[Vision2020] Left-wing, not right-wing, of the Reformation

[Nick Gier]

Dear Visionaries,

Recently someone on the Christ Church golf team took a swipe at me with a 
comment to the effect that "the Reformation is the reason that Nick Gier 
acts like he does."  First, when I exercise my First Amendment freedoms, I 
assure you that it is not an act.  Second, if the right-wing of the 
Reformation had its way there would be no basic freedoms of speech and 
religion.  Douglas Wilson's vision, expressed recently in a LMT interview, 
of all Christian towns in the US is a preview of his new Calvinism and 
theocracy.

The martyrdom of Unitarian Michael Servetus, which I summarized in a Daily 
News column on Sept. 24, destroyed the freedom promised by those who talked 
of the priesthood of all believers but did not practice it.  For 270 years 
Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics killed, pillaged, and persecuted those 
who did not agree with them.  Finally, the Unitarians came back in the form 
of the American founding thinkers, who gave us a secular state with the 
fundamental freedoms that we now enjoy.

Christ Church golf, Yes; but Wilsonian theology, No!

Happy New Year to you all,

Nick Gier

Nicholas F. Gier
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://users.moscow.com/ngier/home/index.htm
208-883-3360/882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/ift/index.htm