Down to Basics

Submitted by dennis middlebrooks (United States), Feb 22, 2008 at 09:45

Mitch,

I wil stand by my comment that in order to be Christian you must believe in the tenets of Christianity, including all of the miracles. Otherwise, Unitarians would be considered Christians because they use (or used) the Protestant prayer book. I doubt that many Christian leaders would consider Unitarians as Christian. Admiring the social gospel of Jesus is not suffcient. A Trinitarian outlook is essential.

The USA was founded in the Age of Reason, and the religious views of many of our Founders reflecte that. Educated men (and women!) of the late 18th century tended to have unorthodox views of the subject of divine revelation. The prevailing outlook was Deism. It is clear to me that based on their writings and pubic statements, as well as the type of government they bequeathed to us, the leading Founders were in the main Deistic. Exceptions were Patrick Henry and Samuel Johnson, both devout Christians.

My view has long been that it is ideology, and not religion or secularism per se, that is the bane of mankind. I adhere to the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey, one based on trial and error and willingness to adjust. Ideologues are incapable of this, whether they are religious fundamentalists of whatever denomination or adherents of secular ideologies (e.g., Randian Objectivism, communism, fascism, laissez-faire capitalism, libertarianism, etc). It seems that our society at present has seen a merger between religious funamentalism on the one hand and dog eat dog, devil take the hindmost free market capitalism on the other). This is a paradox with unpleasant implications.

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