Lawmaker in Kentucky Mixes Piety and Politics

[groovedaddy]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Tom Riner looks for God everywhere, and in places he does not find him, he tries to put him there.

For more than 30 years, Mr. Riner’s singular devotion has been to inject God into the public arena. It has guided him as he preached the Bible in the countryside of Nicaragua and Jamaica. And it steers him as he proselytizes the formerly homeless and drug-addicted people who live with him at his ramshackle church in one of the poorest sections of this city.

But this unrelenting mission has also frequently taken Mr. Riner and the Kentucky legislature, where he has been a Democratic representative for 26 years, across the constitutional barrier between church and state.

In December, an atheist organization and a group of state residents sued Kentucky over Mr. Riner’s most recent incursion: a 2006 law he sponsored requiring that the state’s homeland security office post a plaque recognizing God’s role in keeping the country safe.

“The church-state divide is not a line I see,” Mr. Riner, a Baptist minister, said of the lawsuit. “What I do see is an attempt to separate America from its history of perceiving itself as a nation under God.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/us/04louisville.html?th&emc=th

[rrneck]

1. Another well meaning

dupe for the church powers that be to be trotted out in their dog and pony show of piety. He's a tool and he doesn't even know it.

[Warpy]

2. I love that first sentence, it says it all about a lot of fanatics

All you can do with such people is keep informing them where the line is and then enforce it.

The Jesus I read about would take a very dim view of anyone who withholds help from people unless they're willing to be harangued. However, he does help the ones who are.

For that, he's to be commended. He just needs to know there's a difference between his church and state buildings.

[Taitertots]

3. not a line I see

“The church-state divide is not a line I see,” Mr. Riner
How are people like this still getting elected?

The religious people who do charity are annoying when they make it all about religion. If he spent have as much energy on helping as proselytizing he could make a real difference.

[RetiredTrotskyite]

4. More And More, This Country Sickens Me...

I'm sick to death of Xtians trying to shoehorn their beliefs into public policy. Would anyone care to guess what would happen if a pagan tried this shit? They'd either be drummed out of office or assassinated. Not saying anyone should be killed for their beliefs but if they try to impose them in the civic arena, they need to be recalled. There is NO excuse for this sort of crap in 21st Century America.

[EvolveOrConvolve]

5. The Republican party doesn't have the market corner on stupidity

as evidenced by the idiotic Mr. Riner.