Monday, June 21, 2004

A Good Idea?

I'm not one to normally agree with fundamentalist Christian crazies, but, hey, even they from time to time have ideas that I can get on board with!

Conservative Christian group plans to secede in South Carolina:

A Texas group wants conservative Christians to move to South Carolina - 12,000 at a time - to form a biblically inspired government and secede from the United States.

Decrying a national tolerance of abortion and gay marriage, and the teaching of evolution, ChristianExodus.org hopes to achieve a majority of like-minded Christians in the state by 2016, the planned year of secession.

[. . .]

ChristianExodus.org's leader is Cory Burnell, a 28-year-old who lives in Tyler, Texas, where he teaches at a local Christian school and runs a coffee shop and mobile phone store.

Previously, Burnell directed a Texas regional branch of the League of the South, the country's largest secessionist organization. Burnell says ChristianExodus.org, founded in November 2003, has 600 members nationwide, connected through the group's Web sites.

[. . .]

Burnell's program "is very, very similar to the original Confederacy," said Harry Singleton, a professor of religion and philosophy at Benedict College. "Basically what they're trying to do is re-establish a reality where for them the divine and the secular mesh."

Burnell said South Carolina was chosen because it is a small, conservative state, where the group would have a head start. His plan resonates with at least one other prominent South Carolina fundamentalist group.

"Anything that moves more Christians to South Carolina who want to live under God's law sounds good to me," said Steve Lefemine, director of Columbia Christians For Life.

I think we can all agree that losing South Carolina is a small price to pay to get these nutters out of our hair.