Tuesday Prep for Wednesday Night
While Leesa and Raleigh watched The Unit and a new show called Smith, I was listening to the Speaking of Faith program that I'll present to my little Wednesday Night Live! class tomorrow night at church. This particular installment is called "Conservative Politics and Moderate Religion" and features Krista Tippett's interview with former Missouri senator John Danforth. The following is a quote from Danforth's new book, Faith and Politics.
So it seems we live in a godless age and we feel deeply that we must reverse this. We must restore God. And we seize upon public religion as a way to do this. School prayer, the Ten Commandments, the teaching of creationism or intelligent design, and crèches in front of public buildings all become parts of an effort to reverse our moral course and return our country to a time of public decency.
It is a worthy objective. The problem is that public religion is not up to the task. An innocuous prayer has no power to make us more godly. A display of the Ten Commandments will not make us obey the commandments. What public religion can do is create an appearance that faith is a formality contrived to impress people more than God. The practice of religion is an effective antidote to the disease so apparent in our society.
People who practice their beliefs will live according to moral and ethical standards their religion teaches them. They will be witnesses against the tawdriness of the culture around them. They will be examples of the people God expects us to be. They will be that because they understand and live by the tenets of their traditions. That is the practice of religion. It is different altogether from the public display of religion.
243.4 NWT
posted by mac | 4:14 AM
4 Comments:
Amen.........
Thanks God for the former senator...I can't believe I just "said" that! BUT, Danforth's expression is that of the very foundations of both our faith and our nation. Can we put the last paragraph on a billboard or something? I wish I could be in your class tonight!!!
I have to go buy a book, now!!!
Peace...
The Christian Right ignores the pluralism of American society. People like us should be authentically Christian. But we shouldn't be shoving our form of faith down other people's throats.
Why post the Ten Commandments on the court house door, when some of those who come seeking justice are Buddhist or Muslim? Must we denigrate other people's traditions to affirm our own. Instead of the Ten Commandments I vote for these words:
Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Roz, I always find it interesting that Confucius has a version of that "golden rule." Translations I've seen read something like this: "Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you." A very passive statement in comparison to that Jesus made. Although Confucius lived a few hundred years before Christ and several hundred years before you went to China, can you speculate about the difference between the two statements? Is it a language difference? Is it cultural?
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