@MSRayne—You wrote that, “Personally, I believe and have believed for a long time now that the only thing that could save the world is a rationalist religion.” You wouldn’t be alone in that aspiration. Many Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers have shared similar hopes.
During the early modern revolutionary period, Universalism and Deism became popular among liberal and radical thinkers, including in the working class (Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God). Thomas Jefferson optimistically predicted that Americans would quickly convert to Universalism.
Sadly, it never happened. But Universalism is still around. Besides independent Universalist churches, there is the Unitarian-Universalist organization with its origins as a an organized religion, although increasingly secularized, allowing believers and non-believers to gather together with shared values.
On a positive note, maybe the future will eventually prove Jefferson right, if he was way off in his timing. As most organized religion is on the decline, the UU ‘church’ is experiencing an upsurge, and most strongly in the South for some reason. It’s now one of the fastest growing ‘religions’ in the US.
@MSRayne—You wrote that, “Personally, I believe and have believed for a long time now that the only thing that could save the world is a rationalist religion.” You wouldn’t be alone in that aspiration. Many Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thinkers have shared similar hopes.
During the early modern revolutionary period, Universalism and Deism became popular among liberal and radical thinkers, including in the working class (Matthew Stewart, Nature’s God). Thomas Jefferson optimistically predicted that Americans would quickly convert to Universalism.
Sadly, it never happened. But Universalism is still around. Besides independent Universalist churches, there is the Unitarian-Universalist organization with its origins as a an organized religion, although increasingly secularized, allowing believers and non-believers to gather together with shared values.
On a positive note, maybe the future will eventually prove Jefferson right, if he was way off in his timing. As most organized religion is on the decline, the UU ‘church’ is experiencing an upsurge, and most strongly in the South for some reason. It’s now one of the fastest growing ‘religions’ in the US.