Anne Hathaway on Obama's election: "We're allowed to live now."

A more socialist state directly harms the church, and I don’t just mean anti-religion policies. I mean government becoming all things to all people; replacing freedom and independence with a false sense of security. I mean Christians slacking on our biblical mission to care for the poor and the sick because someone else is doing it.  Aside from the practical aspects of which system works better (government does almost nothing efficiently or well) it’s important to look at the end result.  When we do it, God is glorified. When the state does it, government is glorified. It’s that simple.

Uruguay has been called the “Switzerland of South America” because of their expansive welfare state and low religious participation. We have every reason to expect to become the Switzerland of North America.  This study explains the inverse relationship of welfare to religious participation in detail.  This article is a wonderful summary of why people of faith should have thought twice before they voted for Obama and handed more of the work of Christians over to the government.

To fund his bold efforts to revive the American economy and expand the welfare state, Obama is proposing to spend a staggering $3.6 trillion in the 2010 fiscal year. Obama’s revolutionary agenda would push federal, state, and local spending to approximately 40 percent of Gross Domestic Product, up from about 33 percent in 2000. It would also put the size of government in the United States within reach of Europe, where government spending currently makes up 46 percent of GDP.

Why is this significant for the vitality of religion in America? A
recent study of 33 countries around the world by Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde, political scientists at the University of Washington, indicates that there is an inverse relationship between state welfare spending and religiosity. Specifically, they found that countries with larger welfare states had markedly lower levels of religious attendance, had higher rates of citizens indicating no religious affiliation whatsoever, and their people took less comfort in religion in general. In their words, “Countries with higher levels of per capita welfare have a proclivity for less religious participation and tend to have higher percentages of non-religious individuals.”

… over the long term the Obama revolution is likely to erode first the religious and then the civic and moral fabric of the nation. Undoubtedly, this is not the change religious believers who put their faith in Obama last November are hoping for from this president.

But are we going to be as irreligious as Europe, or just praise a different god? We’ve seen the “Obamessiah” phenomenon since the start of the Presidential campaign; it’s wry commentary on how over-the-top the left has gone on a guy whose speeches usually parse out to meaninglessness. But a lot of people take it pretty seriously. It’s really not just politics to them.  I don’t particularly care what actors think – no more than anyone else – but the video does a good job of expressing the emotionalism that got President Obama elected.

Some people made a thoughtful, considered decision to vote for the man.  They learned what his actual policies are and agreed with them.  My brother is one of those people.   But most people, and Ziegler’s video walks this out, had no idea who he is or what he stands for.  They thought he was pro-life; a totally absurd position.  They were carried away by the thought of electing a black president (a day I looked forward to as well, just not this black president) and by hollow, towering rhetoric that the press mercilessly pounded into all our brains.

Usually where the church is oppressed and poverty abounds, the church grows exponentially – China and North Korea are prime examples.  But when your religious icon is the head of the government, how does the welfare/anti-religious equation play out? Will people wake up and escape from the cult as circumstances worsen, or will they gulp down more Kool-aid?   America has been an atypical nation since the beginning.  I think we will continue to be, and that we will see more people turn to Obama than we will to the church.  I pray that I’m wrong.

via Hot Air