I usually try to avoid entering these kinds of discussions because I fear the title of Moderator will make my opinions seem to carry excess weight. I'm putting down my Moderator title for the moment. Take this as the opinion of a fellow poster.
I agree that I see all around us a lack of realizing what would seem to be spiritual principles to me. However, in our American society, I don't think it's right or fair to say that the TRUE or REAL principles are to be found in a single particular religion, like, say, Christianity. In my opinion, it would be very useful to cut all the "stuff" down and start off with a couple basic principles that many religions have in common. 1. Love your neighbor as yourself (and that implies loving YOURSELF, something sorely lacking in many instances--someone who loves themself wouldn't lie, for example) 2. Don't do things to other people that you wouldn't like them to do to you. Really. No cheating.
In my opinion, to really, honestly apply these principles would solve many, many problems, and it has little to do with Christianity as a sole source of spiritual authority, since these principles are common to many religions. If we could only start there, just really do these TWO things, then many of the other questions would resolve themselves easily. Certainly slavery breaks both of these spiritual principles, and yet it was vehemently supported by religious people years ago, creating very difficult soul searching decisions.
Certainly there are issues that are difficult to sort out. Gay marriage is one of them these days, and yet, based on these two principles, I have a hard time seeing how two people of the same gender being married would be offensive, except that it brings to the fore people's fear of those who are different. And in my reading about American slavery, I have found no justification for enslaving a particular group of people other than that their skin was a different color. Enslaving white people was certainly not acceptable. So it would seem that this fear of what is different can sometimes become dangerously encoded into a particular religion's dogma, at the expense of the basic spiritual principles I mentioned. To me, this is what American democracy and the separation of church and state is all about--to avoid these things as much as possible. Intellectual discussion, as envisioned by our founders who lived during the Age of Enlightenment, would, theoretically, cut through what is less important in any religion and create laws based on more universally fundamental spiritual truths. (Remember that Thomas Jefferson had his own version of the Bible where he omitted all the things he thought were false.) This, of course, requires true intellectual debate, another thing which is sorely lacking in our modern American culture.
I have to say that if I were God, I'd be a lot more concerned about the pain and horrors human beings are causing one another these days than about two people LOVING one another. And even if we choose to keep the awful horrors of Iraq out of this, look at our own society. Poor people cannot get healthcare, for instance. Is this truly loving our neighbor as ourself? Is ignoring the problem as long as it doesn't affect one personally really doing to others what we would want done to us? Compared to the health care problems, the constant lying by our leaders (and I'm not saying one party or the other--BOTH), people suing one another, drugs, the terrible state of our prisons, and on and on. . .AND Iraq, and Afghanistan (I'm not taking sides--it's just horrible no matter who you lay the fault with) is it really so important who one loves? Let's use these two spiritual principles and tackle all the really awful things first and then see how we feel about gay marriage.
