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MODERM SOCIETY . Experience of emptiness, a void, meaninglessness Craving for certainty amid perplexity of modernity Lack of a sense of sacred significance Devaluation of mythology and ritual Scientific rationalism incompetent to deal with ultimate questions. PREMILLENIALISM.
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MODERM SOCIETY • Experience of emptiness, a void, meaninglessness • Craving for certainty amid perplexity of modernity • Lack of a sense of sacred significance • Devaluation of mythology and ritual • Scientific rationalism incompetent to deal with ultimate questions
PREMILLENIALISM • Darby’s “literal truth” in Bible • Seven “Dispensations” in Salvation History (the Fall, the Flood, the Crucifixion…) • Seventh Dispensation - the Armageddon outside Jerusalem • True progress inseparable from conflict and near-total destruction (final extinction of modern society)
AMERICAN PROTESTANT CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISM THE CHURCH-STATE CONSTRUCT AND THE TENSION BETWEEN THEM
STATE-CHURCH SEPARATION AND INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY • What is the basis of true government? • (Moral individual exercising common sense because he/she is morally rational) • What was the basic unit of social organization? • Family? Church? Individual? • (Group exists for individual.)
ENLIGHTENMENT RATIONALIST THESIS ABOUT RELIGION • “….RELIGION IS REDUCIBLE TO COMMON CORE MORALITY DISCOVERABLE BY REASON ALONE.” • The consequence of such a thesis: MOST OF RELIGIOUS FAITH AND LIFE IS IRRELEVANT TO SOCIETY.
JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY • Favors freedom of religion • Tolerates religious pluralism • Fosters all creeds by rejecting the ultimacy of any creed • Implicitly arrogates a privileged authority of being the sole custodian of spiritual and moral values (the core of culture) • Spiritual reflex depends on political goodwill
AMERICAN CIVIL RELIGION and its modernist origins • A Natural Theology not a Revealed one • Includes a formal acknowledgement of God as a Supreme Being • Common sense not faith that counts for its universality • Modernism, true religion of High Tech Era • (Democracy, Communism, Socialism)