What does "make American Christian again" really mean?
In a sense it means make America Christian as it has never been before. This decidedly is not a conventional Evangelical view. When I think of the American Revolution it is not about a multitude of true believers in some form of Calvinist Protestantism. Rather, while some 'Calvinists' are in the mix, it is about the kind of religious variety and philosophical variety that actually existed in the late 18th century. It is about Patrick Henry -as sort of a stand in for today's Baptists- AND about Jefferson, as a sort of stand in for today's liberal Christians and religious nonconformists more generally. It is about Pastor Muhlenberg representing old fashioned Lutheranism of the kind once preached by Luther himself and it is about the measured and carefully conceived Anglicanism of George Washington. It is about Deists and it is about the Catholic and Jewish minorities.And mostly it is about Ben Franklin and his unique approach to just about everything. And how do you characterize Franklin? As a Christian? Sure. But it clearly would miss the point to leave things at that. It is also about, while she came along in the early 1800s, Hannah Adams the woman who founded what would become Comparative Religion in America. And it is about the Cherokees and freed black people and people who went West, who followed the frontier out of a sense of adventure and because of perceived opportunity. And it is about Henri Saint-Simon and his admiration for the American experiment as a beacon to Europe. But no matter how we frame the issue, there was no place in early America for Gordon Gekko, no place for most Hollywood nihilists, no place for Donald Trump, no place for Hillary Clinton, no place for William Clinton either. And no place for that damned Cultural Marxist / Islamist sympathizer/ homophile, Barrack Hussein Obama, Satan's emissary on Earth. In short, this is not just about making the bureaucracy function better, it is not just about the social need for civility, it is not just about private freedoms, it is about defining the Good, about knowing exactly what the Good really is, and going to war against Evil in all forms so that we can have a decent and compassionate society. Where is your passion? That, ultimately, is what RC is all about. If you wet in your pants every time that values issues arise, then you aren't a Radical Centrist. If your default view of politics always has something to do with money, you aren't a Radical Centrist. RC, at least as I understand it, is all about fighting for "the Good." Not about fighting for me-me-me, the libertarian view, not about fighting against Christianity, the view of the Left, it is about education and learning what it good, what is true, and accepting nothing less than the Good and the Truth. To say it again: Where is your passion? Billy -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
