[Mb-civic] Bill Moyers: 9/11 & the Sport of God

[Linda Hassler]

This article is adapted from Bill Moyer's address this week at Union 
Theological Seminary in New York, where Judith and Bill Moyers received 
the seminary's highest award, the Union Medal, for their contributions 
to faith and reason in America. I'm sending just the first two 
paragraphs. Read the whole by clicking the truthout.org link given. He 
concludes the speech (article) with something very important to us at 
this time.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/091105X.shtml

9/11 and the Sport of God
     By Bill Moyers
      Commondreams.org

      Friday 09 September 2005

      At the Central Baptist Church in Marshall, Texas, where I was 
baptized in the faith, we believed in a free church in a free state. I 
still do.

      My spiritual forbears did not take kindly to living under 
theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves but denied it 
to others. "Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils," thundered the 
dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished from Massachusetts for 
denying Puritan authority over his conscience. Baptists there were a 
"pitiful negligible minority" but they were agitators for freedom and 
therefore denounced as "incendiaries of the commonwealth" for holding 
to their belief in that great democracy of faith - the priesthood of 
all believers. For refusing to pay tribute to the state religion they 
were fined, flogged, and exiled. In 1651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was 
given 30 stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the law and 
took forbidden communion with another Baptist in Lynn, Massachusetts. 
His friends offered to pay his fine for his release but he refused. 
They offered him strong drink to anesthetize the pain of the flogging. 
Again he refused. It is the love of liberty, he said, "that must free 
the soul."
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 2386 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050912/4e8d2d06/attachment.bin