It seems it is fall everywhere else but here in Arizona it is still summer. There aren’t many leaves that turn here compared to the Northeast and temperatures still spike in three digits most days. A sure sign of fall though is the approach of Florence. Take care Carolinas!
My article this month hearkens back to the best days of summer in Kentucky. We toured Shiloh, ate catfish at Hagy’s by the Tennessee River, and stayed at a Bed & Breakfast near a the big battlefield. The breadth of the battlefield and the length numbs the mind after a time. By 1864 in Russell F. Weigley’s book A Great Civil War I’m ready to end this war – but there are still one hundred pages of fighting left and Lincoln has just become committed to emancipation as an outcome!
The article, about approaches then and now to fences, is on p. 59 of the September issue of book fun.org Check it out!
Fences are a bit like walls. You can wall in and wall out – Roger Williams knew that on this fallen earth you could never institutionally wall out evil and thus Puritan legal walls – walls that gave only church members voting rights for example – around Boston were doomed to failure-he said God himself would tear them down because of their gaps.
The wall he did support is the one required by scripture between the ways of a Christian and the ways of the world, one that can only be built of heartfelt conscience, built from scripture. He never called his limitation on government meant to enable religious freedom a wall. He wasn’t walling religion into the church or walling it out of the public square. He was ensuring a fertile pasture for building conscience, a conscience that was free to disagree with the institutions of state and organized churches.
