HI Mick,
Welcome aboard. I'm sure with your background, you can bring some insight we laymen would never have thought of. By my not knowing how familiar you were with the former Spong forum, I'll say you would of been very highly appreciated there.
One of the topics I had introduced and couldn't get a lot of input about was, the Origns of the Mindset of many Fundamentalist Protestants, back during the healthcare debates, was the idea that the working classes, being mostly the descendants of Slaves, did not deserve healthcare, but that God should provide whatever they needed. This was voiced during a Washinton Journal broadcast on CSPAN,9/16/09.
Considering the resistence experienced by the Dems. in trying to get the healthcare bill passed, the above mindset was manefested in the hard fought battle against it and the pubic option by the Repubs.
My ears pricked up when I heard the above statement, due to some history I'd ran across written by Michael Hoffman; "They Were White and Enslaved", giving some of the history of the white middle passage from England to the American British Colonies. As I delved deeper into the subject of White Slavery and to what extent it was practised by the British Empire, I came across the works of Peter Wilson Coldham's geneological study of how laws were created for the purpose of enslaving Whites, placing them under contracts of Indenture and working them to death literally, by the Elites of British society, who relegated them as a Chattel Class, a result of the industrialization of the Empire and the fall of Serfdom. This dispossed agrarian mass of British subjects, to survive, in many cases, resorted to crime. The history of the "Diggers" will give a sampling of what life was like for these former Serfs. Added to this group were those religious and political dissidents, resulting from the expansionism of the British Empire, such as the creation of the Plantations of Ulster. This was the motivating factor for the British Empire to enact the Transpotation Act as a method to rid it's self of the dregs of it's society and use them as Free Labor in the Colonies.
This is the suppressed history of The United States in America I discovered that isn't very widely known.
I said all of this to provide a context for this question; What is your opinion of the Papal Bull of Nicolas the 5th and the Doctrine of Discovery which morphed from it?
This is just the tip of the iceberg of fun we can have discussing this topic, but it is direly needed to fill in the gaps of what is not being taught about who we really are, in this Government's scheme of things. The irony of this is that it has been staring the citizens of this Nation, in the face for the past 400 years and was actually further revealed in the Preamble to the American Constitution. (This I can show you later, if interested)
Oh,btw, this is the topic and history deleted by the old forum that I'd arcived and no longer have access to. From the questions I asked, it highlights the part Religion has/is playing in the development of Mindsets of the future.
Be Well my Friend,
The Juanster