#184: July 8

Back in the day of 1741 on this very day, Jonathan Edwards read (pronounced "red") a sermon to a group of folks in Enfield, Connecticut. (Preaching style was quite different then, I suppose.) It's title was "Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God" and was part of the Great Awakening going on at the time. (Why can't Christians just have an Awakening? Why always include superlative adjectives? Hmmm.) If you don't know the text, one that is quite good, actually, click on this particular site: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/relg/sinners.short.htm

Back in the day of 2004 on this very day, I got an email that had some interesting material in it by Robert Reich (yep, spelled the same way as Hitler's Third...by the way, Hitler founded National Socialism, not National Right-Wingism in Germany!!). The email included a quote from a magazine called American Prospect. Reich wrote, "The great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic, not a belief. The true battle will be between modern civilization and anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority; between those who give priority to life in this world and those who believe that human life is mere preparation for an existence beyond life; between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face."
The email went on to say that you could read more in Reich's book, Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America. If you want to read the whole article, click on the url that leads to "The Last Word: Bush's God": http://www.robertreich.org/reich/20040701.asp

Wonder what will crop up in the religious news today? Do ya think maybe God's still angry?!