ShareThisEarly in 19th century America, disputing the religious dogmatism of the Puritans, Ralph Waldo Emerson preached that "it is by yourself without ambassador that God speaks to you... It is God in you that responds to God without."With notable exceptions, this is now the faith of most Americans. It is a private religious faith -- vague, incommunicable, sentimental, unanchored by Scripture, creed, or doctrine, and buttressed only by the latest personal revelation. To be sure, God is not dead, as naysayers claimed in the 1960s. Nevertheless, he has been marginalized and domesticated by individual believers.How did this come to pass?With the notable exceptions of the Evangelical, Fundamental, and Catholic churches, traditional Christianity has tended since the Enlightenment to accommodate the prevailing secular culture. Better known as the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment began in the 18th century to interpret human existence in terms contrary to religion.In the words of Harvard historian Crane Brinton, the basic idea of the Enlightenment was the "belief that all human beings can attain here on earth a state of perfection hitherto in the West thought to be possible only for Christians in a state of grace, and for them only after death."The Rationalists aimed at more than simply releasing mankind from superstition. They meant to free him from belief in, and responsibility to, a demanding God. University of Wisconsin historian Thomas C. Reeves identifies the Enlightenment as a secular religion in which human pride (for Christians the most grievous of the seven deadly sins) has been transformed from vice to virtue.Before the Enlightenment, the reformer Martin Luther reviled reason as "the devil's harlot." For Christians, Protestant and Catholic alike, the self has always been the problem. The ego must be tamed and subordinated by repentance, humility, and reliance on the better wisdom of God.Happily, America profited from founding fathers who balanced Christian and Enlightenment thinking. In retrospect, they may have been too optimistic about human nature, but optimism suited the New World and motivated our forebears.At the same time, our nation's founders believed in an ordered universe, and they inherited from the Pilgrim Fathers a sense of divine destiny for this land. That was all to the good.Unfortunately, the Enlightenment planted a seed that would grow into secular humanism and infect the thinking of ordinary Christians. In the mainline churches today, there is more talk of self-esteem than of human frailty, and practically no mention at all of sin. Not long ago, when Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a bestselling book whose title posed the question "How Good Do We Have to Be?," he blamed guilt feelings and inadequacy, rather than pride, as our enemy.If he is correct, then our faith in ourselves is now competing with our traditional faith in God.(David Yount's new book is "How the Quakers Invented America" (Rowman & Littlefield). He answers readers at P.O. Box 2758, Woodbridge, VA 22195 and dyount(at)erols.com.)
Does faith in ourselves compete with our faith in God?
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
