Follow http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?scp=1&sq=Russell%20Shorto&st=cse
This is a link to a New York Times Magazine article by Russell Shorto. If this link doesn't work for you go to your local public library and find the New York Times Magazine for February 14, 2010.
For Lutherans the idea is that there are two kingdoms. Jesus said to render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to render to God what is God's. At this time, the relationship between the state and religion is very much in play. The confusion on this issue includes some pious and well-intentioned Lutherans.
Of course, people can believe anything they want to believe. The trouble comes when people want to wrap their ideas of what is right and proper in the civil arena with what they think God has ordained. They confuse in their own minds what they think and what God has said. I have known such persons who want the church to inform the membership of what is right in certain areas of social consideration. The stated intention is to inform but the actual agenda is to direct. Behind it all is the binding of consciences.
My link this morning is to a very well-written article on the subject. The ideas in play involve how far ideas of a certain religious expression can and should go in the preparation of school textbooks. It is the ideas and not the locale that has interest, I think, to the readers of this blog.
This could be grist for my blogging mill. I think that most Lutherans have the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms pretty well in hand but there is expression in certain blogs which raise the question as to whether that is so or not.
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