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willing to extend human nature was withdrawn by the radically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.
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