The Secret Language of Bings
More than a week has passed since our last EfM zoom session and nearly a month since our last substantive discussion of the assigned reading. It feels as if we arrived at the point in Chrisendom where the American colonies became petrie dishes for just about every reformed, iconoclastic and/or fringe movement to escape Western Europe one step ahead of the executioner. Religion was used as a wy of justifying slavery long after the practice of buying and selling human beings had been outlawed by the British Parlaiment. And, certainly by the end of the eighteenth century, newly emerging forms Protestant governance no longer pretended to be in any way in the direct line of succession from the original Apostles. Basically, if you could gather a following, you could form your own church.
For me, the discovery that so much American ignorance is based on the proliferation of these stiff-necked, poke-in-your-eye, bigot factories (including, quite a few African-American ones), is one of the most lasting impressions I shall come away with this semester. So, it was with an added note of relief that we were able to take a break from class this week.
For me, the discovery that so much American ignorance is based on the proliferation of these stiff-necked, poke-in-your-eye, bigot factories (including, quite a few African-American ones), is one of the most lasting impressions I shall come away with this semester. So, it was with an added note of relief that we were able to take a break from class this week.