statesman.com

Perry’s campaign draws closer as the Response passes into history, Perry gets some attention from the Sunday shows and the Morning News takes a long look at Royce West.

(Happy birthday to Texas Parent PAC’s Carolyn Boyle.)

Gov. Rick Perry and his team seem pretty happy with the Response and its bigger-than-expected crowd of 30,000. For now at least, it doesn’t seem like any of the people on stage in the eight-hour event said anything that will cause immediate, serious damage to his presidential prospects. Perry was well-received by those in the stadium, the event was well-covered and Perry has now clearly identified himself with evangelical America.

We are now as close to a self-professed Evangelical Christian candidacy for the Presidency as we have been since - well, since the birth of the nation. I am not talking here of candidates who are upfront about their religious affiliation, or who profess a spiritual component to their political philosophy. Perry would be running on a fully developed platform built entirely and coherently on Evangelical Christian precepts. His religious beliefs will not simply inform his moral choices, but will form the basis for political decisions that will be designed to bring New Apostolic Evangelicalism to all of us, whether we like it or not. Anybody unwilling to accept “the living Christ” will be subject to re-education as a (second-class) citizen of the United States. Roughly 26% of the country will be determining the social and political environment for the majority. This Pew Forum Survey on the U.S. Religious Landscape is a good place to start the realization that one way or another, the religious, social and anti-science convictions of a vocal minority from Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and other Deep South states have started to determine the direction of national discourse.

What would life under a President Perry look like? We know who his supporters are, much as we know how he feels about marriage equality, homosexuality in general, and the notion that God somehow should be blamed for man-made disasters to avoid harm to his friends in the oil business. Science? forget about it. Not to mention Perry’s populistic approach to religious pandering:

So while Rick Perry is out to pander for votes, he’s pandering to people who believe in signs and wonders and spiritual warfare; who care nothing for policy or respecting other people’s faith beliefs; who disdain other people’s reproductive choices and gender identities; and who believe that God is calling them to engage in a bloodless (although apocalyptic) battle with political enemies. If Perry runs for president, it won’t be for the United States of America. It will be for a new Zion whose followers believe God will smite their enemies and declare a new Kingdom on earth, and in America, one that is ruled by their singular version of Jesus Christ.

I could go on for a while here, but I will get to the point. Rick Perry’s vision for the United States is one in which non-believers live as tolerated second class citizens who can only better themselves by accepting Christ (but only in an Evangelical context - Papists need not apply), where laws will be re-written to reflect a New Apostolic interpretation of the Bible, and where education will be secondary to religious indoctrination.

While we are being asked to worry about “sneaking sharia law”, we are in very real danger of becoming dhimmi to the Evangelical right.