Posted on 02/04/2014 1:26:16 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Author and speaker Diana Butler Bass suggests that we are in the process of reinventing American civil religion, the way we think about God and national purpose. And she says President Obama is part of that process. Obama, like his predecessors in the White House, has generally drawn the older form of civil religion complete with biblical language, social justice evangelicalism, and the themes of orthodox theology. But, she suggests, something has changed in the last couple of years. His speeches have included a view of God with an appeal to a wider faith audience, she says.
“Gone is the God of biblical revelation, the generalized God-as-Father-in-Heaven, and the distant God of Providence. Rather, Obama’s public God is a personal spirit, the relational presence of inclusion, community, empathy, irony, justice, and service. The God of this new and emerging American civil religion is a God who is with humankind, a far more embracing rather than judgmental figure, who loves and acts in the world through the works of human beings. Most theists can recognize this God (or gods) in their own religious traditions; most non-theists can interpret this sort of God as a spirit of beauty or justice in humankind.
This comes as America is becoming more pluralistic, as fewer people are claiming membership in orthodox religious groups. American civil religion has long emphasized a language and set of public practices based on the “biblical archetypes” of “Exodus, Chosen People, Promised Land, New Jerusalem, and Sacrificial Death and Rebirth” But the newer civil spirituality, which Bass says Obama expressed in his 2013 inaugural address, does something else: It reaches away from traditional civil religion and toward civil spirituality—a less dogmatic, more open-ended form of inspirational public speech....
SNIP
....Our Texas Faith panel weighs in:....
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com ...
You’ve gotta be kidding.
Yep. Socialist/Communist countries substitute the Government in place of religion. This has been coming for years. Sickening.
Freakin’ ridiculous.
Should read: Obama’s public God is a personal spirit an impersonal bureaucracy, the relational presence of inclusion, community the relational presence of jackbooted thugs, empathy sympathy for the devil's ideas, irony oh, it's ironic all right, justice money for our supporters, and service servitude.
Stunning. Huh?
And all it requires is an Orwellian surveillance apparatus and the end of the American State for us to reach the altar of this new “spiritualism”? What a deal!
What the Hell is this idiot smoking?
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