Lawrence Journal-World opinion section

To the editor:

Conservative Kansas legislators’ attacks on the Kansas Supreme Court and their prurient interest in bathrooms, women’s bodies and sexual topics seems to stem from a pervasive fear that the Christian polity itself is being destroyed. This anxiety is shared with a similar sense of the disintegration of Christianity in 16th century Europe.

Then, the rise of printing and publishing led to new knowledge and ideas. It also led to massive pamphleteering including topics on witches, baby cannibalism, human monsters, mass murder and other sensational fantasies. That’s not a lot different from the Internet’s rise, shared knowledge, new and challenging ideas as well as conspiracy theories, end times predictions and other tabloid manufactured alarms and panics on the internet today.

Our under-educated conservative lawmakers just don’t know any better. When one of their leaders decries the League of Women Voters as communist and claims the Kansas Supreme Court is “off the rails” you can bet the next step is creating, ex nihilo, a polemical and romantic representation of a past that was unified and now needs restoration.

That was the case in the 16th century as well. Even though wars were fought to destroy apostates and others branded as heretics the restorations never were successful. Life then, like life now, was filled with a vibrant, chaotic and noisy multiplicity of perspectives.

Since our conservative legislators persist with their dogmatic approaches I would suggest that we send them blinders so they can keep their faith and be recognized as false prophets (Matthew 7:15-20).