Ever see those recent figures, the ones that represent about 80% of Americans still have a spiritual belief vested in Christianity, yet almost 200 million of them go unchurched? Even vote for Obama, even though he uses ministers for inaugural activities?

 

Anyway, one thing for sure is that there HAS been a large presence of Calvinism detected in many Christian groups in America, the kind of doctrine that says we're all predestined by God to be winners or losers, winners can do what they want, losers are worthless even if sincerely good and of goodwill, and in fact all God wants is for such Christians to flaunt their chosen success and dominion over all else rather than say expect others to become part of the fold. To be sure, that kind of thinking could lead many to shun even the phrase "Merry Christmas"...more so where such Christians hold sway over public funds to boot.

 

Another major salient has been Churches or faith strands which cling not to their overall Christianity, just the fact that it ab initio was meant...in the time of Jesus Christ...to apply to everyone then locked into a world where feudalism, royalty, and often indentured servitude were ALL one had to work with, before making any other life choices or paths. In that sense, so much of the Bible is culture-bound; what worldly forces are exerted today, let alone ABSENCES of many economic or "daily bread" circumstances, plus scientific data sometimes verified by faith leaders, would sort of tend to indicate Christ's and even His Apostles' words would have to be accepted for the spiritual gravamen they contain, but in attempting to relate them to the present world and its intricacies evolved over 2,000 years one might look for CONTEXTUAL as well as literal cognates in trying to ascertain what might be the compassionate/peaceful/Christian right things to do. Ditto that to any other longtime faiths of earth, where even non-Christian leaders preach we're still on the plantation, as it were, and God or Allah or such will want us A) to stay there, and B) with those who tell us this lorded over us.

 

As it is, in the USA faith-funded, Presidentially-led Christianity has resulted in clergy deciding this or that immigrant(s) should just be given nationals' houses as Jesus told a rich Prince HE should do in feudal days, or even immigrants should expect to lose out if thereafter turns out God willed them into failure as well, you get the picture. Of course, wasn't it a Bush administration/GOP like Jim Ryan of Illinois position that Laden accused the USA of apostasy in a laundry list of "gripes", didn't Bush back when want to see where Laden led, and didn't Bush say therefore those USA citizens and immigrants who reject or question how faith-funded works are of interest as people possibly susceptible to Laden recruitment as they too...even if by wholly different parallel...happen to sound in questioning USA clergy re doctrinal applications?

 

When Bush recently said but did not enumerate that he would have done some things differently, one hopes he meant he would have smashed Qaeda and other such groups outright, and unlike Mushareff of Pakistan not appear to also be using Qaeda to destabilize political opponents...because as the Bush nation floundered, rights dried up, and officials came to know best God's will in determining how a return to feudalism would serve mankind...and going along with similar attitudes abroad would be one heck of a price to pay off terrorists from hitting us.

 

One holds forth hope that Obama would just close the Presidential Office Of Faith-Based Initiatives Bush Executive Order created, or in the alternative, that such office then will function to promote more widely-accepted realities and bring the leaders of world faiths into not fatwas and excommunications and oy-vays for discomfort with imposed avoidable serfdom, but into the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., Ghandi, and John Paul II, and every person of peace and humanity...yet religious or not...on the face of the earth.