I agree. I consider myself a born-again Christian and am personally quite "socially conservative", but am a "social liberal-moderate" when it comes to the government's role in the private lives of Americans.

You cannot legislate morality. Who is the government to say what is "moral" or not? What might not be moral for you may be for me, or vice versa. And I for one do not want any schoolteacher preaching his or her religious beliefs to my child, I want them to teach the children to read, write, and cipher.

Regardless of what Hillary believes, Moms and Dads know how to raise their children better than the government!

Remember the Huckster? He represented the Religious Right in the Republican Party. He lost despite the efforts of the religious right nationally. Republicans primary voters selected the moderate (and neocon) McCain.

Warmongering, unlimited Congressional spending, pandering to old folks and minorities with the prescription benefits plan, and an inability to reign in the current financial situation sunk the Republicans.

The neocons want you to believe that the Religious Right is the culprit. I think this is another one of their ploys. It is neoconservatism that was voted out of office this November.

Read Romans 13:1 and afterwards and it might give a meaning to all that is transpiring.
Bill

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel06-2.html

It is no exaggeration to say that on Sundays in Washington during the administrations of Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) and of James Madison (1809-1817) the state became the church. Within a year of his inauguration, Jefferson began attending church services in the House of Representatives.

Worship services in the House--a practice that continued until after the Civil War--were acceptable to Jefferson because they were nondiscriminatory and voluntary. Preachers of every Protestant denomination appeared. (Catholic priests began officiating in 1826.)

Throughout his administration Jefferson permitted church services in executive branch buildings. The Gospel was also preached in the Supreme Court chambers.

Jefferson's actions may seem surprising because his attitude toward the relation between religion and government is usually thought to have been embodied in his recommendation that there exist "a wall of separation between church and state." In that statement, Jefferson was apparently declaring his opposition, as Madison had done in introducing the Bill of Rights, to a "national" religion. In attending church services on public property, Jefferson and Madison consciously and deliberately were offering symbolic support to religion as a prop for republican government.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c102:H.J.RES.104.ENR:

H.J.Res.104
One Hundred Second Congress of the United States of America

Whereas Congress recognizes the historical tradition of ethical values and principles which are the basis of civilized society and upon which our great Nation was founded; Whereas these ethical values and principles have been the bedrock of society from the dawn of civilization, when they were known as the Seven Noahide Laws

You either didn't read the column or you didn't comprehend what she was saying.

I was responding to this: ...the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs.
Neither Jefferson nor Madison believed religion belonged only in "the privacy of one's heart."

But, you're right, Ms. Parker is an incredibly deep thinker!

Short break as writer ties blindfold and smokes her last cigarette.
Comparing the Christian right to Muslim terrorists! How courageous, original, and profound!

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows.
I'm sorry we can't all be geniuses like Ms. Parker. The religious right are all just dummies, like Rev. Neuhaus or Dr. Dobson or Dennis Prager.

But, like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian.
She's half right here. We are no longer predominantly white. The GOP does need to court Hispanic voters, who are largely Catholic, with a growing number becoming Pentacostal or some other form of evangelical Protestant. And Ms. Parker mentions the Jewish vote, as an example of how the Republican party has lost favor with non-Christians, as if it has ever been Republican!

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state. [Congress thus inhibited from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I have refrained from presenting even occasional performances of devotion presented indeed legally where an Executive is the legal head of a national church, but subject here, as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective sect.] Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties." - Thomas Jefferson, 1802

the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions

The religious right would completely agree with this. When the religious right argues, for example, that there should be more restrictions on abortion, they are not arguing that you have to accept any particular church's or sect's theology.

No one on the religious right believes that the Executive should be "the legal head of a national church." Legistlators are chosen by the people, so the religious right tries to choose legislators who will pass laws that agree with the values of the religious right. Not laws that establish a religion, mind you, but laws that "reach actions" the religious right considers harmful. Isn't this what every faction does?