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Letters from 15 to 22 May 2005

Like all letters to the editor everywhere, these letters are the opinions of the writers and not Anglicans Online. We publish letters that we think will be of interest to our readers, whether we agree with them or not. If you'd like to write a letter of your own, click here.

Well, to the tenors, at least

As always, I find your editorials thought-provoking and challenging. Keep up the good work.

The week of your response to the negative letters about the ouija board, speaking to a loss of literacy and careful thought processes, the New York Times Book Review (dated May 15, 2005, p. 39) had a most interesting essay by Mark Lilla. It is titled "Church Meets State." The entire article is well worth reading, and bears on your editorial. Here are the last two paragraphs.

"The leading thinkers of the British and American Enlightenments hoped that life in a modern democratic order wouls shift the focus of Christianity from faith-based reality to a reality based fith. American religion ismoving in the opposite direction today, back toward the ecstatic, literalist and credulous spirit of the Great Awakenings. Its most disturbing manifestations are not political, at least not yet. They are cultural. the facination with the "end times," the belief in personal (and self-serving) miracles, the ignorance of basic science and history, teh dmonization of popular culture, the censoring of textbooks, the separatist instincts of the home-schooling movement - all these developments are far more worrying in the long term than the loss of a few Congressional seats.

"No on can know how long this dumbing-down of American religion will persist. But so long as it does, citizens should probably be more vigilant about policing the public square, not less so. If there is anything David Hume and John Adams understodd, it is that you cannot sustain liberal democracy without cultivating liberal habits of mind among religious believers. That remains true today, both in Baghdad and Baton Rouge."

Keep up the good work, though I often suspect that you are "preaching to the choir."

Helen-Louise Boling
St. Andrew's Episcopal Parish
Toledo, Ohio, USA
hlboling@toast.net
17 May 2005

Earlier letters

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