Deism and Social Ethics

the role of religion in the third millennium

Religion in many parts of the world, in both politics and personal life, for good or ill, is now exerting a greater influence than at any time in living memory. There is now not merely a cultural-religious confrontation between a worldwide Islam and what it sees as an affluent agnostic West, but the worrying rise of Christian fundamentalism in the most powerful nation on earth. And the latter has its distinctive political agenda.

Part of this agenda entails a biased approach to the Israeil-Palestinian issue, but the most significant aspect of all religiously-inspired politics is self-righteousness, and the explosive mix which this creates. These are situations which cojuld never have been anticipated a generation ago when it was assumed that securlarism had displaced the beliefs of the past as any longer of political significance. ......