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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacques Chitte who wrote (34401)	4/11/1999 3:32:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Yeah, you got me there. But I don't think I ever implied that the moral community was in any way consensual, or that moral values were developed through a consultative or participative process. Once established (imposed by Moses or Paul or whomever), the moral community can be (must be) self-enforced. It may establish an orderly process of development, but I have never really heard of this happening. One might imagine that Vatican II reflected an updating of the Church but in fact it represented the Pope's impressing his ideas on the Church. The failure of the established moral communities to modify their moral code to accommodate the behavioral rules that people are willing to conform to leads to break up, rather than modification, of the community. "No Council without a Schism" cries history, and Protestantism reflects constant breakup of sects. Presbyterianism (which took over the Church of Scotland) and Methodism could not be accommodated within the C. of E. The values initially imposed on the people by a caste of priests (as in Israel) may not hold for long. The constant stream of prophets (mostly ethnocentric and conservative) fight the tolerance and modernization of a "Caesaropapist" Israel. David, ruling a multiethnic state tries to run the church, centralizes government and worship in Jerusalem, and his son Solomon builds a temple and an even more polyethnic state. These kings are constantly denounced by "Little Israel-Judea" traditional prophets (like Nathan) and soon the joint kingdom breaks into and develops not only different states but different churches as well. The remarkable thing about the Constitutional Convention was that as similar as they were in most ways, they wrote a document that didn't mention church or God, gave no privileges to the clergy, called for no oaths (specifically allowing affirmation). Altogether an extraordinary document -- embodying the Enlightenment in almost every line. And it was a hard sell, even to a still revolutionary populace. The people demanded (via their state conventions) a bill of rights primarily to protect the people against the new national government. Yet these were economic and social elites legislating for the whole People. I marvel to this day that God, the church, and religion were exiled from the Constitution, and still are. It was a wise and lucky decision that has largely preempted religious conflict in the U.S.