Ch 6 ABSOLUTE ABSOLUTION - The Forgiveness of Original Sin By Ministers of Government Schooling by John Taylor Gatto from spinninglobe.net

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The trust that Aquinas was willing to extend human nature was withdrawn by the radically different psychological outlook of the 16th century Reformation. Suddenly the world became an evil place and the mortal side of Man evil with it. This critical transformation entered Europe much earlier from Persia and Zoroastrianism in the 7th century B.C., arriving in the western mind from Persian influence on the Hebrews during their Babylonian captivity. It came from another direction, too, that of the Greek rationalists which surrounded and deeply influenced early Christian thinkers.

This at one time heretical view that the world was evil remained peripheral for centuries, but thanks to its development in Augustine's City of God, one of the immortal books of the West written in the late 4th century, the God of Forgiveness came slowly to be supplanted by the angry God of the Puritans. City of God is the first major landmark of the Puritan point of view, one in which God is seen as Saviour not for everyone but only for an exclusive few.

It was the attempt to restore the loving God to center stage, or failing that to wash one's hands of the whole God business, which ended up in a titanic, yet invisible struggle in the 18th century colonies and early Republic between American Puritans and their own descendants. Between the end of the Revolution and the Jackson Presidency in 1832 Calvinists of the Congregational religion battled the forces of so called "liberal" Christianity concentrated in the Unitarian sect and its allies, in politics as well as pulpits. Just after the turn of the l9th century, two impressive victories in Boston - where Harvard management fell to Unitarian control - and New York City - where a Quaker private corporation calling itself the Public School Society was given exclusive access to tax money - signaled the eventual outcome of the contest. Although it would not be until mid-century that public school legislation would be passed in both places, from this time forward the momentum ran against Calvinism.

But something strange and perhaps unexpected happened as a byproduct of this changeover. In struggling against the vengeful God it was necessary to mount so many compelling arguments against the established religion that inevitably some of this violent energy was directed against every position held by that religion. Christ the Redeemer was reinterpreted and de-spiritualized. Now he was presented as a model of character but without divinity, or sometimes as a divinity accessible to everyone who sought after it. This "men as gods" position was especially popular among the intellectual classes.

This transformation robbed the Christian curriculum of its power, reducing it from a grave obligation to a set of good ideas that had to compete against other sets of good ideas. Eventually toward the end of the century the Christian curriculum of duty, service, hard work, cheerful resignation, independence, etc. showed serious erosion and the scientific management in schools of the 20th century removed it entirely.

The dimensions of the tragedy this uncovered have only been slowly revealed as the 20th century wore on, but they remained unnoticed by the enthusiastic progressive forces who pulled it off. The angry God was not only gone but the idea of God along with Him.