Terms And Names In Christianity

Shades of liberalism

There have been a variety of responses to your remarks on the division of opinion within the Nationalist Party and its sources of inspiration from both the religious and liberal traditions. Why have you not replied to at least those bloggers whose contributions I know you have read attentively?

I have become allergic to express disagreement with critics rather than just mull over their positive ideas. However, I am happy to report to you a comment made by a friend with whom I have just completed a book on clowning.

He referred to my telling you about the occasion when I realised I was not made by Providence to become a professional clown. He reminded me of another occasion when he became convinced that I was by nature a real clown. It was when I had cooked a meal for him and other friends. “The food tasted really funny” was his comment.

Another friend of yours, who also enjoyed telling jokes, was George Borg Olivier. This is the week when he is commemorated. What do you think would have been his position in relation to the current debate about the orientation which the party should take in relation to the religious and the liberal fountainheads of PN ideology?

The former Prime Minister, who had become Leader of the Opposition, only a short while before, at the time when the PN was discussing affiliation to the Christian Democratic Movement, used to have frequent and lengthy conversations with me. He would have found it to be a big joke to counterpoise liberalism with Christianity.

He would have preferred the name of his party to be Liberal rather than Christian Democrat, but not at all because he saw any intrinsic opposition between the two names.

Borg Olivier used to stress that John Locke, generally deemed the founder of Liberalism as a political ideology, claimed that he derived his inspiration from the Epistles of St Paul, on which the English philosopher spent the last years of his life writing a commentary.

Borg Olivier also pointed out that William Gladstone, the icon of the British Liberal Party, devoted as much time and energy to Christian Apologetics as he did to anti conservative politics.

Many even who remember Borg Olivier’s jokes refuse to believe me when I recall his references to the philosophic sources of the Liberalism that he espoused.

He was definitely against Theocracy and for freedom of conscience. But he recognised that the term ‘religio’ in the slogan ‘Religio et Patria’ serve primarily to qualify the nationalism implied in the word patria, so that it was clear that the nationalism in question was not the sort asserted by Nazi or other extreme Right partisans, but was subordinate to the universal human values that were for him as for St Paul the core of Christian revelation.

Perry names Barbara Cargill to chair State Board of Education ...

On Friday, Gov. Rick Perry appointed Republican State Board of Education member Barbara Cargill to lead the tumultuous 15-member body.

Former SBOE Chair Gail Lowe (R-Lampasas) had been forced to step aside earlier this year, with her confirmation blocked by a group of Senate Democrats dissatisfied with board leadership. Lowe’s predecessor Don McLeroy (R-Bryan) met a similar fate, as the Texas Independent previously reported .

Though Perry’s last two initial SBOE board choices were nixed by lawmakers, Cargill won’t need Senate confirmation until 2013.

The watchdog group Texas Freedom Network said the appointment amounted to “strike three for Gov. Perry,” in a statement from communications director Dan Quinn. “Once again, he is putting politics ahead of the education of Texas students by installing an ideologue in the chairman’s seat. Just like the governor’s two previous appointees as chair, Ms. Cargill has worked since her election to the board to promote her own personal beliefs rather than facts and sound scholarship in our kids’ classrooms.”

Cargill’s promotion over Lowe may not make much of a difference for the board’s direction, as both members vote in line with the social conservative bloc, advocate for diluting the teaching of evolution and pushed for a version of the social studies curriculum critics viewed as unrepresentative of minorities and tilted toward a conservative view.

Cargill herself has sought to vet her own curriculum review committee appointees through a conservative lens. Highlighting the findings of email correspondence obtained under the Texas Public Information Act by TFN, The San Antonio Express-News reported an exchange between Cargill and an education coordinator at Stephen F. Austin State University that showed a line of politicized inquiry while determining the merits of panelists:

“Would you consider yourself a conservative when it comes to patriotism, the constitution, the heritage of our forefathers, etc?” Cargill said. “The majority of the constituents in my 24 counties tend to have conservative views, especially about how history is taught to our students.”

Cargill is also noted for appointing the late Christian minister Rev. Peter Marshall to the social studies review panel. In a series of commentaries, Marshall wrote about the dangers of Islam calling it “a demonic and perverse caricature of Judaism and Christianity.

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