Voegelin
23rd December 2007, 06:40 AM
The American Thinker
http://www.americanthinker.com/
By James Lewis
Dec 23, 2007
Fundamentalist Christians have become the new target for the Old Media. One big reason is that media scribblers are simply ignorant of Western and world civilization. That thought comes to mind on listening to Verdi's Requiem, one of the most gorgeous and moving works ever composed. It is simply filled with "Christian fundamentalism" --- including the fear of punishment before God. At a guess, half of the greatest works in Western civilization are directly inspired by religious fundamentalism of one kind or another.
Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Mendelsohn, Faure, Britten, Handel, and all the rest are just incomprehensible without understanding that. Everything else --- Michelangelo's Pieta, Rembrandt's Jewish Bride, all the great devotional monuments and buildings from the Parthenon to the sacred buildings in Jerusalem --- point to the same powerful nexus of the human imagination. Our media trivializers are just showing their endless ignorance when they attack fundamentalism as if it were some alien implant in our world . . .
American history is incomprehensible without the religious strands that wove this country into a unity . . .Most people will listen to Handel's glorious Messiah during the holidays. The Messiah is nothing but "fundamentalism." . . .
I'm not a believer myself, but all of us are inheritors of this extraordinary civilization --- unless, of course, we choose to be ignorant . . .
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/the_fundamental_truth_about_fu.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/
By James Lewis
Dec 23, 2007
Fundamentalist Christians have become the new target for the Old Media. One big reason is that media scribblers are simply ignorant of Western and world civilization. That thought comes to mind on listening to Verdi's Requiem, one of the most gorgeous and moving works ever composed. It is simply filled with "Christian fundamentalism" --- including the fear of punishment before God. At a guess, half of the greatest works in Western civilization are directly inspired by religious fundamentalism of one kind or another.
Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Mendelsohn, Faure, Britten, Handel, and all the rest are just incomprehensible without understanding that. Everything else --- Michelangelo's Pieta, Rembrandt's Jewish Bride, all the great devotional monuments and buildings from the Parthenon to the sacred buildings in Jerusalem --- point to the same powerful nexus of the human imagination. Our media trivializers are just showing their endless ignorance when they attack fundamentalism as if it were some alien implant in our world . . .
American history is incomprehensible without the religious strands that wove this country into a unity . . .Most people will listen to Handel's glorious Messiah during the holidays. The Messiah is nothing but "fundamentalism." . . .
I'm not a believer myself, but all of us are inheritors of this extraordinary civilization --- unless, of course, we choose to be ignorant . . .
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/12/the_fundamental_truth_about_fu.html