Re: [asa] Ken Ham Honored

"Return to Christian America" rhetoric is one of the few things that I find
as upsetting as YEC rhetoric. As a student and teacher of law and history,
I think I react as strongly against this as many Christians in the sciences
do against YEC. It's even more of a shame because there are currents in our
jurisprudence since the 19th Century that have eroded the moral basis for
law, but it's very difficult to talk about that from a Christian perspective
because one is immediately lumped in with the Christian America crowd.

And the interesting thing, to which the Christian America crowd is
oblivious, is that the Enlightenement rationalism and skepticism that is
inherent in the American experiment, precisely because of the influence of
the founders, is the genesis of that jurisprudential shift. The notion that
the moral basis for law is found primarily in human reason -- and thus,
ultimately, in pragmatic utility -- rather than primarily in divine command,
divinely ordained natural law, and/or notions of virtue rooted in a created
order, is a stream from which the founders drank deeply.

Sigh and double sigh.

On 6/28/07, Robert Schneider <schneider98@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Yes, Ted. That nominal Anglican with a Deist's sensibilities George
Washington, along with Jefferson, Franklin, and several others of the
founders, would be puzzled by this accolade. The revisionist history that
declares America to have been a "Christian nation" has been a movement by
the so-called Religious Right in response to the decline since the 1960s of
the Public Protestantism that dominated the public moral views throughout
most of the nation's history. It may be of interest that in the first
national census of 1790 only 10% of the population identified themselves
with any religious sect. Ham is one of the last people I would ever identify
as eligible for an award named after Washington.
>
> Bob
>
>
>
> On 6/27/07, Ted Davis <TDavis@messiah.edu> wrote:
> > Ham says, "But as we all know, America is not the Christian nation it
once
> > was."
> >
> > It never was, Ken, it never was. Rather ironic, I'd say, that he's been

> > honored with an award named for someone who probably did not share his
view
> > of the Bible, and (if he were living today) would probably not have been
a
> > "Creationist" in Ham's sense.
> >
> > ted
> >
> > To unsubscribe, send a message to majordomo@calvin.edu with
> > "unsubscribe asa" (no quotes) as the body of the message.
> >
>
>

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Received on Thu Jun 28 12:55:18 2007