Divide and Conquor: Tyrants Always Try This But Unless We are Very Stupid It Won't Work

Obama is a liberal Protestant who was formed in a church that preached black liberation theology and it is an open question as to how much of orthodox Christianity he actually believes. One would not have to believe much to fit comfortably into Jeremiah Wright's congregation and it is very difficult to believe that a person with orthodox Christian doctrine could have endured 20 years of Wright's rants.

But one thing Obama knows is that the Christian Church in America is an obstacle to his vision of a giant, all-powerful State directing the lives of individuals with as few as possible intermediate institution in between. The family is one such mediating institution and the Democratic Party has been following policies that weaken the family ever since they used the opening provided by the civil rights movement to implement the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson. The Church is another such institution and as George Will remarked the other day on ABC's This Week, every institution of civil society must be broken to the saddle of the progressive state.

The Christian Church is hardly a monolithic entity and so the opportunity exists for Obama to try to divide and conquer. A frontal assault on the whole thing never works, so chipping off groups here and there is the obvious way to go if one's goal is to neutralize Christian opposition to the out of control Leviathan.

Two obvious fissures exist in the Christian Church in America that can be exploited by shameless politicians eager to neutralize the Christian moral witness. First, the Roman Catholic Church, which is dangerous because of its size and hierarchical organization, has a liberal wing that regularly dissents from the hierarchy and is perfectly positioned to be used as dupes for Big Government. Second, the Evangelical-Catholic alliance, which has become so dangerous to Leviathan in recent years, is always inherently fragile. Witness the way that the pro-life movement is winning the moral argument and the political fight over abortion ever since the Catholics and Evangelicals got together and liberal Protestantism declined to insignificance.

Enter the contraception issue. Why is Obama so anxious to turn a referendum on Obamacare into a referendum on contraception? It is his administration's strategy to defend Obamacare and the march toward ever Bigger Government. How so? Evangelicals and Catholics, on the one hand, and liberal and mainstream Catholics, on the other, disagree on this issue. The Evangelical-Catholic alliance on abortion is so strong now that abortion is losing its value as a wedge issue for liberals (which is why they now accuse conservatives of using it as a wedge issue). So they need a new wedge issue to divide Christians from one another.

The liberal Catholics who support Obama are dupes. He is just using them and will toss them aside like so much excess baggage once they have served their purpose. If it were not for the fact that the Pope and the Bishops are a genuine threat to Obama's re-election, they would be under the bus already.

Evangelicals should be wary of this strategy and should remember who their true allies are. And, let it be said, it is past time for Evangelicals to re-think their support for the whole contraceptive mentality. What I am surprised is not being emphasized right now is that Evangelicals and Catholics are equally opposed to the "morning after pill" and other poisons that cause abortions. And the government is determined to make every Evangelical college and seminary in America pay for such abortion poisons. We Evangelicals have every bit as much at stake as Catholics do in this sort of fight if we are serious about being anti-abortion.

If Obama can peel off some Evangelical support from the Evangelical-Catholic alliance and then get liberal Catholics fighting his battles for him against the hierarchy, then he dilutes the voting impact of traditional Christian opposition to his pro-sexual revolution policies. But if we are on to his game, we can ensure that there is no daylight between our position and the Catholic one. After all, this is not really about contraception; it is about religious liberty and limited government.