{"id":1952,"date":"2010-10-14T11:57:29","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T16:57:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/?p=1952"},"modified":"2010-10-15T20:12:04","modified_gmt":"2010-10-16T01:12:04","slug":"secularists-horrifed-by-churches-encouraging-congregants-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/secularists-horrifed-by-churches-encouraging-congregants-to-vote","title":{"rendered":"Secularists horrifed by churches encouraging congregants to vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.susanjacoby.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Susan Jacoby<\/a> is a real-life card carrying Secular Humanist. She is\u00a0program director of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.centerforinquiry.net\/nyc\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Inquiry-New York City<\/a>, a rationalist think tank, and a member of the advisory board of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.secular.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Secular Coalition for America<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/onfaith.washingtonpost.com\/onfaith\/spirited_atheist\/2010\/10\/why_the_religious_right_has_a_permanent_political_edge_over_secular_america.html\" target=\"_blank\">In her most recent post for the Washington Post&#8217;s <em>On Faith<\/em> blog<\/a> she decries the efforts of conservative evangelicals to inform their congregants of the issues in the coming mid-term elections. Some of the activities she laments include:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>* Planning, advertising and conducting <em>non-partisan<\/em> voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives.<\/p>\n<p>* Educating the congregation regarding biblical teaching on civil government, the responsibility for culture engagement, and the importance of being informed by biblical principles when considering current issues, candidates&#8217; positions, etc.<\/p>\n<p>* Mobilizing members of the congregation to vote their values.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and let the church not forget to provide transportation to the polls for those who need it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Horrors. People actually voting their values and other people actually driving them to the polls to do it. What <em>is<\/em> this country coming to?!<\/p>\n<p>Her piece is a rallying cry to her secularist compatriots who seem to be slumbering under the impression that the Religious Right is dead. She informs them that quite to the contrary:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>No secular organization is capable of mounting anything like an organized, church-funded campaign to recruit new voters. Churches reach deep into the daily lives of their most devout members in a way that no secular group can (or, for that matter, would want to do).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One wonders if Susan Jacoby has never heard of <em>unions<\/em>, which for decades have been mobilizing (intimidating?) their memberships to support\u00a0a most extreme liberal agenda through the election of Democrat candidates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Susan Jacoby is a real-life card carrying Secular Humanist. She is\u00a0program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, a rationalist think tank, and a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America. In her most recent &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/secularists-horrifed-by-churches-encouraging-congregants-to-vote\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[331,557,233],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atheism","category-featured","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1952"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1956,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1952\/revisions\/1956"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}