Lord and Land

Dear John and Thomas

Religion today is as confusing as religion back then. But questioning religion and religious authority is and will always be hard to understand. According to your letter Thomas you believe that the facet through which we collected a “beautiful assembly of gentlemen” was under Christianity and English/American Liberty. Things have far changed from those days. From my perspective religion today has undergone a huge change. Not a change in values or tradition but of how Religion is perceived. Religion is not an internal faith as it was back in Virginia and Massachusetts. Christianity is still the largest religion but no religion/Agnostic is a close second. Its not that Christianity is going down it’s the education of the people about Christianity is dwindling. As I am a college student at a Jesuit University I can confidently say that most people are Christian, but don’t practice it. Jesus has become the opposite of a fair weather friend. When in absolute desperation we call on him, but other than that he has no room in our day-to-day life. It has become more prevalent in older aged folk to start concentrating on religion due to the scare of Death, but besides that it doesn’t give a second thought.

Where religion and government is concerned we have made laws separating Religion and State affairs. They are no longer linked due to the trouble started about what is moral in God’s eyes and what is not. We can’t just live by the Ten Commandments and be ok. As you well know self-government is synonymous for a democratic state. But we have different definitions of self-government. John you are astonished at “How could mankind submit to be governed as they have been”, you call it a “inscrutable Mystery”. And I agree, but if we were self governed we would constantly be at war with one another and the world would be packed with dictators. Religion is allowed to have one ruler, one God, government is cannot.

If we can just “reduce our volume to the simple evangelists” like John says, and “express unintelligibly for other what they had not for themselves”, we may have a chance to recapture the beauty you both have experienced that is Jesus in modern day life.