Engines Of Liberty: Covenanted Self-Government
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Given the state of American education today, it is increasingly necessary to restate the obvious: that a civilization is only as strong as the ground it stands upon. Its foundations must be tested and renewed continuously. Cornel West, a Harvard public philosopher, and Jeremy Tate recently criticized the removal of classics – the Western canon – from the curriculum as “a sign that we, as a culture, have embraced from the youngest age utilitarian education at the expense of soul-forming education.” To end this “spiritual catastrophe” they call for a challenging curriculum that, while grounded in tradition, lifts every voice.
As America becomes more secular and pluralistic, conservatives are fighting a rearguard battle to protect their rights to speak, worship, and participate in the public square. Some have suggested that conservatives isolate themselves, promising not to offend if left alone. At the same time, ascendant liberals are seizing the opportunity to consolidate their hold on cultural institutions. They are abandoning commitments to open debate and.
Summary: Did America have a Christian Founding? This disputed question, far from being only of historical interest, has important implications for how we conceive of the role of religion in the American republic. Mark David Hall begins by considering two popular answers to the query “Of course not!” and “Absolutely!” both of which distort the Founders’ views. After showing that Christian ideas were one of the important intellectual influences on the Founders, he discusses three major areas of agreement with respect to religious liberty and church–state relations at the time of the Founding: Religious liberty is a right and must be protected; the national government should not create an established church, and states should have them only if they encourage and assist Christianity; and religion belongs in the public square. In short, while America did not have a Christian Founding in the sense of creating a theocracy, its Founding was deeply shaped by Christian moral truths.
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On May 9, 2001, Steven M. Greer took the lectern at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C., in pursuit of the truth about unidentified flying objects. Greer, an emergency-room physician in Virginia and an outspoken ufologist, believed that the government had long withheld from the American people its familiarity with alien visitations. He had founded the Disclosure Project in 1993 in an attempt to penetrate the sanctums of conspiracy. Greer’s reckoning that day featured some twenty speakers. He provided, in support of his claims, a four-hundred-and-ninety-two-page dossier called the “Disclosure Project Briefing Document.” For public officials too busy to absorb such a vast tract of suppressed knowledge, Greer had prepared a ninety-five-page “Executive Summary of the Disclosure Project Briefing Document.” After some throat-clearing, the “Executive Summary” began with “A Brief Summary,” which included a series of bullet points outlin