He is very far from being an "idiot." ("Idiot," incidentally, was the self-descriptive title that both my closest sets of high school friends applied to ourselves: the "Senior" and "Junior Idiot Cliques.") He he does differ from both of us on questions of value, and, in your case, of facts, and he is far from charitable in temper and has a deplorable attitude towards religion and Christianity, but one that is I think entirely understandable in terms of the way or ways in which both they can be presented and experienced, especially in this country and culture. I wrote what is probably a less than admirable, certainly hostile, letter to my seminary within the past two weeks, because it or they sent (twice) to me an invitation to an alumni "reunion" at the Newport Beach Presbyterian Church. I told them in no indecisive terms just what I think of that congregation, its community, and the church (congregation) that I was unfortunately exposed to as a child, and why I would like to see "Evangelicalism" purged from the Church. It is authoritarian, repressive, and anti-intellectual in the extreme, although it could certainly be rightly described as "intellectualist," and as "rationalist," although anything but rational. It is that in the predominant American religious tradition that the Founding Fathers would have hated, and in fact, did, in prominent cases: Washington, Paine, both Adamses, Jefferson, Franklin (whose birthday is today), and to perhaps a lesser extent, Madison. Of course they all believed in God, in some cases, strongly, but "fervently" would not be an appropriate adverb, and they nearly all believed in religion in the way that children of the Enlightenment did. The two great religious movements that brought American independence and identity about were similar in a few respects and antithetical in others. Both ways of thinking and feeling were I believe mistaken to some degree, but this is far more true of the Evangelicalism/Pietism behind the "Great Awakening" than of "The Enlightenment rationalism to which most of the Founding Fathers embraced. Both Franklin and Jefferson constructed their own personal statements of faith that are very close to the Unitarian tradition but not to The Catholic Faith. Washington, though an Episcopalian, was careful never to receive The Blessed Sacrament. I wonder if he ever attended a Eucharist. What they did not like about Christianity as they experienced it--especially in the Evangelical "New Lights" was in part its excessive and often unseemly emotionalism, and still more its authoritarianism: the religion of the "shut up and don't ask questions" variety, which that tradition, that version of Christianity shares of course with Papalist Roman Catholicism. It is that to which many Americans have been exposed, often painfully, and it is that which makes them as blatantly, and of course, ignorantly, hostile to true Christianity, identifying the one with the other. The American of that period whom I most admire was of course Blessed Samuel Seabury (f.d., Nov. 14), the first bishop of the American Church and earlier in his life, Chaplain to His Majesty's American forces. Had he not escaped Manhattan in a hired rowboat, he would undoubtedly have been hanged along with the other captured male Tories when the Fleet sailed away with their wives and children aboard, sadly not before they were compelled to see their husbands and fathers kicking on the gallows, intentionally erected so that they had to, since lack of favorable winds had prevented their sailing for some days.
Hamilton, of course, was as "High Church" an Episcopalian as he could have been without having compromised his rationalism.
Burr was of course Jonathan Edwards' grandson. Edwards was of course as brilliant a thinker as this country has produced, and the third President of Princeton. But have you read or heard read (I took my advisees to his grave on his birthday and delivered much of it to them there) "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"? Brilliant thought and superb rhetoric: hardly Gospel, in my opinion, at least.
I think that Maher was brought up in a less-than-educationally-
sophisticated R.C. family, and experienced popular authoritarian American culture first-hand. That experience has left him understandably angry as hell, and thus sadly in danger of it in popular estimation. I am as sympathetic with his mindset as I can be, given that I wholeheartedly disagree with and deplore it. I don't need to see the clip; I watched and enjoyed the program. The Bible, understood as literally and ignorantly as many do, certainly more a center of belief, if not faith, than the Gospel, certainly can be viewed or felt about as "bullshit." That of course is blasphemy insofar as Scripture
containing and centered in the Holy Gospel is concerned, but it is not all that far off insofar as it is understood and believed in by Fundamentalists and similar contemporary Pharisees. I rather think that Luther would not have bristled at using the German Renaissance equivalent of the term, as Fleisch, and not Geist.
As in most respects, particular circumstances exist within a larger context. We still are, and certainly have been, the majority and dominant subculture here. Thus every cultural strain of frustration, resentment, rebellion or anger focuses itself upon and directs itself against, the central symbols of our identity. Our superior position to this time at least still allows us enough self-confidence to "take" and to tolerate it, and we are able both to exhibit and to admire that magnanimity displayed in our doing so. Our culture (religion: functionally one is the center, core, or point of origin of the other) has developed over centuries of its history, plural forms, diversity, which are characteristic of and moral models of its highest ideals. Consider the Act of Toleration of 1689, as the "Whig" tradition emerged victorious, something I pretend to regret and in certain Romanticist moods, slightly do. But I don't really believe any more in imprisoning Baptists or Quakers, or denying RC's suffrage. The history of Islam has been to the present, quite the reverse, and it has remained intolerant and authoritarian, though in its flourishing periods in Damascus and then Baghdad, it was at least open to, then enthusiastic about, and finally imitative of and then superior to Byzantine, i.e., Christian/Greek/Western culture--at least with regard to the sciences, medicine and philosophy. Whence do you think St. Thomas got his methodology other than from Avicenna (ibn Sina) and Averroes (ibn Rushd), howevermuch they got theirs from Aristotle? But, given the Crusades, the Saracen and then Turkish and almost Mongol conquests of the Middle East, and finally the economic-political-and cultural triumph of the Christian>secular/pluralistic, Modern>post-modern cultures, the Arabs reacted. The authoritarian side of Islamic culture triumphed, and it has remained in many respects subservient, resentful, and intellectually narrow ever since, although now possibly redeemable because it has entered Western culture to some extent, particularly here in the USA. Do we want to speak with ONE voice? God help us, NO!!! although our authoritarian subculture, certainly growing stronger as we become increasingly insecure and resentful, e.g., Fundamentalists, the lower-middle-class South, Mormons (i.e., "Rednecks) consider that an ideal for which they strive. I hardly think that Gay subculture has anything to imitate in their example.
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