I'm about half way through a wonderful book, An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America, not an easy read, but a challenging and somewhat humbling read on how Christianity in the US was morphed into a "social gospel":
In their view, the social forces of bigotry, power, corruption, mass opinion, militarism, and oppression are the constant themes of history. These horrors have a palpable, almost metaphysical presence in the world. And the post-Protestants believe the best way to know themselves as moral is to define themselves in opposition to such bigotry and oppression— understanding good and evil not primarily in terms of personal behavior but as states of mind about the social condition. Sin, in other words, appears as a social fact, and the redeemed personality becomes confident of its own salvation by being aware of that fact. By knowing about, and rejecting, the evil that darkens society.
Bottum, Joseph (2014-02-11). An Anxious Age: The Post-Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America (p. 15). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.In this Holy Week, it is good to reflect on our fall "You will be as Gods, knowing good and evil". Often we assume that Satan told the truth, that we now DO "know good and evil". I find it to be a dangerous step to take the father of lies at his word.
The modern left, the "post protestant new puritans" believe with their whole heart that they DO know evil ... "bigotry, power, corruption, mass-opinion, militarism and oppression", and their souls, like Michael Bloomberg's, are saved because of their opposition to what they know as evil.
'via Blog this'
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