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d*8Tipline betrays me. And besides, it isn’t suppertime yet. The recent dustup on the pages of the Rappahannock News has stirred my grey matter into a state of obsessive opinionation. Anyway, I never could keep my mouth shut.
And the separation of church and state, the role of religion in public life, and whether or not the United States is a “Christian Nation” are subjects that I have long contemplated and in fact confronted in my own public life. So, like everyone else, I qualify to testify on the subject.
As I have followed this most recent flare up, the disagreement started when the News ran a story about a new Unitarian/Universalist group being founded in the county. A letter from a “stunned” gentleman in Amissville, L. Torrance, laid out his complaint that the newspaper appeared to be “endorsing this pagan religion” and that he didn’t appreciate it. One bit.
He said that we should check out the Web site listed in the article and we “will find out the hidden truth about this so-called religion.”
He said if “you want to know the truth” you should go to his church or one like it.
Then Tim Pagano from Huntly „ wrote a slightly heated response to the Amissville letter, saying (among many other things >, that “it is a tragic and unfortunate occasion...when what is ‘right’ for one’s self can only be right when that ‘rightness’ is imposed on everyone else at the pain of who knows what per the tone of L. Torrance’s communication.” Mr. Pagano also felt that the use of “pagan” was an epithet and said that Torrance’s letter offered notes of “bigotry, discord, and intolerance...”
So that’s where it stood until Mr. Carl Ebom of Scrabble topped it off with a long and interesting letter which basically called Mr. Pagano’s letter bigoted and intolerant.
Ah, the beloved community.
Mr. Ebom also posited that “truth, by definition, is exclusionary. There is only one truth; or there is no truth.” And after saying unequivocally that the United States is a “Christian nation,” he says this: “What is sad is that the American people have bought
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