A friend of mine likes to explain his religious background this way:
I have powerful conservative roots. I was raised in a very strong conservative, Roman Catholic, immigrant, German, farming family, with all the inhibitions, protectiveness, exclusivity, and reticence that this entailed. It would be hard to find a more strongly conservative religious background than mine. And I’m grateful for that. It’s one of the greatest gift you can be given. Now I’m free for the rest of my life!
There is something both healthily conservative and healthily liberal in that assessment. The instinct within the liberal wants to push edges, to widen the circle, to move away from narrowness, to be more inclusive, to not always see the other as threat, and to protect the ineffability of God and God’s universal salvific will. Whereas the conservative intuits the necessity of being rooted in truth, in grounding yourself in the essentials, in having proper boundaries, and in not being naive to the fact that everything that’s precious and true will invariably be under attack.
Both protect the soul...
(Resources listed here reference more than one reading and are normally shorter than the resources listed under the individual texts above. If you are looking to link the readings, check these resources.)
(Resources listed here reference more than one reading and are normally shorter than the resources listed under the individual texts above. If you are looking to link the readings, check these resources.)
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finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to
where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a
different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link
with your mouse and select “open in a new tab”. Then, when you have
finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to
where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
(In order to avoid losing your place on this page when viewing a
different link, I would suggest that you right click on that link
with your mouse and select “open in a new tab”. Then, when you have
finished reading that link, close the tab and you will return to
where you left off on this page. FWIW!)
