Comments on: Progress, or Return? “Working Together” or “Under God”?

By: AJK

AJK — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 03:27:33 +0000

You said that you are aware that “under god” was only added recently; I feel compelled to ask if you were aware that the supreme court only allows it because it is “ceremonial deism”? In case you are unaware, the courts have ruled that it should be allowed in the pledge because it is purely traditional and has lost all religious meaning.

By: Raymond Takashi Swenson

Raymond Takashi Swenson — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 01:31:24 +0000

As was pointed out in a recent First Things article, referring to America as a nation “under God” comes form the actual spoken version of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, inscribed on the inside wall of the Lincoln Memorial, and was NOT a creation of Congress in the 1950s. Furthermore, as Lincoln’s speech was a recapitulation of the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, it was fitting that it should refer to God, since the words of the Declaration most often quoted refer to all men as being “created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights”. The Declaration, not the Constitution, actually created the United States of America, and that founding document announces emphatically that this is a nation founded “under God”, based on the concept that the order of sovereignty goes, first, God, then the people God created and “endowed”, then the governments created, in turn, by the people. This is the rationale for the ability of the people of the United States to be able to reject allegiance to Britain, because the charter for their government can be revoked by the people, by authorty of the rights vested in the people by God.

The corollary of God as sovereign is that the people are accountable to God for the way they govern themselves. That is implicit in the closing words of the Declaration, in which the signers declare their agreement in the sight of God.

Abandoning the theory of divine sovereignty and divine endowment of rights opens the field of public debate for the socialist idea that men can aspire to control all circumstances of life, through the coercive instrument of government.

By: JP

JP — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 01:17:47 +0000

I think the problem is much deeper than most people realize. Progressivism in its many forms began to invade organized religions some time ago. And since Progressive dogma has been taught in most universities for several decades, thier language and categories dominate everything. The end result is that few of us can even write or speak with any kind of moral coherence. We fall back on well used Progressive nostrums almost every time. Young people’s rejection of thier childhood religion reflects in my belief a rejection of Progressivism Light (which is what most orthodox religions are). There can be no “return” because in most people’s eyes their is nothing to return to. Progressive thought makes any alternative mode of existence impossible to imagine.

One of the reasons why Islam finds so many converts is that it has not succumbed to Progressivism.

By: Victor

Victor — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:43:56 +0000

Personally I think that we should Return Progress back to God but that’s my Canadian .2 opinion but I’ll let God worry about “IT” cause I’ve got enough on my plate and I’m willing to bet that most of you do also. :)

Peace

By: Carl Eric Scott

Carl Eric Scott — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 04:03:40 +0000

Putnam and his partner seem to be reaching with this, and into outright incoherence. Interfaith linkages are somehow becoming more important, but polarization is still increasing (with moderate religious types disappearing), and yet we must still all say that the culture wars are “so-called.” Oh, and THE single explaination of the decline of organized religion in the aughties was the linkage of evangelicalism and right wing politics? Well, it was a problem, but by no means the only one. Nor was it very avoidable. And no mention of the death of the mainline?

I’m sure Putnam bundles his concepts more subtly than Ralph reports here, but this is not promising. Sounds like complexified Alan Wolfe.

By: KarenT

KarenT — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 05:59:21 +0000

Of course, you are right to suggest that the current divisions between Americans along political lines cannot be blamed just on the rise of conservative religion in the 1970s. Conservative religion was not the only ideology which began to grow rapidly in the 1970s. I think it was during in the 1960s that leftism started to supplant the classical liberalism which had dominated mainstream "liberal" politics pretty much through the Kennedy years. Though leftism, or "progressivism" had been around for much longer, especially among intellectuals, the determination of 1960s radicals to dominate universities, often by becoming faculty, changed the university experience for later students. I think this contributed to the phenomenon of young people rejecting organized religion in the 1990s. There are a lot of less-educated young people in the conservative evangelical churches in our town. Going to college may be a key to rejecting churches which tend toward conservatism. Victor Davis Hanson comments on today's "Angry America" and the "sermonizing generation":

The common denominator? If one were to survey the elite campuses around 1975 and talk to those in law school, political science, or the humanities, then imagine them 35 years later as our elite leaders in government, the media, the universities, the foundations, and the arts, one could pretty much expect what we now have.  . . . . . . Yes, one walk across the Yale or Stanford campus circa 1975, and one could see pretty clearly what sort of culture that bunch would create when it came of age and was handed power. If that is reductionism, so be it.

Ed Driscoll points out religious overtones at the One Nation rally today.

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