{"id":914,"date":"2008-12-17T10:57:53","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T18:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=914"},"modified":"2008-12-17T11:00:16","modified_gmt":"2008-12-17T19:00:16","slug":"words-in-a-pluralist-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/words-in-a-pluralist-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Words in a pluralist world"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the comments below<\/a>\u00a0some note that several prominent Founding Fathers who would have self-identified as Christian would not be perceived by many as such today (e.g., Is Barack Obama a Christian?<\/a>). \u00a0At the time of the Founding men such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson assumed that Unitarianism was the future of Christianity, so in hindsight their own perception of their identities makes more sense. \u00a0But there are still societies where a “Jeffersonian,” for lack of a better word, view of Christianity persists. \u00a0In much of Scandinavia most of the population identifies as Christian<\/a>, without acceding to any of the “orthodox” tenets of Christian theology (not only do they continue to identify as Christianity, they continue to pay a voluntary “tax” to a Christian religious institution). \u00a0<\/p>\n

I will admit that until recently I thought it was best to take use a stringent theological test<\/a> to determine whether someone was Christian or not. \u00a0As an atheist, that is of course how I identify myself, with a theological test. But of late I’ve come to have second thoughts about this, as a non-believer a “thin” theological set of criteria is clear and distinct, but my reading of anthropology, sociology and psychology suggests that religious identity is embedded in a “thick” cultural matrix. \u00a0I’ve come to believe that heuristics based on theology have less power than those which integrate all the disparate parameters which frame religious identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the comments below\u00a0some note that several prominent Founding Fathers who would have self-identified as Christian would not be perceived by many as such today (e.g., Is Barack Obama a Christian?). \u00a0At the time of the Founding men such as … 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":[90],"tags":[134,133],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914"}],"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=914"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":919,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/914\/revisions\/919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}