LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY catvincent)

In a follow-up to comments on her earlier post, Sara at Orcinus looks at a (dare I say) fundamental question:

"For the past 200 years, (the American Evangelical movement have) done their level best to lead and convert by the good example of their own lives, believing that honesty, kindness, sobriety, thrift, and other virtues would give them the social capital that would make their way attractive to others. (And, to their credit, many Evangelicals still do believe this is the approach most consistent with Jesus' teachings.)

Unfortunately, as I noted in my post, this attitude has, in recent decades, been replaced with a far more militant and aggressive posture among the more fundamentalist Evangelicals. It's fair to ask: how did we get from there to here? Where did these people jump the track?"

Her take on the chronology and thought-processes is convincing - I wonder what our various walkaway (and of course other) readers think?