An Apologeticum for This Blog

The purpose of this blog is not to disturb the meditative serenity of Christians of benign being, nor to indirectly undermine the spiritually-reasoned basis for humble good acts. Both traits are rooted in the beauty of simple faith. This blog honors the belief that the purest and strongest indication of God is the emanation of kindness within and among people despite the world's difficulties -- even in cases where such benevolent attitudes are not consciously registered within a belief in God. Not does this blog assume that its articles are going to change the mind of those who are its fanatical opposite in the broad continuum of Christian belief and values. What this blog does hope is that its articles will provide an alternative set of considerations for those who are only hearing the loudmouthed pronouncements of fundamentalism and the equally loudmouthed body of critics attacking the viability of Christianity as a source of uplift for humankind, both parties of whom purport to define just what Christianity is and always has been. This blog, rather, seeks to be an antidote to both anti-progressive, un-reflective, a-historical forms of Christianity and the bigoted critics of Christianity who would lump all varieties of Christian faith into its lowest common denominator. These critics and their counterparts, the self-appointed media-spokespeople of Christianity, have little concept of its historical complexity, and in fact, do not care to properly explore its humane variety of expression, nor its progressively evolving moral tenets, nor its continuity of humane traditions in defiance of a parallel tradition of authoritarian societal persecution that it learned from its former foe, the Roman Empire. For instance, it would not be fair to judge today's Christians by the polemical, dualistic arguments of Augustine of Hippo, a Pauline Church Father, whose puritanical writings effectively rejected the Golden Mean, which had been fundamental to the humanely beneficent ideals of Greek philosophy. Such a way of decrying the Christian faith would be equal to judging today's Jews by the harsh tribal rules of collective survival found in the Pentateuch, which came out of a warlike and highly competitive world marked by a marginal ecological environment for life. Such a specious approach would also be equal to judging the present inhabitants of the British Isles with Celtic ancestry on the ancient behavior of their pagan ancestors, who made offerings of human sacrifice to their native gods by burning their religious victims alive in wicker baskets. By contrast to such simple-minded approaches of criticism, this blog seeks to be one of the few fully assertive voices on historical and contemporary religious issues from a progressive Christian position, which otherwise seems mostly to adopt a policy of meek silence and unappreciated appeasement in answer to the firebrand and intolerant dicta of their hellfire-leaning brethren.