The Things They Carried Re: Rove and Wolfowitz's role

[Carl Remick]

>From: billbartlett at dodo.com.au
>
>But for fundamentalist Christianity to retain a strong hold in a nation 
>like the USA would be strange. Dogmatic thinking, which is basically what 
>any religion amounts to, is seemingly incompatible with social and 
>technological innovation which seems so much a part of the USA. So  am 
>somewhat suspicious about the claims that yanks are a nation of backward 
>dogmatics.

My God, fundamentalist zanies have abounded in this fevered promised land 
going waaay back back.  E.g.:

"Nineteenth century America contained a bewildering array of Protestant 
sects and denominations, with different doctrines, practices, and 
organizational forms. But by the 1830s almost all of these bodies had a deep 
evangelical emphasis in common. Protestantism has always contained an 
important evangelical strain, but it was in the nineteenth century that a 
particular style of evangelicalism became the dominant form of spiritual 
expression. What above all else characterized this evangelicalism was its 
dynamism, the pervasive sense of activist energy it released. ...."

"Evangelicalism, Revivalism, and the Second Great Awakening"
Donald Scott / Queens College / City University of New York

<http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/nevanrev.htm>

Carl

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