From: ptfarre@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Peter Farrell)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Liberal/New Age Religion (Was: Santeria and animal-sacrifice)
Date: 16 Nov 92 03:26:07 GMT
Organization: The Great Beyond

In article <Nov.10.02.14.39.1992.12520@geneva.rutgers.edu> 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 first part of a simplistic, dogmatic attack on those opposing one's
>views is to put a label on those opposing views. Last time I visited a 
>Christian bookstore, I perused the "New Age" section out of curiosity. From
>someone with a fair amount of experience in pagan religion, as well as 
>familiarity with "New Age" ideas, I'm always surprised at the incredible
>distortion thrown on the subject among Christian writers. Even environmental-
>ists come under the fundamentalist gun, ie. "How to Save the Earth Without
>Worshipping Nature" (or something like that).
>
>Just as anyone can point to the fundamentalist quacks (like the Bakkers et al)
>it is easy to look into pagan and new age religion and find aspects that
>appear ridiculous from the outside. And some of it is ridiculous from the
>inside as well. But a great deal of pagan religion and what is purported to
>be "new age" comes from legitimate, established religious belief, some of
>it predating Christianity by millenia. And among those religions without a
>longstanding tradition, there still exists the freedom to practice those
>beliefs.
>
The points Mr. Altheim makes here are technically irrefuteable. Nevertheless,
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. 

This is a generation of Americans quite unlike any other in history. Since
they cannot see any plausible way to obstruct the bizarre and totally
incredible from the social fabric, they feel compelled to let it run.
Abraham Lincoln remarked during the Gettysburg address that one of the
questions being answered by the Civil War was whether this nation or any
nation so conceived as ours is can long endure. That question is again in
the air and for good reason. 

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. 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. 

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. 

The verdict is still out but our nation's future is again in question. 
This great struggle, like the one in Lincoln's day, is one in which we
will see if any nation so conceived can long endure. 


-- 
Peter Farrell			| "Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, 
ptfarre@afterlife.ncsc.mil 	| shall enter the kingdom of heaven; but he
				| who does the will of my Father in heaven."