I must not have explained myself well, I agree with what MLK did with his religious faith. My point is everyone lives out their faith, whatever they believe, including atheists and agnostics.

Your question of McWaters keeping his beliefs out of policy is what I said was not legitimate. No one can or does that.

I also said that your underlying question was not only legitimate but the key issue with all who are involved in public life, that is what are your beliefs. You were quite right to question his church affiliation and role of women. That is important and worth bringing to light.

However, his position is not extreme but is and always has been the Christian position until recently when a handful of diminishing denominations rejected traditional theology, but they are the extremists.

And MLK Jr never ran for office, so what he did with his beliefs was his business.

You may think the question not legitimate but that doesn’t make it so.

Remember, If it wasn’t for the Christian “right” we wouldn’t have abolished slavery. William Wilberforce in Britain who led the downfall of the slave trade and the abolitionists in this country were all traditional Christians who would be characterized as the religious right by you. Yet they didn’t keep their religion to themselves but let it drive the entire culture to a higher level and that is how we got rid of the slave trade and how we are protecting people’s right to life today. Same fight.

But I also would say to your comment about a modern culture clinging to old values and beliefs.
Well, they certainly should especially if the old values are true and the new ones are false.

[There might not be a Southern Baptist Convention today if the women of the church, the same ones who've been denied leadership roles throughout the denomination's history, hadn't bailed the denomination out financially and provided necessary institutional stability every time the men screwed things up and knocked the church off its feet.]

It is true that mainstream denominations have generally been in decline and that for a period newer evangelical churches were very attractive to people looking for old-fashioned values in an increasingly complex modern world.

The decline in mainstream denominations, however, had more to do with geographic dispersion of congregants, scandals within churches and the increase in secular values that is part of the history of modern developed nations than anything else. A civilization built on education, science and technology cannot sustain itself in a culture that clings to earlier centuries’ values and beliefs.

By the way, new evidence now also shows that the newer generation of megachurches are no longer sustaining their growth, that their founding members are retreating from the monsters they created, and that the reach and political might of the “religious right” was never as great as some purported it to be.

In any event, Vivian’s original thought holds. Mr. McWater’s religious viewpoints are relevant because they discriminate against a sizable minority of his potential constituents. How can any gay man or woman have any confidence in any elected representative who considers their sexual orientation to be either a “choice,” a discretionary “lifestyle” or, in either case, a sin?

Christians, whether Roman Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian Church of American are perfectly capable of representing women even if they believe that men and women are equal, but have different roles in the church, just as they can represent people who choose to practice homosexuality without agreeing that it is OK and not a bar to ordination.

If not, there are very few Americans left to be our representatives other than a handful of extreme left wingers.

At any rate, no of this has any real bearing on the political race other than to say that McWaters is a traditional Christian like 95% of the other Christians in the world.

I’m not following this race closely at all and don’t care who wins. However, it seems to me that if you’re really just looking for an answer to your “simple” question you would have just emailed McWaters and asked him.

Greg