Skip Navigation

The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

The Problem With Christianism

By The Daily Dish
Nov 19 2008, 8:04 AM ET

Tocqueville understood the genius of American Christianity better than most Republicans today:

"I have no belief in the virtue or durability of official philosophies, and when it comes to state religions, I have always thought that, though they may perhaps sometimes momentarily serve the interests of political power, they are always sooner or later fatal for the church.

Nor am I one of those who think that to exalt religion in the eyes of the people and to do honor to the spirituality of religious teaching, it is good to give its ministers indirectly a political influence which the laws refuse.

I am so deeply convinced of the almost inevitable dangers which face beliefs when their interpreters take part in public affairs, and so firmly persuaded that at all costs Christianity must be maintained among the new democracies that I would rather shut priests up within their sanctuaries than allow them to leave them."

These people will kill Christianity before they get to enforce by law the fantasies of their own neuroses.



Presented by

More at The Atlantic

Occupy Kindergarten: The Rich-Poor Divide Starts With Education The Wealth Gap Starts With Education
Using the Internet as Matchmaker: The Drawbacks to Online Dating The Drawbacks to Online Dating
The Reverent, Ridiculous Grammys The Reverent, Ridiculous Grammys
We Don't Need a Digital Sabbath, We Need More Time You Don't Need a Break From Technology
Can't We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Mass Refinancing? Can't We Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Mass Refinancing?
Special Report
The Civil War National Portrait Gallery The Civil War
A 150th-anniversary commemorative issue, with Atlantic work by Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Frederick Douglass, and others. Read more ›
View All Correspondents

The Biggest Story in Photos

Athens in Flames

Feb 13, 2012

Subscribe Now

SAVE 59%! 10 issues JUST $2.45 PER COPY

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)