I agree with much of the thoughtful essay you wrote, and have made many of the same points in various journal articles and book chapters. One place online where I explore this is at:
God, Calvin, and Social Welfare - Part One: Coalitions http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/2/6/15390/88821
It is true that there is "an historical theme that has never been fully resolved in US intellectual life or the public mind."
But do you honestly think this has escaped the attention of Christian intellectuals? It was the driving motive behind the 1805 fracas that saw the pulpit at Harvard seized by the proto-Unitarians aimed at displacing the neo-Calvinists in an ideological coup.
Many Calvinists came to the Northeast as settlers and as doctrinaire theocrats. But over time the tendency split, with many rejecting Predestination and the idea of the Elect in a kind of democratization. This merged with other forms of Christianity, especially in the South and created hybrids. These ideological battles revealed themselves in the debates over the Constitution and Bill-of-Rights. Most major forms of Christianity by the late 1800s had found a way to value separation of church and state and adapt to the challenges of the theory of evolution and the scientific method in general.
Fundamentalism--originally in Christianity, but also in Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism--is rooted in the claim that any attempt to adapt to Enlightenment themes creates a syncretic and heritical form of the religion.
As for this:
"Now this will sound exceptionally harsh on the liberal minded believer, Christian, Muslim or Jew, but that is because they don't see the rest of us in quite the same light as they see themselves---and that is the precisely the point."
Look in the mirror. Secularists "don't see the rest of us [people of faith] in quite the same light as they see themselves."
I do not view secularists as somehow deformed or unfinished intellects. Please do not frame me through this lens.
Chip Berlet
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