A woman named Tara Mack represents my district in the State House. She is also a fundamentalist Christian married to one of the pastors of a huge mega-church in the area.
Recently she quite literally got caught with her pants down in the parking lot of a nearby park with a Republican legislative colleague.
About the same time this incident happened there was a YouTube clip of Professor Clay Christensen of the Harvard Business School talking about a comment by a Marxist economist from China studying here as a Fulbright Scholar.
The economist remarked that he was surprised to discover that American democracy depends so heavily on religion to function. He went on to explain that most people voluntarily obey the law (the key to democracy working) and it seemed to him that religion promoted the kind of personal morality that gives rise to this voluntary compliance.
Christensen agreed, noting that years ago most Americans regularly attended a church or synagogue where they were taught such a moral code. But he now worries about the future of our democracy in light of the decline of the influence of religion we are seeing.
(As a footnote, the actual extent of the influence of religion on people’s moral conduct is in dispute. The results of a recent study published online September 11 in the journal Science showed that people live by comparable moral codes whether they are religious and not.)
Be that as it may, if religion can and does have a positive influence on people’s personal moral standards, and in that way helps our democracy function, its decline may have quite serious ramifications for the future for our democracy as well as religious institutions.
That brings me back to Tara Mack. I think she represents the kind of Christian who is contributing to Christianity’s decline in America, and that of the church.
Being caught with her pants down in a car with another brought renewed focus on her political views. They are what you would expect – anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-social programs, anti-Muslim, pro tax cuts for the wealthy, supporting everything else Republicans stand for these days. What is more, two years ago she was a very vocal proponent of a constitutional anti-gay marriage amendment she said would protect the sanctity of traditional marriage.
Her hypocrisy alone is enough to make people turn away from religion, but religious hypocrites have been around a long time. What’s different is that their moral crusades now become headline news and are reported far and wide across numerous media outlets around the world.
The result is that Christianity gets the reputation of making people moralistic, self-righteous, unthinking, uncaring, nationalistic, militaristic, and unbalanced, and more and more people are choosing not to get near it.
But there is a healthier Christianity and churches that teach it than what people like Tara Mack or Kim Davis of Kentucky embody.
The question is, will the latter so poison the public perception of faith that a healthier Christianity will lose its voice entirely and churches that teach it will fade away?
We can only hope the die has not already been cast.
linnposts.com 
How do we find those churches when we have been duped by those talking the gospel but not walking it and our resulting apathy for organized religion has “flown the coop”? Is it time for home gatherings and drawing a fish in the sand straight out of the early days of Christianity?
Without knowing where you live, Rita, I would suggest calling some of the mainline churches where you live and ask them if they are theologically progressive. Those that are may be for you. If they are not, don’t attend.
I know and have experienced your frustration, Rita. You may want to try try the internet search term “progressive church (town name)” I tried it several times using google and a variety of names and it seemed to work well. I wish you success.
I think it’s telling that this incident even made it into international news in Japan. Complete with animation to suggest what happened inside the car.
With instant reporting on nearly everything, hypocrisy does not go unnoticed. Except, perhaps, by the likes of Ms. Mack, Mr. Kelly & their supporters.
House church, per Ms. Dalzell, is appealing. I’m still hopeful that the institution (or at least some congregations) can be the Body of Christ as intended & be the hands and feet of the Divine in this fractured & needy world.
Tara Mack’s “pants down” hypocrisy brings to mind Ted Haggard, the Colorado-based evangelical pastor who was for 3 years the head of the National Association of Evangelicals.
Haggard resigned from all his “leadership” positions in 2006 due to a sex scandal involving a male prostitute/masseur whom he allegedly paid for sex over 3 years and admittedly bought crystal methamphetamine from.
After the scandal was publicized, Haggard entered three weeks of intensive counseling, overseen by four ministers. In 2007, one of those ministers said that Haggard “is now completely heterosexual,” later saying he meant that therapy “gave Ted the tools to help to embrace his heterosexual side.”
It occurs to me that Pastor Ted always had those “tools”!!
I, for one, am looking forward to the death of the church and the end of Christendom. Christianity will be fine. Jesus’ polls well. The jingoist church however… that can go and something new can take it’s place.
Amen to that, Luke!
As for my side of the Pond, it’s long been one of our unwritten rules (the more powerful for being unwritten), that people in public life in England don’t parade their religious beliefs in public. When Tony Blair wanted to discuss his faith in a BBC TV interview, Alastair Campbell, his Press Secretary, weighed in with his immortal phrase: “We don’t do God”…
…And then, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are different places…