Word: religion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...prayer. Well then, how will the toddlers know what to say? It appears there is to be some kind of rotalional system whereby the Catholic will bring in his prayer one day, the Baptist the next, then the Jew, and so on. This is an exercise not in religion but in anthropology. If public prayer means anything, it means the joining together of individuals in common devotion. This ecclesiastical musical chairs, however, both trivializes religion and offends it, by asking children to join in prayer foreign, perhaps contrary, to their own beliefs...
President Reagan not only advocates school prayer, he calls those who oppose him intolerant. One might argue with equal plausibility that on this issue his opponents are more tolerant: after all, a cardinal principle of toleration is thai Ihe practice of religion should be free and uncoerced, a situation that hardly obtains in the third grade. Many who oppose school prayer support a moment of silence as a serious, denominationally neutral alternative. Is William Rusher, the outspoken conservative publisher of National Review, intolerant of religion because he supports a moment of silence? By questioning the religious, indeed the constitutional, bona...
Moreover, the current debate, if not always enlightening, is healthy. Just as there are cycles of public upheaval and quietude on great issues like nuclear weapons, so too with religion. It is natural that Americans should periodically vent their feelings about so powerful, though often subterranean, an influence as religion. And then agree to retire to their respective churches for a little meditation, penance perhaps, until the next round...
...disposed to do." Moynihan was perhaps trying to make sure that charges of hypocrisy in the current debate do not remain lodged exclusively with liberals. His little witticism, however, points up an important fact: in the U.S. one can hardly speak seriously of the idea of established religion. In America it is the rules that are established; reformers, even insurrectionists, challenge no more than the bylaws. No one, not a President nor an Archbishop, is likely to change that. -By Charles Krauthammer
Moreover, Wilson's condemnations of academia are often overly-harsh, often to the point of sounding adolescent. Though Wilson stops short of raging an outright attack on authority and its preceptors, his picture of religion and scholasticism is notably unsympathetic. Potential "heroes" are either washed up and disillusioned by their own insight, or undercut their own good intentions with overbearing concern...