Jim DeMint: First Great Awakening Won American Revolution

Umm, yeah (via CNN):

“Tea Party crowds [have] a spiritual component. I think it’s very akin to the Great Awakening before the American Revolution,” DeMint told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview airing Thursday. “A lot of our founders believed the American Revolution was won before we ever got into a fight with the British. It was a spiritual renewal.”

Funny, that’s not how I remember my Intro to American History class running.

Also:

“People are seeing this massive government growing and they’re realizing that it’s the government that’s hurting us and I think they’re turning back to God in effect is our salvation and government is not our salvation and in fact more and more people see government as the problem and so I think some have been drawn in over the years to a dependency relationship with government and as the Bible says you can’t have two masters and I think as people pull back from that they look more to God.”

Interesting how none of that ever came up during the Reagan or Bush II administrations, what with their massive expansions of the government and the quasi-idolatry of the War on Terror.

And, oh God, the rest of the above quote, from Brody’s teaser:

“It’s no coincidence that socialist Europe is post-Christian because the bigger the government gets the smaller God gets and vice-versa. The bigger God gets the smaller people want their government because they’re yearning for freedom.”

I’m sure Jesus, who lived under the thumb of an oppressive big-government Caesar, would have agreed. Why, if only the Romans had made the rational choice and shut down their enormous social welfare machine, the people would have found their God-given freedom and our Lord and Savior might still be with us today. As it was, they crucified him. Maybe he should have gone Galt instead.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to go lay down for a while.