From: ptfarre@afterlife.ncsc.mil (Peter Farrell)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Liberal/New Age Religion (Was: Santeria and animal-sacrifice)
Date: 18 Nov 92 09:24:07 GMT
Organization: The Great Beyond

In article <Nov.17.03.39.18.1992.26610@geneva.rutgers.edu> johndunk@planet10.wpi.edu (John Dunkelberg) writes:
>... 
>I would submit that your "faith and value systems" are not the branch
>on which the United States sits.  I would further submit that:
>
>Pluralism is the *strength* will may well *save* 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, and further, enhance and strengthen a nation where liberty,
>law, and order are maintained.  But this premise has limits!  You
>cannot saw off the branch that supports you and expect it to support
>you.  With only ONE set of values, only ONE set of faiths, the human
>weaknesses of pride and prejudice will inevitabily lead to the
>destruction of minority thought, and soon any inerrant and creative
>spark that might lend life to the nation.
>... 
>I unabashedly say to those who would prohibit all thought save their
>own, all belief save their own, all values save their own that they
>MAY GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!  I AM for encouraging them to find and
>establish their own land, their own Constitution, so that they might
>presume to know what is the Divine Law of the One God Almighty.  With
>total lack of common sense, and with the greatest sin before God,
>Pride, they claim to know the mind of God, and in doing so they deny
>all that Jesus Christ hath taught.
>

Whether you like it or not, the following is a virtually undeniable
FACT about this country's beginnings:
the overwhelming evidence is that the concepts on top of
which our Constitution and the Declaration of Independance
rest are rooted in Biblical, Protestant, New Testament thought.
This country's foundational charter was drafted and put into
force by a group of almost exclusively WHITE CHRISTIAN PROTESTANT
MALES! Oh my! 

I am not saying here that anyone who does not fit that
profile is unfit to be an American. What I AM saying
(which you didn't bother to read) is that the liberties which
permit, among other things, the exercise of individual
recognizance and responsibility such as this debate do not just
stand on their own. Neither does the Constitution.

That the Constitution is now being wrested from those old
underpinnings and being made to say things its founders
never intended in their wildest dreams is a sad fact of modern
times.

Any people (this or any other) foolish enough to deny the
validity of the ideas which launched their freedoms deserve
to lose and will ultimately lose the way of life which those
ideas champion.

Nowhere in my post did I do any of the following:
Call MY faith the ONLY way our country should follow
Call MY religion the ONLY one our country should allow
Claim to know the mind of God
Deny all (or any of) Jesus' teachings.

What amazes me is how could find those statements in something
that clear and that short.

-- 
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."