there's a reason for it?

[acroyear]

The Revealer: The Facts According to Fundamentalism:

[...]for many Christian conservatives, there are no "inherently religious" activities, since they don't consider their beliefs "religious" -- a term associated with stuffy mainline Protestants and Catholicism -- but simply "the truth." The fundamentalist approach to faith is much like a civil engineer's approach to bridge-building: there are certain irrefutable facts to be taken into account, but of the laws of physics and God are followed, success is certain. So, for instance, a fundamentalist would see nothing "inherently religious" in counseling a drug addict to accept Jesus; the fundamentalist would consider the conquest of addiction impossible without Christ's help in rejecting sin.

I'm reminded of a formulation for governance conceived of by John MacKay, a mid-century dean of conservative protestantism cited by rightwing lawmakers for years. There are only three kinds of government, MacKay advised: secular, a modern invention which is based on denying the facts of God; demoniac, which is based on lying about the facts of God; and covenantal, which is based on harmonizing the law of the land with the laws of nature -- that is, God's.

Fundamentalists aren't interested in a place at the secular table. If the press wants to respect fundamentalist activists -- and accurately report on the challenge they raise to separation of church and state -- they need to accept that and look past the worldly proofs of efficacy -- or the lack thereof -- that mean little to true believers bent on "restoring" America to what they believe are its covenantal origins.