I will be working on separating my collection of quotes into somewhat similar categories. As you can see [above], I have already started. I think I will included a “Historical” section as well as an “Economic” section. I was limited in my old theme to how many “PAGES” I could have, but no longer. And it dawned on me that I can expand this section/resource of my blog.
What this will do — pro: it will allow visitors to better find relevant quotes or insights if they so choose. The posts with the loosely classified quotes/excerpts will not be quite as long! More manageable.
What it will do — con: Since many of these quotes span multiple topics, for instance, religious AND political, or Theological AND historical*, they will be hard to categorize. So some will seem out of place — except in my mind of course. For this, I apologize.
* This will end up in the “Historical,” even though it could be in “Theology”
The Christian faith often served as a prelude to political reform. Just as it appeared that the reforming light was about to be extinguished” in early medieval Europe, missionaries from Ulster sailed and transplanted the faith. Democracy’s growth centuries later would come from the soil nourished by the Christian ethos. St. Patrick’s Ulster faith would blossom as much in Switzerland as anywhere else at the time. During the early sixteenth century, that same faith, greatly matured, would both fuel and be charged by Calvinism. Calvinism, in turn, contributed to revolutionizing the politics of England and eventually returned to Irish soil, from which many of the second wave of American settlers sailed. The faith that would transform Western political institutions spread contagiously—not always predictably or systematically, but irrepressibly. As it was recycled from Bangor to Geneva, then back to Donegal, it gathered force again in the massive Ulster Scot migration during the eighteenth century to America—still preserving the improvements of Genevan polity—through Scots-Irish missionaries like Francis Makemie.
David W. Hall, The Genevan Reformation and the American Founding (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 37