First Things
Aug / Sept 2008
The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Protestant Mainline
Joseph BottumI

America was Methodist, once upon a time—Methodist, or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Episcopalian. A little light Unitarianism on one side, a lot of stern Calvinism on the other, and the Easter Parade running right down the middle: our annual Spring epiphany, crowned in bright new bonnets.

The average American these days would have ­trouble recalling the dogmas that once defined all the jarring sects, but their names remain at least half alive: a kind of verbal remembrance of the nation’s religious history, a taste on the tongue of native speakers. Think, for instance, of the old Anabaptist congregations—how a residual memory of America’s social geography still lingers in the words: the Hutterites, Mennonites, and Amish, set here and there on the checkerboard of the nation’s farmland. The Quakers in their quiet meeting­houses, the Shakers in their tiny communes, and the Pentecostals, born in the Azusa Street revivals, like blooms forced in the hothouse of the inner city.

And yet, even while we may remember the names of the old denominations, we tend to forget that it all made a kind of sense, back in the day, and it came with a kind of order. The genteel Episcopalians, high on the hill, and the all-over Baptists, down by the river. Oh, and the innumerable independent Bible churches, tangled out across the prairie like brambles: Through most of the nation’s history, these endless divisions and ­revisions of Protestantism renounced one another and sermonized against one another. They squabbled, sneered, and fought. But they had something in common, for all that. Together they formed a vague but vast unity. Together they formed America.

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Some nice thinking here, similar to some of my own ideas.

Citizen Legislators can End the California Crisis
http://foxandhoundsdaily.com/blog/john-cox/9191-citizen-legislators-can-end-california-crisis

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The Real Truth Project / Hal Morris

Notes From the Radical Center 

Posted by ontologicalcomedian

One problem with the idea of “Radical Center” or “Radical Middle” is that there are too many radical centers. A lot of people have taken up one or the other as a slogan (or “brand”, I might say — but I’d rather not).

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Edward L. Glaeser: A Time for Radical Centrists – NYTimes.com
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/time-for-the-radical-centrists-to-step-up/