Blog | Myrtle Beach area conservative Christians haven’t cornered the market on faith, or morality
I plan to follow up my recent piece on the horrible mix of politics and faith along the Myrtle Beach area I was happy to have gotten away from for a year.
Here’s the column that started this discussion: Does believing in God mean believing in the GOP, too?
But I wanted to quickly address a couple letters to the editor.
Here’s one:
GOP-God comments off base with readers
Re: Nov. 9 column by Issac Bailey, “Does belief in God mean belief in GOP?”
It is distressing to hear Isaac Bailey indicate his discomfort with Myrtle Beach Christians who take the word of God (not GOP, Isaac) seriously.
While there are a number of his points that beg rebuttal I will address just one. He says “there is supposed to be a clear line between politics and faith.” Really? Is it all right for a politician to lie? Is it all right for a politician to steal? Is it all right for a politician to kill? Those are moral issues (not political) driven by faith in God’s commandments, not His suggestions.
Pretty simple, right? The problem for many is they don’t believe that God’s law trumps man’s law and when one begins to “pick and choose” for personal reasons it most probably results in wanting to get away from people who espouse their faith-based beliefs. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen here
JOHN KOST
MYRTLE BEACH
Notice the primary concern of some people of faith isn’t that their conflating of politics and God is making it harder for some people to hold onto faith, it is that they believe their First Amendment rights might be threatened because they are being challenged.
They are making the point I was trying to make better than I ever could.
If you can’t even pause to maybe rethink, not your principles, but how you are expressing them, to make sure you aren’t becoming a barrier to another person’s faith, then maybe - just maybe - you’ve lost sight of what’s really important?
I’ll defend people’s First Amendment rights until the day I die. I’ll never argue that a person of faith should not be allowed to speak up.
But I am saying how they speak up and express those views matter.
This story was originally published November 17, 2014 at 12:01 PM with the headline "Blog | Myrtle Beach area conservative Christians haven’t cornered the market on faith, or morality."