Louis Proyect wrote:
Though liberals are routinely chastised for their “secular relativism,” as Bill O’Reilly puts it, American statesmen who waged the largest wars were driven by the Christian doctrine of “good works,” often enunciated in Obama’s speeches as the duty to be “our brother’s keeper.” What should be even more troubling to those who call themselves progressives but oppose the current wars: Obama's motivations for pursuing them are rooted in the central tenet of progressivism, enunciated by his idols, that the American national government is responsible for the reform and uplift of those "we" deem to be living below "our" standards, and that "they" must be protected from their oppressors. Obama's role models followed the logic of that moral calling to the ends of the earth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion Ronald Wimberley (1976) and other researchers collected large surveys and factor analytic studies which gave empirical support to Bellah's argument that civil religion is a distinct cultural phenomena within American society which is not embodied in American politics or denominational religion.[5] Examples of civil religious beliefs are reflected in statements used in the research such as the following: * "America is God's chosen nation today." * "A president's authority...is from God." * "Social justice cannot only be based on laws; it must also come from religion." * "God can be known through the experiences of the American people." * "Holidays like the Fourth of July are religious as well as patriotic."[5] Later research sought to determine who is civil religious. In a 1978 study by James Christenson and Ronald Wimberley, the researchers found that a wide cross section of American citizens have civil religious beliefs. In general though, college graduates and political or religious liberals appear to be somewhat less civil religious. Protestants and Catholics have the same level of civil religiosity. Religions that were created in the United States, the Mormons, Adventists, and Pentecostals, have the highest civil religiosity. Jews, Unitarians and those with no religious preference have the lowest civil religion. Even though there is variation in the scores, the "great majority" of Americans are found to share the types of civil religious beliefs which Bellah wrote about.[5 ________________________________________________ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
