That
"America" is a religious sect that developed from the Christian
tradition is a radical Earthfolk claim.
While scholars discuss an
American
"Civil
Religion"
and find its roots in the writings of Rosseau, Benjamin Franklin
and other American Enlightenment thinkers, as with our claim
about the ritual
that created the Atomic Bomb, this insight about "sect" is
one that has yet to be seriously considered
by academia or the popular
culture.
When we discussed the making of the Atomic Bomb,
we stated that all three Big Stories (Abrahamic,
Scientism, Secularism) could
not on their own terms have imagined and created
the apocalyptic bomb. Likewise, these same three Big Stories could
not—and did
not—on their own terms imagine and create "America." In both instances,
the three Big Stories were melded, pruned, thinned and "something
new" created, here, "America."
The formation of "America" is a bit like that
of the Atomic Bomb. At one very peculiar period, people from
diverse Big Stories and
non-religious belief systems, gathered together and produced something
that even at the time they self-consciously realized could only
be
described
by imagery such as "the whole is greater than
the sum of its parts."
In Revolutionary Era America, diverse
strands of Christianity
(Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Quakerism, Deism, Unitarianism, Puritanism,
Presbyterianism, Arminian
Calvinists, among others) collaborated,
not in church services or theological forums but, as members of
voluntary societies. It is the voluntary
society that created the
social space where "sacred and profane" met and "America" was birthed.
- It is our Earthfolk
claim that it was inside these voluntary societies
that the "Civil Religion" was imagined and "America" as
a sect formed.
Later, on this website, we discuss how, as with
the formation of the Manhattan Project, so was this "America"
formed by a project,
namely, the penitentiary project of the multi-denominational
membered
"Pennsylvania Prison Society."
The singular act that clarifies how this
sect was formed is the belief put into action that the new government's
institutions could
and inevitably would act and operate in ways that
followed and produced in its recipients Christian virtues.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the actions
of members of the Pennsylvania Prison
Society as they—led by Episcopal Bishop William White
for 45 years—transferred their traditional
ministerial concerns and rights about criminal justice over
to the newly
formed democratic State.
While this historical analysis and interpretation
remains unknown to being highly controversial,
nevertheless, it is a bedrock insight that enabled Earthfolk
to grasp why "America" came to manifest
the Warrior's Quest vision and imagination and, on America soil,
through the Manhattan Project, realize the ultimate Warrior's
Quest dream—to create the first truly "weapon
of mass destruction."
