David French: Christian Zealots Can't Hold Back

While my link today may have fire walls requiring a subscription, I hope many can read it. David French is a lawyer who formerly defended Christian organizations in court and prosecuted the concepts of non believers. He attacked abortion rights. Then the right turned him into a villain and today he writes interesting things about having moved from inside the zealot Christian center to it fringes.

His column today debunks the popular view in the Christian right that Christianity suffers from persecution and its rights are trampled upon. He suggests that no religious group in the world has its rights protected as much as U.S. Christianity. The problem with Christian zealotry is that it cannot stop itself from trampling on the rights of non Christians. It wants books banned and abortion never mentioned.

David French's conclusion that the religious right cannot hold back its zealotry to some level that is acceptable to the general public says what I have read into the Founding Fathers. I must admit here that what we know of the Founding Fathers of the 1700's cannot be considered complete. They were politicians and said and wrote different things to different people. What we know for certain is they did not put a state religion into the Constitution. In the several decades that followed when they were replacing autonomous states governments with federal powers they also took a pass on a government religion. They said and wrote a little here the there about religion and the writing I like to focus on reflects my own bias. One important member of the group wrote the zealotry and aggressiveness of religions borders on the uncontrollable. 

What David French wrote reflects an experience with the religious right similar to what the Founding Fathers saw in religious people. They cannot hold back. If gay marriage can be prohibited, why not interracial marriage. If my religion does not permit an unmarried man and woman from sleeping in the same bedroom I can turn them away from the motel I own. Also, if I think a woman who came into my restaurant has had an abortion I can ask her to leave.

French practiced anti abortion law and held positions of authority in the Force Birth community. He got cross wise with that group, however, when he saw that absolute "defense of all life" was not realistic nor was it practiced in medicine. Certainly allowing abortions up to six weeks is not an absolute prohibition.

As French wrote, since he became a person pushed to the outer edge of Christian zealotry it looks different than it did when he was deep in its middle.