THE NEW YORK TIMES had a recent article about Joe Biden bringing a liberal Catholic destiny with him to the White House.
Seemingly Joe Biden intends to get America back into a favorable standing with God and Jesus, and get the Republic on the right side of History by amassing a plethora of good deeds: succoring the refugee, the asylum seeker, the illegal alien, the migrant, the transgender, women of color, women of no color, Gays, Blacks, Muslims, Hispanics, Latinx, Asians, and Etruscans.
He will shower them with good deeds, and the Republic will be saved; he hopes.
Mr. Biden’s Liberal, Pope Francis’ approach to America puts America right back into the Reformation.
This is ample evidence, in this Blogger’s opinion, in fact, there is enough empirical evidence in America’s History, to suggest that America is Protestant in more ways than have ever been dreamt of in Mr. Biden’s philosophy.
America has dispensed more bad deeds than good deeds in its History: slavery, genocide, lynching, Jackson’s betrayal of the Cherokee, the Washita, and internment of Japanese-Americans, to name a few. Yet, in spite, of all that blood, greed, hypocrisy and treachery, in 1992, America stood at the top of the greasy pole of History; the most powerful and prosperous nation in recorded History, in the History of the planet.
So how did America do that? With all those sins piled up, how did America wind up the crème de la crème of History?
The only answer, is the Protestant answer- GRACE.
It was GRACE that saved a wretch like America, not good deeds; and going forward, perhaps it will be Grace rather than good deeds which will insure America’s survival.
America is the Biblical David: rock star, adulterer, murderer, yet anointed by God. Joe Biden wants to turn America into Jonathan, the sweetest man in the Bible after Jesus. His fate was summed up, in one phrase “slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty fallen!"
When King George III heard that George Washington was giving up command of the army which had driven the British Empire out of America, to retire to his plantation, to spend his days ordering slaves around, he said” If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world."
However, Washington giving up power is not the manifestation of Grace. That manifestation happened in the Battle of Monongahela in 1755, during the French and Indian War. Washington was 23.
Washington himself wrote about the Grace, in a Letter to his younger brother, dated July 18, 1755.
"As I have heard since my arriv'l at this place [Fort Cumberland], a circumstantial acct. of my death and dying speech, I take this early oppertunity [sic] of contradicting both, and of assuring you that I now exist and appear in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectation; I had 4 Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me, and yet escaped unhurt."
This incident rapidly became known throughout the colonies and in England. On August 17th of the same year, the Reverend Samuel Davies of Hanover County, Virginia, preached a sermon in which he mentioned, "that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country." Davies' sermon, entitled "Religion and Patriotism the Constituents of a Good Soldier," was published in Philadelphia and in London…..MT. VERNON HISTORICAL SOCIETY.”
Washington was not the greatest general in History; he was no Caesar or Cromwell. Yet, time and time again, he prevailed…….his contemporaries thought it was because of Providence.
Take the case of the Divine Fog which allowed Washington’s defeated Army to escape the oncoming British by crossing the East River; their retreat was masked by a sudden fog, which instantly dissipated once the Americans landed safely on the far shore, not an American was lost.
" American soldiers involved in this incident viewed these most unlikely of events as providential. Indeed, so did the British, some of whom even wrote in their diaries, "The hand of God is against us."
Interview with Historian David McCullough
"WALLACE: There's a fog bank that covers him during his retreat.
As you look back over the sweep of history -- I guess this is a personal question -- do you feel divine intervention was on the side of the revolution?
MCCULLOUGH: Well, you can call it divine intervention, you can call it Providence, you can call it chance, you can call it circumstance. You call it the roll of the dice? In any event, whatever it's called,it was out of anyone's control, and absolutely it was the decisive element again and again. Now, it wasn't always the decisive element all alone. They couldn't have made that escape across the East River, when a providential fog bank came in, or the river suddenly got calm -- the wind dropped, it was like the, you know, parting of the waters of the Red Sea. They got calm, and that enabled them to escape.”
The following is excerpted from the NEW YORK TIMES.
“Hours before President Biden took the oath of office, he entered the front pew of the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, the seat of Catholic Washington, and beheld the mosaics behind the altar.
An intimate group of family, friends and congressional leaders had gathered for Mass, in the place where Pope Francis spoke in 2015 and where the funeral for John F. Kennedy, the nation’s first Roman Catholic president, was held.
When it was time for the homily, the Rev. Kevin F. O’Brien, the president of Santa Clara University and friend of the Biden family, compared Mr. Biden’s upcoming inaugural message to the words of Jesus.
“Your public service is animated by the same conviction,” he said, “to help and protect people and to advance justice and reconciliation, especially for those who are too often looked over and left behind.”
“This is your noble commission,” he said. “This is the divine summons for all of us.”
There are myriad changes with the incoming Biden administration. One of the most significant: a president who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.
Mr. Biden, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in half a century, regularly attends Mass and speaks of how his Catholic faith grounds his life and his policies.
And with Mr. Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant: less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality.
……in his inaugural address, Mr. Biden rooted himself and the country in a Christian moral vision that makes room for a pluralistic society, unlike his predecessor who promised to make America a certain kind of Christian nation. Mr. Biden quoted Augustine, “a saint in my church,” he said, who wrote that “a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.”
Augustine, the fourth-century North African bishop, recognized that no political community was going to be the city of God on earth, explained Eric Gregory, professor of religion at Princeton University. This passage, from the saint’s “City of God,” has been used in the 20th century “to open up the space for a nontheocratic way for Christians to understand what it means to be citizens in a plural society,” he said.
For Mr. Biden, “it was a subtle and explicit effort to show a different vision of a way in which a Christian could imagine themselves as part of a diverse America, one that is defined by these common objects of love, rather than by hate and fear or exclusion,” he said…., Mr. Biden’s policy priorities reflect those of Pope Francis, who has sought to turn the church’s attention from sexual politics to issues like environmental protection, poverty and migration.
On his first day in office, Mr. Biden recommitted the United States to the Paris climate agreement, the international accord designed to avert global warming; ended the ban on travel from predominantly Muslim and African countries; and stopped construction on the border wall.
Mr. Biden’s priorities reflect values that progressive faith leaders have pushed for, and that motivated many to speak out for him during the campaign, said Derrick Harkins, who led interfaith outreach for the Democratic National Committee this past cycle. There is a sense of moral synergy on the left, among not only progressive Christians but also humanists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and the spectrum of faith traditions, he said.
….Unlike four years ago, when many of the participants in the post-inaugural prayer service were conservative evangelicals or prosperity gospel preachers, this year’s Thursday service included a broad array of religious progressives, including two transgender faith leaders. Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, a Jewish community in Los Angeles, prayed for the coming of a new America, one “built on love, rooted in justice and propelled by our moral imagination.”…..NEW YORK TIMES."
Joe Biden relishes, nay wallows in his Irish Catholic background; the Irish, in the 6th Century, did Western Civilization a great good deed, by saving Western Civilization. Yet that good deed did not save them from Vikings, Plantagenets, Cromwell, Scottish Presbyterians, famine and DeValera. In fact, the greatest Irishman of them all, Michael Collins, who did so many good deeds, was not saved from death by his own people. Good deeds have not protected the Irish at all.
Well here we are Readers, in 2021; and the election of Joe Biden means that America is tumbling toward a denouement of Luther’s Reformation; Americans should soon know: how does one keep the Mandate from Heaven? By exercising a noble mission or by acknowledging the Grace dispensed to imperfect beings.
On a personal note, this Blogger finds it perversely hilarious that this American Generation, the most secular and syncretic in American History, has been chosen to have a rendezvous with Denouement.
“DENOUEMENT-The final part of a narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved”.
Joe Biden, full of good deeds.
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