So, Mrr, where do people fit in who accept and treasure myth as myth, and not as scientific fact - people who see myth as pointing to a deeper truth that cannot be contained by words?

Take creation stories, for example - I see them as illustrating the profound beauty and value of what is called "creation." While I accept evolution and the "big bang" theory as the most credible scientific explanation, the various creation stories give me a deeper appreciation of the wonder of all this.

I'm reading a fascinating book by Garry Wills titled Head and Heart: American Christianity. Wills, a history professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, sings the praises of Lincoln as the most original theological thinker of his time. The prevalent U.S. religion was Evangelical, but Lincoln was not an Evangelical despite the fact that he was viewed as a man of the people. He wasn't exactly a Transcendentalist thinker, either. Wills sees Lincoln as akin to Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, and particularly his black contemporary Frederick Douglass. Evangelicals (both North and South) saw the U.S. Civil War as apocalyptic, a divinely-inspired cleansing that would result in bringing the nation to Christ. Wills says that Lincoln and the other three held themselves aloof from the organized churches of the day, although they we certainly influenced by Transcendentalism. Both Lincoln and Douglass described the struggle against slavery in biblical rhetoric, but neither was bound by the religious ideology of the day. Lincoln referred to Jesus Christ rarely, and then only indirectly. Somehow, Lincoln was able to rise above all the ideologies and take a different view of slavery as a fault that must be overcome, no matter what the cost. Wills saw Lincoln as believing in the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence, superseding the condonement of slavery in the Constitution.

-Joe-