2008 Woodie Awards
Religion is Not Entirely Responsible for America's New "Crusader" Image
Loren Van Wyk A.M.D.G.
Issue date: 4/28/08 Section: Opinion
Soren Kierkegard once wrote that Christendom is the great enemy of Christianity. He insisted that Christianity is inherently a polemic notion (polemos is the Greek word for war).
There is certainly a kernel of truth in this saying of Kierkegard's. As one rabbi put it, when asked about salvation, "It's every man for himself."
However, I believe that Kierkegard's conviction on this point owes something to
historical circumstance.
My own view is that the State, the religious sense, however expressed, and the family form a triangle of mutual dependence, if they are to serve the individual to the full extent that they, by their very nature, are called to do.
George Washington said as much, as Pope Benedict XVI recently reminded us. It is the failure of education in the broadest sense, and the resulting flood of immorality, that have turned America into an outlaw nation, seeking, both at home and abroad, whom it may devour.
There is no political solution to this problem. Albert Camus wrote in "The Rebel" that anyone who takes part in politics implicitly commits homicide. Things have come to pass such that, if Camus' words were not true in their own time, they are
true now.
I have a suggestion to make, and it is only a suggestion. The reader might like to write to Pellerins de St. Michel, Rougemont, PQ, Canada, and ask for a copy of "Under the Sign of Abundance" by Louis Even. The theory of Social Credit which he advances may be seriously flawed. Most theories are. But perhaps the reader can take part in honing it into a finer instrument than it now is.
There is certainly a kernel of truth in this saying of Kierkegard's. As one rabbi put it, when asked about salvation, "It's every man for himself."
However, I believe that Kierkegard's conviction on this point owes something to
historical circumstance.
My own view is that the State, the religious sense, however expressed, and the family form a triangle of mutual dependence, if they are to serve the individual to the full extent that they, by their very nature, are called to do.
George Washington said as much, as Pope Benedict XVI recently reminded us. It is the failure of education in the broadest sense, and the resulting flood of immorality, that have turned America into an outlaw nation, seeking, both at home and abroad, whom it may devour.
There is no political solution to this problem. Albert Camus wrote in "The Rebel" that anyone who takes part in politics implicitly commits homicide. Things have come to pass such that, if Camus' words were not true in their own time, they are
true now.
I have a suggestion to make, and it is only a suggestion. The reader might like to write to Pellerins de St. Michel, Rougemont, PQ, Canada, and ask for a copy of "Under the Sign of Abundance" by Louis Even. The theory of Social Credit which he advances may be seriously flawed. Most theories are. But perhaps the reader can take part in honing it into a finer instrument than it now is.
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