{"id":380,"date":"2008-12-02T12:19:49","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T20:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=380"},"modified":"2009-01-09T12:25:32","modified_gmt":"2009-01-09T20:25:32","slug":"why-secular","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/why-secular\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Secular?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I want to make something clear, again, so that it doesn’t crop up on the comments over & over: the point of this website (for me) is not to argue for the abolition of all religious sentiment. \u00a0Rather, it is to push back against articles such as Can Atheists Be Good Citizens?<\/a> by Richard John Neuhaus, a prominent conservative intellectual. This is a nation where an agnostic conservative can write books with titles such as The Pursuit of virtue and other Tory notions<\/a>. \u00a0A common sentiment I’ve heard, and seen in these comments even, is that by definition someone who does not believe in God is simply not a conservative. In which case, should Heather Mac Donald go work for Brookings? \u00a0Should John Derbyshire write for The New Republic<\/em>? \u00a0Should AEI offload Charles Murray, who though sympathetic to Christianity, is not (last I checked, Charles evolves) a believer? \u00a0Should conservative institutions perform the sort of “faith check” (i.e., you sign some document affirming your adherence to particular propositions) before hiring individuals which many Christian colleges do, so as to filter out those deluded non-believers who wish to forward the conservative cause?<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong> I see no logical reason why the reading-out-by-definition should be limited to atheists & agnostics. \u00a0Many conservatives (myself included) whould agree that this is ultimately at heart an Anglo-Protestant nation. \u00a0In which case, where does that leave those who are not Anglo-Protestants?*<\/p>\n

* As an empirical matter I think many religious traditions which have assimilated, such as Judaism and Catholicism, are cuturally Anglo-Protestantized (an atheist Jewish friend who was raised Orthodox told me he refused to enter Reform Temples, as they were “too Christian”). \u00a0And Mormonism, though recognized as non-Christian by most Christians, is clearly an organic outgrowth<\/a> of American New England Protestantism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to make something clear, again, so that it doesn’t crop up on the comments over & over: the point of this website (for me) is not to argue for the abolition of all religious sentiment. \u00a0Rather, it is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[11,15],"tags":[166,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1229,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions\/1229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}