Religion & Law

Canadian commentator David Warren gives expression to the concerns that many of people of faith have about the man likely to become the next President. Herewith an excerpt (full editorial here):

Obama has presented himself from the start as a messianic, ?transformational? leader ? and thus played deceitfully with ideas that belong to religion and not politics. That he has done this so successfully is a mark of the degree to which the U.S. itself, like the rest of the western world, has lost its purchase on the Christian religion. Powerful religious impulses have been spilt, secularized.

In this climate, people tend to be maniacally opposed to the sin to which they are not tempted: to giving Christ control over the things that are Caesar?s. But they are blind to the sin to which they are hugely tempted: giving Caesar control over the things that are Christ?s.

?Faith, hope, and charity? are Christ?s things. They apply, properly, outside time ? to a ?futurity? that is not of this world. They must not be applied to any earthly utopia. A Caesar who appropriates otherworldly virtues, is riding upon very dangerous illusions. Follow him into dreamland, and you?ll be lucky to wake up.