Christian Conservatives and the War against Secular Humanism

Abstract

In 2006, Representative Katherine Harris, who lost her race for the Senate, gave an interview to a religious journal, the Florida Baptist Witness, in which she asserted that the separation of church and state is a “lie,” and that electing non-Christians to political office means legislating sin (Katherine Harris). This is a rather extreme view within literature advocating for a stronger relation between Christianity and politics, even among the Christian right. Some may agree with Katherine Harris, but perhaps surprisingly, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have often disagreed with this view in their public policy literature. Often, it is statements like Harris’s that are viewed as representing the entirety of the religious right, and the left accuses them of wanting some form of theocratic government. However, in order to understand the general aims of persons usually described as Christian right, and in particular, what they think the proper relationship should be between religion and government, it is first necessary to discover what their more typical arguments are like.