On The Importance Of Understanding Tom Jefferson, The Anti-Religionist

The nation isn’t going to abide the “wall of separation” concept — which isn’t constitutional, merely Jeffersonian — because it violates the unity principle, which is the spirit of the age and for centuries to come. So we need an articulation well in advance of Mr. Jefferson’s, which is conditioned historically to the point of irrelevance.

We can’t tell people to be united in race and not in social structures (government, church). We’re accused of picking and choosing, of being not thoroughgoing. And the charge is deserved. The articulation has to be of that in which unity consists. Suggest bringing some Bahai articulation into play, also Augustinian. It is bathetic for churchmen to let themselves be defined by Jefferson’s articulation. Tail wagging dog, shows lack of self-respect. Jefferson hated the church.

The same is generally the case for the faith/belief area. Reason is a loaded word, if we really use its basis — Logos — and the several types of reason, all operational, that Logos indicates. Let’s define the situation instead of reacting to it. Again, Augustine, for starters, epistemology by participation and assuming thoroughgoing unity in and between seer, seen and sight. We really have to not let others define either terms or situations for us. We are the theologians, we do the defining. It can be no other way.

There are many with human bodies but relatively few with human birth. We are not all seeking God or even to be good. Many of us are seeking quite otherwise and not from misspent youth or disadvantaged background but from the nature of our birth and therefore our heart.

The fact that not all who appear human are allows fanaticism, the bane of the age, to emerge. The only way to suppress that bane is to face the fact which can allow it and articulate that fact. We will not accept that thugs in any guise are human. They are thugs, a race, an evolutionary sheaf. In Bharathyia literature they are called rakshasas, demonic creatures, ogres and ogresses, and they are treated as a genetic phenomenon, a congeries of demons.

The hallmark of humanity is compassion. When that is not present, we know we are not in the presence of humanity. When it is, we know that we are.

All men are not created equal because all are not created men. This phenomenon has to be articulated realistically to fend off the really dangerous attitude of fanaticism.

So, thanks to President Bush and his selfish team for making us cope with these matters!     🙂

Update 1:
kevinstroup
Not believing in religion is not the same as not believing in God. You can be spiritual without being religious.

David R. Graham to kevinstroup
Well, Tillich is famous for saying that Christianity is the world’s great anti-religion religion.  I add Hinduism to that description, but that will be a bridge too far for many at this time.

Dragblacker to David R. Graham
I’m not sure I follow.  Does it mean that Christianity and Hinduism have elements in them that lead some people to eschew religion entirely?

David R. Graham to Dragblacker
Yes, that is what it means.  It also is in Hebrew Prophetism.  Religion is a means, not an end, much less the end.  Like all means, it is fraught with danger because it can lead either Godward or Godaway because there are right ways to be religious and wrong ways.  In fact, far more wrong ways than right ways.  Far, far more.  Religion is very dangerous in the absence of experienced and skilled guidance.  Religion (Latin re + ligare) means binding up that which has become unbound.  Once a body is repaired, its ligaments (ligare) grown or tied back together, it has no need for the doctor who or the procedures which repaired it.

Lawman45 to David R. Graham
Tillich is correct.  Christianity, shorn of the Elmer Gantrys of the world, is a great handbook to living in a large society.  Just remember that the substance is correct but all the rest is B.S.  And, as I learned at Notre Dame, the “Priests”, the “Rabbis”, and the “Ministers” are just ordinary folk who live life free off of the insecurities of others.

AMDG