In response to Douglas Benn’s letter to the editor, “State buries, not promotes religion” (Sept. 11, 2018), where he blames the N.E.A. and secular humanism for the immorality of our country and that we need to return to Christianity.
Well! Contrary to Mr. Benn’s lament, Christian-run governments had their day and opportunity to prove themselves in Europe, where they ruled for a thousand years before the Renaissance, and they failed miserably at “righting” the world. At that time, the Christian Church’s word was law and men were burned at the stake for doubting it.
We do not need to go back to religious laws that harm the rest of us by a sectarian-bias government. Secular humanists live by extending ourselves, not to the heavens, but to the horizon. It connects us to human beings in the generations to come. What kind of societies are the current inhabitants of the planet going to bequeath to those who follow? Lest we stick them with a world governed by the angry nationalism and dark authoritarianism that is being pushed now, we must win the fight for global cooperation. (Forget what religion countries have; we all want the same things with democratic values-human values.)
— Gary Garoutte, The Spokesman-Review, Letter to the Editor, September 30, 2018
Hear hear!
Add to that the modern nations that are controlled by Islam.
Yup! I think of how the control of Russia during the Eastern Orthodox Era,and their rules, policies and corruption led to the takeover by those Bolsheviks in 1917, and of course Russia was never truly liberated even in the early 1990’s, a time of brief hope. And America, Christians there, failed everybody because they held those racist beliefs from Europe, brought it here, and the twin evils of slavery and genocide carry this influence up to this day. I’m thinking of that incident on the subway there in Brooklyn the other day. There’s always been this anger that dominates society. You see it daily,and people say that one reason that they give for leaving America now, is all the violence.