I stumbled upon a magazine at Borders that I hadn’t seen before … Science & Spirit. Looks interesting, but I haven’t had a chance to do any more than just skim it a bit. I’ll take a closer look this weekend while at our desert cabin. Anyone else have more insight into this one?
Life is full of dichotomies, and one of the ones I find most interesting is that the more a culture tries to instill religion in its people, the less religious they are.
It’s a good lesson for those that want more government involvement in religion. Be careful what you ask for, as the unintended consequences can be disastrous.
The early colonists in America did have strict laws mandating certain religious standards. Never mind that they came to these shores to escape the same kind of laws. Once in the majority they reverted to form. But people started noticing that it wasn’t working the way they thought it should. This shocking quote from Colonel Lewis Morris, the former colonial governor of New Jersey reveals that awareness:
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There is an adage that if your position is not making “either side” happy, then you are probably on the right track. I find myself in the dubious position of taking comfort in that adage whenever I discuss whether or not America is a “Christian Nation.”
But I do have company. I just finished a pretty good treatment of Christian influences in America, American Gospel by Jon Meacham. Meacham is the managing editor of Newsweek, and is the author of another history treatment, Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship. This isn’t a hack job by a partisan, but a fairly straight forward and honest treatment of a controversial subject.
Meacham does a good job of blowing past the current polarized positions of the two camps at the extremes … the “America is a Christian Nation” folks cuddling up to the Christian Reconstructionists and the “the Founders were all Deists!” group which includes folks like Bill Mahr. On this issue, I don’t find either side “funny”, just wrong.
Meacham’s thesis is that America has a “public religion” that was consistent with the Founders faith,
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Most of you know I host the messing-about website dedicated to amature boat building, and that we’ve been supporting that site for the last three years by renting out spare space on the server. Its enabled me to provide some complimentary web space to folks that wouldn’t be able to get on the web otherwise. Well, growth of messing-about and registrations have used up most of the space.
I also bought into a domain name registration business three years ago because of all the domain names I manage for my family, and I’ve been selling domain name registrations through a funky little Paypal interface. Well the business is still funky, and I only accept credit cards through Paypal or paper checks, but the domain name registrar partner and I have put together a pretty good deal for domain name registration and website hosting. The new business is HOSTkabob, offering domain name registration, web site space, and some pretty unique email services at economical prices. And the proceeds are plowed back into the hobby web sites that I continue to provide at no charge to the users.
It appears to me that we have lost our way, we Christians, when we ignore our own rules for interpreting scripture. And American religious conservatives seem to have done so.
First, a doctrinal statement: I am a Christian, conservative in theology, and accept the Apostle’s Creed, Nicean Creed, and follow a modified Calvinist theology. I hold to a “once saved, always saved” belief vis-a-vis my brothers in the faith, and hold that the only assurance of salvation is to be found in accepting the gift of salvation through Jesus’ substitionary atonement.
If you agree with me on that, we probably are going to have our first little spat.
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