2022 at 9:09 pm
I’m not convinced that this is something that people need to know about. While there are a miniscule number of Catholics who MIGHT support replacing the US constitution with some sort of confessional state, their numbers are miniscule. Please do not lead people to believe that the institutional Catholic church in the US or the Vatican suppprts integralism.
At some level this reaction against some Catholic intellectuals who endorse integralism is being fed by a notion that some protestants still have that Catholics are not and never will be true Americans.