Showing posts with label Catholic communitarianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Catholic communitarianism. Show all posts

Friday, March 29, 2013

Update on the Communitarian's Progress in the USA

How Far We've Come!

The communitarian ideolgy has penetrated deep into the American heartland. From the colleges to the K-12 programs, it is 100% Communitarianism being taught to the future leaders of the USA. The Communitarian Residence Life Movement in Delaware is just the tip of the iceberg. Our people are jumping on the Communitarian "feel good" bandwagon like there's no tomorrow. In Madison, Wisconsin, The Hamilton Middle School Handbook open with:
"WELCOME!
“With education comes understanding, and with understanding comes a better sense of ourselves. I am a communitarian. I believe in giving back to thecommunity. A community is not a place- it is a system of values. A strong system of values prepares our young people to live and think clearly in the world.”  - Velma Bell Hamilton"

Barb Drews and Phil Lyons were named the 2009 recipients of the 
Don Hunt Communitarian Award for all their volunteer efforts for the Souper Bowl. 

The communitarians have been run out of places all over the world, but their power in the USA grows stronger every day. All our businesses and our schools promote communitarian ideology like volunteerism, sacrifice, social equity, responsibility, service, Quality of Life, Sustainable Development, Livability, Stewardship, Environmental Ethics and Cultural Diversity. The hottest new field, where all the big grant money flows, is climate change "research: and Sustainable Development. If you're not studying how to micro-manage people and willing to sell out their freedom to secure your own financial sucess, you're just not a very nice person.

 2012 Communitarian of the Year - Rex Maynard

Communitarian Awards sound goods to Americans, who apparently cannot grasp that all those empty, meaningless communitarian phrases were created to achieve a level of control over people never before thought possible. The war against our national system is advancing to the stage where the facades can easily be dropped anytime, and we will accept whatever they ask us to do next. 
"Government subsidies of gasoline, electricity and other energy sources amount to about $1.9 trillion a year and should be ended or offset with taxes used to battle climate change and pay for social programs, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday in a major foray into the global warming debate."  By Howard SchneiderMarch 2
Unlike the people of Colon, who rose up in their streets, beat the comunitarians and took back control of their local economy, the Americans are still being "educated" to think and act like good little communitarian slaves. We can't even tell the difference anymore between an intentional communitarian fellowship and a government run communitarian program. Is there any?

Intentional Communities Newsletter: February 20, 2012

Kozeny Communitarian Award — Your Nominations



We can't tell the difference between an authentic local effort to be a good neighbor, and an international effort to control the way we volunteer. Canada has not escaped the plan either.


Patrice Bernier named 2012 Communitarian Award winner


The Communitarians are hearing from their victims across the EU, but in North America, our people are completely duped into thinking slavery is freedom, and our protests are still of the most civilized sort. We vote, write letters, and give public testimony at meetings. When the Communitarians show up to steal our land and homes, we form a kindergarten committee.
"Last October, there were protests when President Ricardo Martinelli, a supermarket tycoon who has made business development a centerpiece of his term, pushed through a law allowing the sale of state land next to the free zone. Residents interpreted the move as a prelude to expanding the zone and displacing them, and several people died in the unrest." New Your Times, March 24, 2013
Global Warming environmental policy and law is openly defined as communitarian. This is but one of the many ways Communitarian governance is introduced into formerly sovereign nations.
  "The issues of environmental protection, rational nature usage and conduction of communitarian policy in the ecological field are among the most substantial elements of the expanded European Union activity." Sakartvelos Ekonomika, Scientific-Analytic Magazine, September 2011

A global government requires a global tax. When the IMF and the World Bank announced last week that we should either divert funds used to fuel our economy into fighting Climate Change or else collect a $1.40 gallon tax on our oil for them, you would think the public outcry would be so loud and so furious they could hear us all the way to Colon. Instead there was barely a whimper. No big surpise really, considering how many churches have converted to Communitarianism over the past decade. Even Wikipedia added a "List of New Religious Movements" page:
"An NRM may be one of a wide range of movements ranging from those with loose affiliations based on novel approaches to spirituality or religion to communitarian enterprises that demand a considerable amount of group conformity and a social identity that separates their adherents from mainstream society."
Communitarians openly state we have to meet their demands that we conform to the group mentality. We must all become "better" global citizens and give up our freedom to live an a Safe and Healthy community.  So a few million people may have to die before we're safe, but as Veronica Jackson, Director of the Department of Neighborhoods in Seattle told us in 1999, "Sometimes sacrifices have to be made for the common good." What kind of sacrifices have been made in other places forced to adopt Communitarian values and ethics?



Added March 30:

I forgot to add another piece of this that has come into the public arena lately. It's called Common Core, and some people have recognised it as a communitarian program. (Of course the Right always calls it communism!)

"Two Moms Against Common Core. March 2, 2013Agenda 21, Education. Great video about Common Core and how the states are being forced to change their curriculum, state laws, and have to agree to loss of privacy for their students. Parents must understand what Common Core is all about, and fight to keep it out of their public schools or take their children out of the public schools. Common Core teaches the ideology of communitarianism.  This is communism with a new name." http://right-reason.com/2013/03/02/two-moms-against-common-core/

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/More-from-Mary-Grabar-on-4400754.S.214803595

There were people noticing the communitarian influencc on education back in 2001:


communitarianism and education Communitarianism has become the focus of some debate and interest - but what is it, and what implications does the communitarian agenda have for education? by Mark Smith 2001

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Obama's former "Green Czar" calls him a Communitarian

This article has been re-posted all over the internet in the past 2 days. I've looked at about 10 pages of search returns, and only one I opened so far added anything original to the Rebel Pundit's story.

Reading the comments from various sites shows how many people think Van Jones made the term up, and how most say it's just another word for communism. (Exactly what happened when Bill Clinton used the word in Montreal. Nobody there knew what it is either and the reporter said Clinton "coined the phrase"). Only one website that reposted Pundit's article had a link to the ACL, and that was onlysecond hand via democratsagainstunagenda21. 

Really interesting is Van Jones' description of it..... and his telling Breibart there's really no way to look it up. Our anti communitarian research has been on the internet for ten years, we're on the wiki "communitarian" page, but for some reason readers never did a keyword search that would lead to us, or to Etzioni, nor did Jones obviously.

Is this a great way to further confuse the American people, or what?
"Jones compared the president’s address to that of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and recommended that the theater full of college students read Reagan’s “powerful” and “strong,” inaugurals, which he said were “rooted in American tradition and values,” but “unabashedly” and “unapologetically conservative.”'
Following Jones's comparison of President Obama to Ronald Reagan, the “unabashedly conservative” president, I pressed Jones further for some insight into what and who President Obama really is.
Jones replied: “He is a communitarian.” He then elaborated briefly: “I mean you always have individualism, communitarianism, as a part of the, American story, and I think we’ve overbalanced the individualistic direction and I think he’s trying to rebalance toward communitarianism.”
Later, when asked (off tape) to define "communitarian," Jones was unable to answer or to point toward any source for a definition. He said there wasn’t really a way to look up “communitarianism.”
He did reiterate, however, that he saw communitarianism as a counterbalance to libertarianism, which he equated to “individualism.”
Jones declined an interview with Breitbart News following the lecture.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/24/Van-Jones-Obama-is-an-unabashed-Communitarian

Saturday, March 24, 2012

Religion and Politics; a response to Reverend Howard Bess


Religion and Politics; a response to Reverend Howard Bess
By Niki Raapana and Nordica Friedrich
March 13, 2012

Retired Baptist minister Howard Bess wrote a column for the Faith page at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman on March 7, 2012, saying it’s “open season to write about church and state.”  We would like to respond to Religion and politics do go together, because we agree, they absolutely do.
Senator Rick Santorum is a Catholic, but to us that’s not the issue.  The fact that Santorum is a Conservative Communitarian practicing a brand of Catholicism described as “Communitarian” is much more important.  He’s not the only politician in the United States with political beliefs based in religion. Mitt Romney isn’t simply a Mormon; he’s a Mormon Communitarian.  Newt Gingrich also believes in the Third Way Communitarian Platform.  President Barack Obama was described as a “black communitarian voice” coming out of Chicago by the Village Voice in 1996.  He was later called “The Third Way Wonder Boy” by the Democratic Leadership Council in 2004. Bill Clinton says, “We’re more communitarian now.”
Communitarianism is a 1980s ideology quietly shared by Left and Right politicians. Modified regularly, this continually changing social theory borrows from many ancient sources including the Bible, Koran, Talmud, Cabala, Plato, and Merlin.  It was the legal foundation for UN Local Agenda 21. Now it’s global Communitarian Law—the Supreme Law in the court systems of the European Union and the UN.
A revised set of Sustainable Development mandates will be handed out at the upcoming 20th Anniversary Rio Earth Summit in Brazil this June. Communitarianism expanded into The Rights of Mother Earth and The Eleven Laws of Nature.  The new Saudi financed court in Vienna will balance Christianity, Judaism, and Islam with countless religions and cults. Only ancient “wisdom” can help us all evolve into One or save the Earth from over-consumptive humans.  People (not corporations) have been classified in the religious legal framework as an evil species that must be purged before the Earth can heal.  Like all ancient religions surviving on blood, sweat and tears, our advanced scientific religion will require much human sacrifice. Sanctioned genocide of entire nations of people and excessive taxation/fines on the survivors is the Communitarian sustainable solution to Monsanto’s poisoning every field on Earth.
“There is general agreement that the world’s environment is under attack by the lifestyles of human beings. Collectively, we are polluting the world’s atmosphere by burning fossil fuels; we are polluting our farmlands and rivers with chemicals; we are using the oceans as a big dumping ground for the waste produced by our consumptive society. We are aware of these attacks on the environment, but the most dangerous pollutant is barely mentioned. The greatest attack on the world’s environment is being made by population explosion. We are racing to a world’s population that cannot be sustained.” Baptist Rev. Howard Bess, Retired
Rev. Bess is advancing Communitarian theory that says people are a “dangerous pollutant.” Eugenics, racism, nihilism and magic are at the root of the Big Idea to sacrifice millions of innocent people to the angry goddess; the evidence shows Communitarian genocide is a theory that cannot be sustained.

Niki Raapana and Nordica Friedrich are the internationally acclaimed authors of “2020: Our Common Destiny” and “The Anti Communitarian Manifesto.”  They live in Wasilla, Alaska.




Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Contemporary Communitarianism - Yale University Lectures

Part I


Part II



Alasdair MacIntyre: On Having Survived Academic Moral Philosophy (1 of 4)



Bernard Williams on the Spell of Linguistic Philosophy: Section 3

Sunday, May 2, 2010

How many ways can you promote communitarianism?

Busy weekend here. Finalized the deal on the Wayside and we will be open before Memorial Day.

Got my laptop back, all cleaned up... empty now, but the data was all recovered! It will take a while to reinstall programs and find the gertee book and dvd files, but they're all there somewhere. The book and DVD package should move a lot faster now. Thanks to Judy and Jason!!!!!!

Is England becoming more communitarian?

So where does that leave me, and the millions of other voters who are being led somewhere they do not wish to be led, are not asked or consulted about this monumental shift towards a communitarian society. http://pjcjournal.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/the-political-map-a-voter-nightmare/

Does the US Congress work for communitarianism?
Are the homeless a hybrid mix of libertarianism and communitarianism?
Is the new Catholic Church Communitarian?
Is Hindu communitarian?
Is Sufism communitarian?
Is Christianity communitarian? (One of my Jewish high school friends I reconnected with on facebook thought that my Hitler quotes about citizen repsonsibilities to the "community" meant I'm a Nazi. She's a very sweet woman, who asked me to please not like Hitler and then said a very strange thing. She told me that what I oppose is not Israeli kibbutz communitarianism but Christian communitarianism like the kind that's practiced by Obama and the NWO. )
Americans must take the time to learn what the Communitarian philosophy is all about in order to understand the agendas in modern politics and religion. Communitarian principles (which are really just a “softer” version of communism) are being taught in a number of universities in this
country, both secular and Christian. A Communitarian adopts and advocates concepts such as a cooperative spirit of community, selfless commitment to community service, and the duty to work for “the common good.” The ideals of this philosophy are coming in today as a new sort-of “salvation” for the human race, a new way to solve the world’s problems and have peaceful governance on Earth.
http://www.francesandfriends.org/content/communitarianism
Communitarianism is not just a Fabian-United Nations, EU and American ideology:
International solidarity with the AIDESEP struggle will be central to deter the predatory advance of capital and the defense of Amazonia that –as pointed out by the Catholic clergy in Peru– “is not of the exclusive concern of Peruvian citizens but of all humanity.” http://www.russellmeansfreedom.com/index.php?s=communitarian


Communitarian Front in Defense of Life and Sovereignty established by Aidesep together with labor, Andean indigenous, campesino and popular organizations http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1899/68

Is secession communitarian?

Dr. Frank Bryan. Bryan is a veteran secessionist and in the 1970s was even involved with the Decentralist League in Vermont which he founded along with none other than prominent Anarchist theorist and activist Murray Bookchin, also a Vermonter. Bryan pointed out the historical tradition of secession in Vermont. In 1990 he raised the issue of secession into the public lime light and seven Vermont towns voted to secede from the US. He also spoke of his personal feelings on the issue of secession. He had become a Republican in the past because the Democrats "were anti-small town and were proponents of the [much hated] interstate highway system" in Vermont. He was quick to point out that "being a Republican in Vermont is really being a decentralist communitarian."
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/11/327983.shtml


Remember the Communitarian Church of Vermont? :)
http://www.sacreddying.org/who-we-are.htm

Is the Statue of Liberty communitarian?
http://www.newswithviews.com/Cuddy/dennis180.htm

Can't get this last link to load, guess it's time to shut this pc down for the night.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/communitarianism

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Catholic Social Teaching: A communitarian democratic capitalism for the new world order

Still studying the Catholic contributions to communitarian thinking. Martin opened my eyes to the importance of understanding Pope John Paul II and Vatican II. These other writers assure me this is a fairly open and well hashed out topic within the modern Catholic community. Will that make it more difficult for me to discuss political communitarianism with someone who has tied the political to the religious already; will it mean I am challenging their religion if I oppose it?

Catholic Social Teaching: A communitarian democratic capitalism for the new world order, by Oliver F. Williams1
(1) University of Notre Dame, 46556 Notre Dame, Indiana, USA

Abstract Catholic Social Teaching has taken a remarkable turn with the May 1991 document on economic ethics, Centesimus Annus. During their one hundred year history, church documents were notable for their courageous championing of the rights of the least advantaged; they were much less distinguished for their understanding of how markets and incentives function in capitalism. Most business leaders admired church teaching for its compassion but had little respect for its competence. With this most recent document, however, there is a growing conviction that the church may have come of age in economic ethics. Even the Wall Street Journal has celebrated Centesimus Annus. The article outlines the highlights of the document and its points of continuity with the tradition. Responses from business and the academy are also briefly considered.

Oliver F. Williams is a member of the faculty and serves as Associate Provost of the University of Notre Dame. A Catholic priest, Father Williams has a doctorate and other degrees in theology and chemical engineering. He has published and lectured extensively in the field of business ethics.
This article includes an updated version of some material previously published. For more elaboration on the history of Catholic social teaching, see articles by Williams, O. F. in Houck, J. W. and Williams, O. F. (eds.): 1984,Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy: Working Papers for a Bishops'' Pastoral (University Press of America, Washington, DC) and in Williams, O. F. and Houck, J. (eds.): 1982,The Judeo-Christian Vision and the Modern Corporation (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN).
http://www.springerlink.com/content/n89m583132416421/
Other sources that tie the economy to religious communitarianism:

Communitarian Liberalism in Support of an Equitable Global Economy, by John E. Kelly, Ph.D., Philosophy, Canisius College, 2001 Main Street, Buffalo, NY 14208, Sources include "Relevant modern papal social encyclicals beginning with Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum up to Pope John Paul II’s Centesimus Annus (100thRerum Novarum)." http://iaes.confex.com/iaes/Rome_67/techprogram/P2804.HTM

A Communitarian Model of Business: A Natural-Law Perspective
by Surendra Arjoon

This article compares and contrasts a communitarian view of business with business models under the liberalist and socialist doctrines. Specifically, it attempts to define a communitarian view that is based on natural-law principles. The communitarian view represents the proper balance and order between the claims of liberal and socialist views, and provides assistance to private initiative, while at the same time correcting its abuses and respecting its rights. The theoretical framework developed in this article utilizes a metaethical approach in specifying the underlying philosophical assumptions about rationality, primary purpose, basic unit, supreme value, market characteristics, dynamics of market regulatory mechanism, and juridical order. Today, there is need for a new humanism based on an integral view of the human person. Natural-law communitarianism recaptures the metaphysical certitude of the human person and thereby provides a philosophy of authentic human development. By its very nature, it defines the business organization that incorporates its social purposes.
http://www.acton.org/publications/mandm/mandm_article_24.php
The communitarian third way: Alexandre Marc's ordre nouveau, 1930-2000
By John Hellman

Ordre Nouveau's "neither right nor left" movement, based on personalism and revolutionary federalism, helped shape modern Catholic political culture in France, the National Revolution instituted by the Vichy regime, the post-war European movement, and the contemporary European New Right. It influenced European youth exchanges, veterans' organizations, trade unions, religious groups, artists, and architects, even the executive of the French national railway system. In The Communitarian Third Way John Hellman introduces us to the non-conformist Alexandre Marc, a Russian Jew who became a Christian convert and full-time professional revolutionary.Marc helped Le Corbusier launch Plans, imported the existential philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger to France, helped Mounier start Esprit, and was an important force in revitalizing traditional French Catholic political culture. Hellman uses interviews, unpublished correspondence, and diaries to situate Marc and the Ordre Nouveau group in the context of the French, German, and Belgian political culture of that time and explains the degree to which the ON group succeeded in institutionalizing their new order under Pétain. Hellman also examines their post-war legacy, represented by Alain de Benoist and the contemporary European New Right, shedding new light on the linkages between early national socialism and the political culture of Charles de Gaulle, François Mitterrand, and pioneers of the post World War II European movement.
http://books.google.com/books?id=FktLgT8B2yQC&dq=pope+john+paul+communitarian&source=gbs_navlinks_s
On Catholic Communitarianism
by Dominic A. Aquila


Although communitarianism commends itself as a third way between the free market and the welfare state, its relentless attack on the former makes it difficult to dissociate it from welfare state socialism. The Catholic version of it is hardly any different. Father Hollenbach proposes “a communitarian reconstruction” of “the classical liberal understanding of human rights” by refounding it on “the traditional natural-law conviction that the human person is an essentially social being.” His great hope is to transform the prevailing liberal understanding of rights as “fenceposts” that protect one’s “turf” from intruders, into “claims” that “specify the minimum standards for what it means to treat people as members of the community.” Father Hollenbach points to the United States Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on the American economy, Economic Justice for All (1986), as an example of the communitarianism he has in mind.
http://www.acton.org/publications/randl/rl_review_154.php

The rest of these citations are not Catholic


On Confucian communitarianism

Hu Weixi 1 Contact Information
(1) Department of Philosophy, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

Abstract As a social and political thought, communitarian ideas appeared in the Pre-Qin Confucianism. By the Song Dynasty, it had become a systematic theory, namely, the learning of the “four books.” As a social and political theory, not only can Confucian communitarianism contribute to Western liberalism, but it can also be an intellectual resource for the development of democracy in East Asian countries and regions. The future of the Confucian communitarianism lies in its critique of itself and its discourse with Western liberalism, by which Confucianism evolves from communitarianism into liberalism.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/lw383565t412m738/

Shaming punishments and communitarianism, the kamakazi model

Orin Kerr has here effectively jumped into today's debate over shaming punishments (basics here). Orin terrifically explains my communitarian-based grounds for suggesting that shaming punishments may actually honor and strengthen human dignity:

Don't [shaming punishments] rely on, and ultimately reinforce, the notion that the offender is a valued member of the community? It seems to me that the offender feels shame precisely because he values his position in the community. Thus judges hand down such punishments only when they think the offender values his position and will want to restore it to its earlier status. In that sense, then, shaming punishments are not about dehumanization, but about hope and community: the punishment is based on and recognizes the hope that the offender will feel a strong enough connection to the community that he will feel shamed, and that the community will value that person's connection to the community enough to react to the offender.

Along these lines, consider this Wikipedia entry on Crime in Japan which notes here the theory that "an important factor keeping crime low [in Japan] is the traditional emphasis on the individual as a member of groups to which he or she must not bring shame."
http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2006/10/shaming_punishm.html

From Liberalism to Communitarianism: The Erosion of Individual Rights in the Irish Criminal Process? by Liz Campbell, University of Aberdeen - Law School,July 25, 2007
Law and Society in the 21st Century, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
Abstract:
Traditionally, the central concern in the Irish criminal process was the accused person, as is evidenced in the matrix of due process rights which developed to protect him against the might of the State and to safeguard him from unfair conviction. However, in recent years it seems that there has been a shift in discourse and policy away from liberal concerns about the primacy of the individual towards an approach in which the interests and demands of the community and the wider public are prioritised. Contemporary political rhetoric in Ireland often presents the community as an entity with an entitlement to protection from harm, and developments in the criminal process are increasingly justified by invoking the rights of the community, to the detriment of individual liberties.

This paper explores a number of measures which encapsulate this trend. Firstly, the right to bail was restricted in 1996, so as to prevent further offending, and this was based on the perceived need for public protection, notwithstanding the effects on individual liberties. Also, the introduction of behaviour orders under the Criminal Justice Act 2006 was legitimated by the need to protect the public from anti-social behaviour. When exploring such legislative developments which indicate the growing import accorded to the community in the criminal process, this paper will examine the threat that the adoption of elements of communitarianism poses to individual rights. Furthermore, the perception that the interests of the community and those of the suspect are fundamentally at odds will be challenged, and the importance of the limitation on State powers will be emphasised.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1162134

Rastafari: Roots and Ideology (Utopianism and Communitarianism)
http://www.wikio.com/books/rastafari-roots-and-ideology-utopianism-and-communitarianism-0815602960-1544893,b.html

Ubuntu and communitarianism in media ethics
Clifford G. Christians

A robust and visionary media ethics depends on the normative theory in which it is rooted. Two such paradigms have grown up independently—ubuntu in Africa and communitarianism in Europe and North America. For both, the community is ontologically prior to persons. They serve as an antidote to mainstream libertarianism. Ubuntu as a universal idea solidifies dialogic communitarianism and keeps it oriented intellectually. Ubuntu’s total focus on humans and its insistence on the moral dimension of society produce an ubuntu communitarianism that is the most mature version of any to date. As a normative paradigm for media ethics, ubuntu communitarianism emphasises authentic disclosure for news and moral literacy as the media’s mission. Its liberatory journalism empowers citizens to come to agreement about social problems and solutions among themselves rather than depending on the political elite or professional experts.
http://ajs.uwpress.org/cgi/content/short/25/2/235

Communitarianism vs. Individual Rights In the West and the Islamic World
David Lea, Dr. Lea is an associate professor of philosophy at the American University of Sharjah, the United Arab Emirates.
In the 1980s, however, these arguments came into question. A powerful "communitarian" or "culturist" movement began to gain force and stress the value of the community.3 These academics questioned the liberal tendency to articulate principles of justice based on the "bi-polarity" of the individual, on the one hand, and the state, on the other. They argued that justice must go beyond the idea of equal rights for all citizens and provide special rights for communities and cultural groupings so that these cultural groups could survive and endure the overwhelming threats to their traditions.
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol12/0506_lea.asp
Utopian and Communitarian Movements
The Oxford Companion to United States History | 2001 | Paul S. Boyer |
Traditional cloistered Roman Catholic orders, introduced to America by Augustinian monks who reached Philadelphia in the 1790s, and perpetuated in the twentieth century by Trappists, Benedictines, and other orders, represented a different form of the communitarian vision. So, too, did colonies embracing Spiritualism or Theosophy; gender‐based settlements such as the Women's Commonwealth in Texas and Washington, D.C. (1874–1906), and ashrams established by Asian‐influenced mystics in Massachusetts and California in the 1920s. In the Depression‐wracked 1930s, Catholic renewalists started a communitarian religious retreat, “The Grail,” in Ohio; conservative Protestants founded communities in Texas and Arkansas to promote fundamentalist religious beliefs; and radical Jews formed socialist colonies in Michigan.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O119-UtopianandCommuntrnMvmnts.html
Monday, 8:30 am add on -
If the American founders were really freemasons as many Lodges claim to be true, then is it just as possible they were also secretly communitarians, as Bill Clinton and Amitai Etzioni insist? Was Thomas Jefferson aware of the dialectical divide between materialism and spiritualism? Did he understand the synthesis and the conflicts necessary to move it to final conclusion? What does it mean to take the side of materialism when following in the steps of Jesus Christ? How perfectly Jefferson's Bible plays into Pope John Paul's assessment of the Soviet and American systems.

In The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus, Jefferson describes his views of Jesus Christ, the Christian religion, and his own religious beliefs. In a Syllabus which he appended to his Bible, he compared the teachings of Jesus to those of the earlier Greek and Roman philosophers, and to the religion of the Jews of Jesus' time. The following excerpt is from a letter discussing the Syllabus. Of significance is his statement, "...(Jesus) preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require counterpoise of good works to redeem it..."

"But while this syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in its true and high light, as no impostor Himself, but a great Reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to be understood that I am with Him in all His doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require counterpoise of good works to redeem it, etc., etc. It is the innocence of His character, the purity and sublimity of His moral precepts, the eloquence of His inculcations, the beauty of the apologues in which He conveys them, that I so much admire; sometimes, indeed, needing indulgence to eastern hyperbolism. My eulogies, too, may be founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to Him by His biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same Being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to Him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of His disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of His doctrines, led me to try to sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that His past composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man. The syllabus is therefore of His doctrines, not all of mine. I read them as I do those of other ancient and modern moralists, with a mixture of approbation and dissent..." (6) {emphasis added by me}
http://watch.pair.com/mason.html
What actual role, if any, did Freemasonry play in setting up the political-religious divide between Republicans and Democrats? How far back does the penetration by the Masons-Luciferians-Marxists of the Vatican go? Were there open Iluminists in the American constitutional groups prior to 1775? Did the enlightenment serve only to further the divide? What role did the Protestant churches really play in the global divisions? Is there an authentic divide between the material and the transcendent sides of human existence? What if this is but a piece of an elaborate plot to transform the entire world into a global empire in the 21st century?

One thing's for sure, there is nothing normal about the progress of the divide between Christians and Christians, Christians and Muslims, and Catholics and Catholics; it did not evolve naturally.