Friends, I don’t know how the rest of you are navigating the current soap opera masquerading as political campaign, and I HOPE those of you who are our international members are avoiding the temptation I feel to get sucked into it at every dinner with friends and relatives and acquaintances. 

Our status as a non-profit keeps us from endorsing any particular candidate, and we have avoided overt political conversations on our on-line forums, but it seems to me that there are some really interesting, religious-naturalist-relevant questions about human psychology and sociology and anthropology and morality and manners that are quite properly raised by the campaigns and our responses to them.

Therefore we have agreed we just can’t let the opportunity pass to discuss the matter and harvest its riches vis a vis our shared worldview. So despite our usual careful aversion to matters political, and with cautions that some of the lawyers or political scientists here should kick us under the table if we transgress the rules, we’d like to spend the time from now until the election discussing such issues.

If you aren’t already on one of our three members-only forums (Facebook, the GoogleGroup RNAnet, or the Clergy Group if you are clergy) and wish to be, let me know. And if you are on one of those groups already, please consider formulating a question or comment that the political season has boiled up in you, and propose it for discussion on one of those forums. With the cautions above the range of comments can be broad, and we urge all of you to share questions and comments that seem relevant and appropriate, arising out of our core interest in human nature and human culture. Todd has already offered up a couple of questions he is chewing on, and I’ll start the discussion on RNAnet by offering up one of his.

Thank you all, and give yourself a little slack as you stay glued to the media these next few days. Indeed, use it as an opportunity to deepen your own contemplation and understanding of how religious naturalism intersects with civic life.

Cordially,
Michael Cavanaugh, Secretary

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