From: wolfe@wolves.durham.nc.us (G. Wolfe Woodbury)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Liberal/New Age Religion
Date: 18 Nov 92 10:22:54 GMT
Organization: Red Wolfe @ The Wolves Den

ptfarre@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Peter Farrell) writes:
>altheimm@nextnet.ccs.csus.edu (Murray Altheim) writes:
>>... 
>>I hope everyone reading this understands that while Christian fundamentalists
>>have every right to practice their religion, as protected by the US
>>constitution, they have NO right to exclude others from practicing theirs.

>The points Mr. Altheim makes here are technically irrefuteable. Nevertheless,

	Yet, you attempt to refute them?

>there is just as much factual basis for alarm at the rise of these various
>peculiar sects in our country. There is also factual basis for the Christian
>claim that this nation was founded on an overwhelmingly Christian consensus.
>The assumptions the writers of the Constitution had in their heads and the
>assumptions the modern interpreters of it have in theirs would be found
>to be quite at odds in many places if we could fairly examine them. 

	Quite true.  Some of them would be quite appalled at an
assumption that "Christianity" of any particular flavor was assumed to
be better than Islam, Buddhist, or any other particular religion.
Thomas Jefferson, in particular, while acknowledging his
Judaeo-Christain heritage and preferring it, wrote that the
establishment of any religion as state recognized or supported would
lead to tyranny.

>Pluralism is the disease which may well destroy the United States of America
>and quite possibly in our own lifetimes. Its fundamental premise is that
>numerous disparate systems of thought and value can co-exist peacefully
>in a nation where liberty, law and order are maintained.

	The problem that the founders feared was not "pluralism" per se,
but the problem of fraction.  Pluralism was a basic belief in the
founders minds.  The US Motto is "E Pluribus Unum"  (Out of many, One)
explicitly recognizes that each of the states has its own culture and
that from cooperation a Unity can be forged.

	Fraction, however, is a different problem.  In fraction, the
various groups lose sight of the fact that they are in this together,
and fight among each other, and create myriads of small polities that
are based on single issues or a closed set of principles.

> But this premise
>has limits. You cannot saw off the branch you are sitting on and still
>expect it to support you. After all reasonable cultural values and ideas
>have been exhausted, all that is left is the unreasonable.  People who
>declare that the Constitution also protects such faiths and value systems
>as those which the God of the Bible condemns repeatedly in its pages
>are sawing the branch which supports them. Pluralism has run wild. 

	As for your analogy of the tree branch.  It depends on which
side of the cutting point you are sitting on!   Are you sitting out at
the end of the branch and cutting yourself away from the tree, or are
you sitting next to the trunk and pruning away a dead or diseased
branch?  The analogy/metaphor is more apt than you might imagine.

	Are you declaring yourself the sole arbiter of which branches
stay and which branches should go?   Are you going to risk cutting off a
living branch and the fruit it bears because you don't like the smell of
its blossoms?   Will you hack out a huge hunk of the tree to "make room"
for utility lines to pass undisturbed?  Will you cut off one side of the
tree simply because you don't like the way it looks?

	I like the tree metaphor (of course :-)   I recomment you to
contemplate it as a metaphor of society.

>I unabashedly say to those who would prefer to return to the pagan rites
>and value systems of the occultic to go somewhere else. I AM for barring
>them even though the Constitution seems to protect them because over and
>above the Constitution also sits the law of common sense and above that
>Divine law itself. 

	Will you similarly tell the christian mystical traditions to
leave?   Will you tell the Hindu's to leave, will you tell the Buddhists
to leave?  Will you tell Native Americans to leave???   How far will you
go?  Will you tell the Jews to leave?   Who's next?  The Roman
Catholics?  The Methodists?  The Unitarians?   The Anglicans?  Anyone
who doesn't conform to your particular view of Christian dogma?

	You are the reason that pluralism is having problems!  You have
your narrow view and are determined to set yourself up as the judge,
turning against your own Christian kin to further your own agenda.  Your
attitude of intolerance is the very thing that fuels the turning away of
former Christians to other faiths and traditions that are more open to
the Gospel of Love that Jesus Christ preached.

	I'd like to suggest that the moderator close this topic, since
the debate is getting nowhere fast.  It isn't promoting Christian unity,
and merely serves at this point to fuel the fires of hatred.

-- 
G. Wolfe Woodbury @ The Wolves Den, Durham NC	[This site is NOT affiliated  ]
wolfe@wolves.durham.nc.us			[with Duke University! Idiots!]
UUCP: ...!duke!wolves!wolfe      <Standard Disclaimers apply>
    Above All, we celebrate!  --Celebrate the Circle, Statement of Purpose.