Enter an organization by the name of Freedom From Religion Foundation, which has filed a suit to prevent the engravings from being made. This group of atheists and agnostics is working to remove every vestige of religion, especially Christianity, from American culture.
They envision a society devoid of any spiritual viewpoint or sense of a higher spiritual reality. God, in effect, is to be treated as dead, defunct.

It seems to be a fact that fewer and fewer Americans expend energy to attend church on Sundays and Holy
Days. This is more so the case in Europe and Great Britain, where thousand year-old architectural gems are all but abandoned.

Some deny that belief in God is required to undergird Moral Behavior. They believe that human beings are innately good, rejecting the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin; the belief that we are selfish critters who find it all too easy to look out for Number One and to ignore the needs of others.

The assertion that God is Not – when it becomes Public Policy – can not only lead to violence, discord and

confusion . . . and from every evil way (to use words from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer). In effect, we become our own gods, our own ultimate authorities – which must make Lucifer happy, for that is what he had in mind when he declared War in Heaven. (Rev.12:7ff.

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his Angels fought against the dragon; and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. . . Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

It should be understood that Evil really exists as a reality, a spiritualreality. The Devil is not a funny-looking horned creature (something to joke about). That’s what he wants you to think. Above all, he is subtle, cunning.

Most Americans take pride in the so-called Separation of State and Church, which has the effect of banishing signs of Religion from the Public Square – creating a vacuum which must be filled with something, because Nature Abhors a Vacuum. Now, what do you think the Devil will do with this vacuum?

Whether we Americans like to believe it of not, Theology often undergirds a Nation’s laws.

Because Mohamedanism (aka Islam) is the near-universal religion in places like Iran and Iraq, that religion’s legal code, the Sharia, exerts enormous influence on the way its people determine how criminals are to be dealt with.

Recently The New York Times reported that judicial authorities amputated the right hand and left foot of five convicted robbers, part of what the government said was an effort to deter other troublemakers.

Well, five men will certainly find it more difficult to make mischief, but, to quote Gilbert and Sullivan’s song in the

opera “Mikado”, Let the punishment fit the crime – cannot it be said that in this case it most certainly does not?

But then, we aren’t Mohammedans, and we don’t, indeed cannot, think the way they do.

Western European and American law is undergirded by a different Theology. Theology, like so many of our words, comes from Greek roots which mean Discourse with God, God-talk, and Christian God-talk is quite different from that of Muslims

A Father may, and sometimes should, punish, but hardly by cutting off hands and feet as a mere exampleYes, Let the punishment fit the crime, but let it be exercised with the Words and Teachings of Jesus in the back of our minds. Among other things, He said, Forgive, and you will be forgiven – which is not to say that criminals should not be punished, but that the punishment must be humane.

Western European and American law is undergirded by a different Theology. Theology, like so many of our words, comes from Greek roots which mean Discourse with God, God-talk, and Christian God-talk is quite different from that of Muslims

A Father may, and sometimes should, punish, but hardly by cutting off hands and feet as a mere exampleYes, Let the punishment fit the crime, but let it be exercised with the Words and Teachings of Jesus in the back of our minds. Among other things, He said, Forgive, and you will be forgiven – which is not to say that criminals should not be punished, but that the punishment must be humane.
CWB+

Such a development cannot but have a deleterious effect on American religious and political life. While we give lip-service to the supposed benefits of diversity, it is rarely recognized that excessive diversity provides a highway to chaos, pandemonium – and such a condition can only bode ill for a society’s future.

What is happening is that authority is increasingly seen to reside with the individual. As W. E. Henley’s poem Invictus puts it: I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. But are we?

The New Testament recounts a confrontation between Jesus and Satan, who shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and offers them to him if he would only bow down and worship (him). Jesus’ reply is Be gone, Satan! You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. (Mark 4:10)

This biblical passage is radically at odds with the message Invictus encapsulates, although the Zeitgeist, the Spirit of the Age, is generally in agreement with it.

While the so-called Evangelical movement, markedly Bible-based and individualistic, involves millions in this country, there is abundant evidence that America’s intellectual elites, generally secular or agnostic, wield enormous influence. It is significant that Ivy League universities, originally founded to educate Protestant clergy, are now overwhelmingly secular, and even hostile to Christianity. Inasmuch as they like to claim that they train the brightest and the best, it is unclear how this will affect the frame of mind of the American body-politic in the long run. In any event, it appears that Religion will decline in influence. And because Nature abhors a
Vacuum, some religion-like ideology will take its place. It seems to be part of human nature to venerate some thing or some one.

Fluid religion sloshes about, the way water might in a swimming pool on a storm-tossed ocean liner. It can be unsettling, and such a Religion can hardly be expected to undergird a healthy society. CWB+

3-11-08

Their only monument the asphalt road

And a thousand lost golf balls”

T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot is remembered as one of America’s greatest poets, and social critics, although in some ways he was more British than the British, and moved across the Pond to live there. He is perhaps best known for The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and the play, Murder in the Cathedral, based on the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket.

The middle years of the last century were distinguished by such notable Christian writers as C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers and, of course, Eliot – all of whom cast a critical eye on the nature of the Society in which they lived.

With regard to the above quotation, What is wrong with asphalt roads? Surely, they are to be preferred to the dirt roads which crisscrossed America in the mid-1920s.

There is also nothing wrong with playing Golf, and losing the expensive little round spheres in the Rough and elsewhere. Golf, being mostly a weekend sport, has lured many from going off to the local parish church on Sundays, which resulted in many insti-tuting Saturday evening services to keep the damage from spreading.

How numerous are the decent godless people in present-day America? Another term for them is secularists – this-world-only folks. Certainly, they are among the so–called elites, who influence our tastes and attitudes. And they are dominant in our more prestigious universities, which brainwash,-so to speak, the young and impressionable. Don’t send my boy to Harvard, the dying mother said; Don’t send my boy to Princeton, I’d rather see him dead. Certain ways of thinking can be bad for one’s soul.

The problem begins earlier, however, in the Public Schools, where matters Religious are, in accordance with the Constitution, excluded from the curriculum. Since morals and ethics are rest upon a foundation, religious or quasi-religious, societal behavior can only reflect the popular notion that there is no such thing as Right and no such thing as Wrong. In effect, by demoting or even dismissing God, we become our own gods, recognizing no authority greater than ourselves.

Glory to Man in the highest,

for Man is the master of things

CWB+

9-08

Some expressions of religion are downright toxic. Riots broke out a few years ago when a Danish newspaper published a cartoon of Mohammed. And in present-day Iraq, Christians must worship in secret or face the possibility of being killed.

The point is sometime made that it is only the more fanatical Muslims who are the Terrorists, but where are their critics in moderate Islamic circles? Has the cat got their tongue? There seems to be a built-in reluctance for an Islamic to be critical of one’s co- religionists.

Here in America, inter-faith relations have not always been pacific. In colonial times, for instance, the Baptist Roger Williams was driven out of Calvinistic Massachusetts to Rhode Island. And the influx of Russian and Polish Jews was not universally welcomed, as also was the case with Roman Catholics in the aftermath of the failure of the potato crop in Ireland in the 1840s. But as time passed, religion in America has been homogenized, so to speak. We all get along well with one another, and ecumenical services are a commonplace.

Not homogenized, however, are American Islamics. Is there something innately separatist, exclusionary and expansionist in Mohammed’s modern disciples’ mind-set? It is to be remembered that a bare century after his life, Muslim armies advanced to within a few miles of Paris. being stopped in AD-732 at the Battle of Tours by Charles Martel, known to history as The Hammer. Had the battle been lost, Europe might well have been Islamized, and eventually so would the United States of America.

Until recently, the Western World has not been concerned with Islam. But no longer. With Europe facing a labor shortage, huge numbers of Turkish and other Muslims workers have arrived to fill vacant jobs. And Europe has drifted away from its Christian foundation and heritage.

Nature abhors a vacuum – and one doesn’t have to be prescient to see what lies ahead. While Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Jews have learned to co-exist in peace and even friendship, it does not appear that Mohammedans are able to do the same. CWB+

Does it really matter when human life begins? Many Christians, particularly Roman Catholics, Catholic-minded Anglicans, and some others, believe that life begins with inception, nine months before a new child of God draws an initial breath. This understanding undergirds the objection to abortion – which is seen as a form of homicide, perhaps murder. As the VI Commandment put it; Thou shalt do no murder. It is to be noted, however, that the U.S. Supreme Court has judged that to abort an unborn child is fully legal. But does that make it Morally Ethical?

Those who support Stem Cell Research make the point that experimentation and research may lead to finding a cure for diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, and other ail-ments. Perhaps so, but universities and scientists are already lining up to claim their share of the grants.

Former President Bush is an evangelical Protestant whose world-view reflects a Biblical understanding of the nature of human life.

That world-view is not that of pro-Stem Cell researchers – nor of Obama, despite his professed Christian belief and membership in that sectarian church in Chicago, much-discussed in the run up to the election. A verbal artful dodger, Obama can be expected to offer an articulate rationale for everything he does. There will be much talk about separating Science from Politics, whatever that means – but will experimenters now be free to create manufactured human-like beings for experimental scientific purposes?

Was President Bush bashed so often because of his Christian beliefs – inasmuch as the media are markedly secular-minded, even anti-Christian? Certainly it was a factor. Personally, I think he was concerned about how Stem Cell research would be misused. Scientific researchers, after all, are human beings – and we all are afflicted by original sin – that Christian insight and teaching pretty much rejected by the sophisticated elites of our time.

Downright atheistic politicians find it difficult, if not impossible, to get elected, which means that they are often less than completely honest, and the voters know it – which may explain why the Congress ranks so low in public esteem. One fears that the very idea of Democracy as the favored political philosophy is losing world-wide support because the “great unwashed” is too easy to manipulate – not a pleasant prospect. CWB+

Americans are not particularly interested in the religious belief’s of their political leaders, many of whom are of the in name only variety. John F. Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic president, went out of his way to assure prospective voters that his religion would not influence his political decisions – including, apparently, his moral behavior. He was a noted womanizer, ordering his minions to recruit woman who caught his eye. Some of our better presidents, Lincoln and Reagan for example, were quite vague about what they believed.

What can be affirmed, however, is that they all grew up in what might be called a Christian Garden. They breathed in, so to speak, a Christian world-view, and how one ought to behave in it.

There are, of course, other influences at work. In Obama’s case, there is the ethos of the south side of Chicago, not noted as particularly principled. The lesbian/homosexual sub-culture has recently been emboldened by Obama’s statements, and a huge number turned out for the Gay Pride marches in large blue-state cities.

Speaking of “blue states”, what is there about the East and West coasts which spawn a plethora of radicals and liberals? The real Americans (if one can use that term) live in the so-called Heartland – where conservative and traditional and religious attitudes still survive. But the acids of modernity are eating away at those attitudes, and it is only a question of time before they fade away and are forgotten. What will it be like to live in thoroughly Secular-Pagan world? – Secular in the sense that it is godless and it is believed that this world is all there is; Pagan, because newly-invented idols will take their place – because Nature abhors a vacuum. Humans must worship something, or someone.

For aeons, Marriage has been understood as being between a man and a woman, a male and a female – for the simple reason that it is out of such  couplings that succeeding generations come into being.  While we may be approaching a time  when human beings will be produced in laboratories, as was the case in Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World – that time has not yet arrived, although it is a truism that if  something can be done, it will be done – eventually.

Because homosexuality is seen by most people to be un-natural, a perversion, it has been declared to be immoral, debauched – particularly by traditional religious organizations and their adherents.  The Pope, in particular, has termed homosexuality to be an intrinsic moral evil.   So what is happening in New York and elsewhere is that a moral evil is being legitimized.

There is, of course, no necessary connection between what is Legal and what is Moral.   Ideally, the Laws of a Nation rest on a Moral and Ethical foundation.  But the furor over where the Ten Commandments can be displayed indicates a  strong aversion to introducing Judeo-Christian beliefs into the American political system.  Is not the stage being set for the accepting of a world-view- which will weaken, and eventually destroy, America’s behavioral foundations?

There is, for example, the perceived need to keep up with the Jonses, to say nothing about the Smiths and everyone else on the street.  Veblen was not religious, but Chistians and Jews are familiar with the story of The Fall of Man in the Bookof Genesis, which recounts Adam and Eve disobeying God and eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  This was an Act of Pride – giving us the pertintent insight that Pride goeth before the Fall.  Pride is the culprit, and is insidious, permeating all of life. 

The New York Times is read by many members of thr Leisure Class, and merchants pay huge  fees for advertisements, particularly on pp. 2-3, knowing that they will be perused by people who can pay for the hyper-expensive shoes, clothing, jewelry and other items favored by members of the Leisure Class who have a need to exhibit – to use Veblen’s term, conspicuous consumption, which, of course, is a first cousin of Pride.

On the plus side, Consumption is  good for the Economy, whch is why so many of us received gratuitous checks from the Treasury Department.  The  hope is that we won’t squirrel away that money, but will rush out and spend it.  Back in FDR’s time, this was called pump-priming.

The actual things we need – food, clothing, shelter, health care, transportation – are  not in short supply in this country.  It has been estimated that a family of four (2 adults and 2 children) needs an income of abot $20,000 a year before they fall blow the so-called poverty line.  Little conspicuous consumption is possible at this income  level. 

World-wide, hundreds of millions live on $1.00 a day.  It is something of a wonder tht more are not devotes of Kark Marx, who cried out, Workers of the world unite, you  have nothing to lose  but your chanins.  Actually, they had a great deal to lose, but Marx’s message was seen as a  new Gospel, that is, Good News for people who saw themselves as oppressed.  It turned out to be only an updated Idolatry - with clay feet - and like other idols, it crumbled over time. 

While a form of Democracy may dimly be discerned in the government of ancient Greece, the vote was limited to a small, elite ruling class.  It was not until the authority of the Roman Catholic Church was questioned, as a result of the teachings of Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin, that the very concept of rule by the People began to be entertained.  And initially, the assumption was that the authority of this group be limited to literate men who were property owners.  Many years had to pass before women were given suffrage, and in the USA the right to vote has since been extended to people who are incarcerated in Mental Hospitals.

The USA is a relatively new nation, and because it was in reality an 18th Century creation, it was possible for the Founders to strike out in new directions.  Thus the phrase life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness came into being as a fresh statement about the Natural Rights of citizens, which was an indication of what was happening during the period known as the Enlightenment.  It is worth noting that an earlier version of the Declaration of Independence mentioned life, liberty and (private) property.  Its replacement, pursuit of happiness, is an imprecise, perhaps meaningless term that “sounds good”.  But while happiness can never be guaranteed, a Society may be so fashioned as to provide a degree of freedom sufficient to permit happiness to be pursued.

King George III was not unconcerned about the well-being of his American colonists, and was troubled about the excessive number of “black suited lawyers” who were in positions of authority.  Today, the understanding of Natural Rights is modified by Legal Rights, which Rights are not preternatural, and may be revised from time to time. What may be assumed to be a Natural Right today may not be declared illegal tomorrow.

Confusion, disorder, and a paucity of Common Sense are lamentable marks of 21st Century America.  Natural Rights, of course, are just there, and will persist – even if they fall under a cloud from time to time.  It will be a continuing challenge for our elected leaders, educators and churches, to see to it that an understanding of, and an appreciation of, Natural Rights are preserved for future generations to enjoy.

With Rights, of course, go Responsibilities, a personal and individual matter.  And where do young people learn to be responsible?  Not in big city public schools, from which virtually all expressions of Religion have been wiped out, thanks to the likes of the ACLU.  Of course, there are those who claim that Morality can be learned absent any religious associations, but is this true?  All Americans grow up in a kind Christian garden, so to speak.  The German-American theologian, Paul Tillich, used the metaphor of cut flowers. to describe the culture of the mid-20th century; it still had its blossoms,, but the blossoms were fading.

C. S. Lewis used another metaphor.  We castrate, and bid the gelding be fruitful.  He wrote these words almost eight decades ago, when a moderate Christian culture marked life in England and elsewhere in the West.

Today, England and the rest of Europe are decidedly uninterested in traditional Christian matters, while Islam is flourishing.  To some extent this is the result of a decision to permit anyone in the Empire who held a British passport, many of whom were Muslims, to become resident citizens of England.  They flocked in, and they vote, and one can be sure that Islamic values are not those of the England of Yesteryear.  The same may be said for France and other parts of Europe.  In effect, a kind of conversion has taken place – away from Christianity and toward religious indifference and alien ways of thinking.  Can such a gelding ever be fruitful?