Evangelical Self-Righteousness On The Defensive

I have to admit that there is something satisfying in the recent scandals involving conservative politicians and evangelical preachers.  We’ve all heard of Marc Foley’s problems.  I should point out that the problem is not that he is gay, but that he harassed children and marketed himself as someone who promoted conservative "family values" – whatever that means.  A few weeks ago we learned that the Bush administration doesn’t really take their conservative Christian base seriously and now we have the revelation that Ted Haggard was in a relationship with a male prostitute.  These stories point to the dangers of mixing politics and religion.  Given that most of these people believe that the Founding Fathers intended to create a Christian nation perhaps they should go back to the debate surrounding the establishment clause.  Turns out that many of the people who pushed for the separation of church and state were people from within the church and they did so with the belief that it was religion that needed to be protected from the dirt of politics.  And isn’t this exactly what we are now seeing?