As we blather, remember 2004

This nice little article from Out of Ur, a blog from Christianity Today, published yesterday reminds us of the visceral reactions to the 2004 results.

The view north of Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, was even more ominous. Northwestern University adjunct history professor Garry Wills declared November 2, 2004, "the day the enlightenment went out." No longer did America take after France, Britain, Germany, Italy or Spain. No, Bush's America harbored "fundamentalist zeal, a rage at secularity, religious intolerance, fear of and hatred for modernity." In short, the new America shared more in common with Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's Sunni loyalists.

And even before yesterday's election results the Christian Right (in this case Focus on the Family) began the "wailing and gnashing of teeth".

Indeed, Focus's hypothetical "Christian from 2012" writes, "Personally, I don't know how we are going to get through tomorrow, for these are difficult times."

Thankfully, there's a bit of wise advice from the author:

This election will affect how Christians live among their neighbors for decades to come, for better and worse. But faith must at least lead Christians to leave the scare tactics to the skeptics.