Christian fundamentalism is best when libertarian

Some people just can't seem to wrap their brains around the idea that you can be a Christian fundamentalist and also be a libertarian:

Abortion. Gay Marriage. 10 Commandments. Porn. Science. But probably, mostly abortion.

It is a standard political device for fundamentalist Christians to cloak their true theocratic political agendas using the label of libertarian.? Vox Popoli comes to mind here. Fundamentalists know that theocracy isn't exactly an attractive idea when it is presented at face value; it must have a value-add? and a costume to wear. This was the elephant in the living room that was pointed out by Judge Jones in the Intelligent Design? ruling this week. The Christian fundamentalists were lying about their true beliefs and motives. They lied to the citizens and they lied to the Judge.

There is nothing libertarian about allowing minors access to pornography or abortion. True libertarians do not support the regulation of marriage by the state because they see marriage as a strictly religious institution. If a religious group wants to marry homosexuals, that's fine as long as the government is not setting the standard for marriage between consenting adults and emancipated minors. Most libertarians, regardless of religion, see nothing wrong with displaying the 10 commandments in a public place, unless they are being used to override civil law. Considering the fact that judge Roy Moore never used them as a basis for attacking civil liberties, for example he never attacked the right to practice any religion that one wants, I think it's safe to say that the two are not incompatible from a libertarian perspective.

I can speak only for many reformed protestants, the ones who make up the biggest block of real fundamentalists, when I say that most of us just want to be left alone by the government. We don't want our institutions regulated by the state. Reformed theology also points us in a direction which is fundamentally libertarian due to the doctrines of grace and predestination, two doctrines which ultimately obliterate all value to forcing Christian outlooks and behavior on non-Christians. Believe it or not, but there has always been a very libertarian streak among reformed protestant denominations. If our beliefs are so inherently destructive to liberty, then why is it that Presbyterians, a mainstay of reformed protestant Christianity, were so prevalent among the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the troops that fought the War for Independence? In fact, that war was originally called the "Presbyterian Revolt" by the British.

Since Arminianism is so prevalent among fundamentalists, I can understand why Christploitation has a hard time understanding that there is actually a strong libertarian vein among many fundamentalists. It ultimately boils down to the branch of Protestant Christianity that a believer belongs to. If they belong to a reformed denomination, they will tend to be "state-skeptical" to outright libertarian. If they are a typical Southern Baptist, they will reject the doctrine of predestination and thus believe that legislating their worldview is justified and beneficial for the unbeliever.

Believe me, they often piss us off too because their approach ultimately forces the church to become subordinate to the state and make compromises with society on doctrinal issues. I don't want marriage between consenting adults to be regulated by the government, and I have no problem with a hyper-liberal church allowing homosexuals to get married. Many of us don't even support public education period so for many of us, the Dover issue is a moot point since we don't support the public teaching of evolution or intelligent design.

To summarize the way many of us "libertarian fundamentalists" see these issues for the average non-believer, we see the church when left to run its affairs in isolation according to God's laws as being on the spiritual high ground that God grants us through His Word. The bigger the government, the more the church gets sucked into things, especially on social issues, and eventually we are forced to compromise our beliefs and faith because we allowed things like the sacrament of marriage to be put up for auction via the democratic process. We have lost nearly all control over the sacrament of marriage because we legislated an artificial substitute into existence in the 19^th century and now we are paying for that. We opened His sacrament up to the world and the world has trampled it. This is why many of us have adopted a very libertarian view of politics.

So, please explain to me how it is dishonest for us to seek a libertarian political order in order to have more freedom to have our religion practiced unmolested by bureaucrats and non-believers. And don't cite Dover as a good example of how we are secretly theocrats who want to make America into a Christianized Afghanistan because a fundamentalist who genuinely subscribes to libertarian political beliefs, and there are many who do, would not support public education in general. It sounds to me like many of our critics just cannot grok the difference between a Christian conservative and a conservative Christian. Remember, as Hayek pointed out, an adjective modifies the noun that follows it and thus there is a major difference between those two forms of conservatism. One little hint: one is a sprinkling of Christianity on a politically right-wing worldview and the other is a strong desire to adhere to Christian doctrines.