Anodyne Age

Posted on December 29, 2008
Filed Under Politics, Religion | 2 Comments

Secular Right has up a post on an anodyne age.

“We live in an age when religion is good, just not too much, or too strange.”

This explains, I think, a lot of the reaction to folks like Romney. (I didn’t care for him as a candidate but he was really mistreated in my opinion) Obviously folks like Palin or Ashcroft also encounter this. I think there are things that one can criticize of course. But often the criticisms rarely rise above the level of “that’s weird.”

The book that engendered Secular Right’s discussion, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, looks well worth reading (and relevant to discussions of Mormonism of the era).

If you’ve read it what did you think? I’d get it but I’m so ridiculously behind in my reading I know it’d be a year before I got to it.

Related posts:

  1. The Impossibility of Religious Freedom?
  2. The Secular Question
  3. Defending Phenomenology
  4. Burn After Reading
  5. Grace II
  6. Mormonism and Supernaturalism

Comments

2 Responses to “Anodyne Age”

How would you place Pres-elect Obama with his following of the Reverend Wright? Romney’s Mormonism hurt him enough to allow a slack like McCain to be the Republican candidate, but Obama never stopped being a leading contender for the nomination, even though his religious leader was clearly wacko.

I actually think Wright did hurt Obama. But what saved him was a general perception that he was just attending that Church for “street cred” and wasn’t actually that religious. Plus when he came out against Wright condemning those things it put a divide between Obama’s religiosity and Wright’s. In effect Obama said, “that’s not my religion.” Note that Palin and Romney never did that. I actually think had Romney distinguished himself more from the Church he’d have made the public feel more at ease.

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