The Misguided Lance of Bryan Fischer

One of Bryan Fischer’s seminal works, and perhaps the best summing-up of his redoubtable raison d’etre, deals with “Why Christians Should Be Involved in Public Policy.”

Most people’s answer to the unasked question of the title would be, “Wait, aren’t they already?” After all, let’s take a look at the top public offices in the country, and see how many are held by Christians:

President: Barack Obama (Christian)

Vice-President: Joe Biden (Christian)

Secretary of State: Hilary Clinton (Christian)

Secretary of Treasury: Timothy Geithner (Christian)

Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates (Christian)

Attorney General: Eric Holder (Christian)

Secretary of the Interior: Ken Salazar (Christian)

Secretary of Agriculture: Tom Vilsack (Christian)

Secretary of Commerce: Gary Locke (Christian)

Secretary of Labor: Hilda Solis (Christian)

Secretary of Health and Human Services: Kathleen Sebelius (Christian)

Secretary of Education: Arne Duncan  (unaffiliated)

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development: Shaun Donovan (Christian)

Secretary of Transportation: Ray LaHood (Christian)

Secretary of Energy: Steven Chu (affiliation unknown)

Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs: Eric Shinsheki (affiliation unknown)

Secretary of Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano  (Christian)

Chief of Staff: Rahm Emanuel (Judaism)

Clearly, Christians are well represented. As usual, Bryan is playing the delusional Don Quixote, jousting gallantly at the giants of persecution and exclusion that obstinately fail to plague him. (Although, given his attitude toward renewable energy and environmental responsibility, he probably considers windmills to be worthy opponents.)

What Bryan means is that every Christian involved in public policy should be as doggedly dogmatic as he is himself, and should favor fanatical religious convictions over sensible statecraft. 

What’s more, they owe their position not to their constituents or to appointment by the President, as American voters so foolishly thought, but to The Big White Guy in the Sky. “Civil authorities, we are told in Scripture itself, are ‘ministers of God,’” Fischer blathers.

One problem, Bryan: the Constitution provides for the separation of church and state. Next time you eagerly unstick the pages of that august document to drool over the Second Amendment yet again, try to spare a glance for the first.