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Faith Is Personal

June 30, 2005

Religious faith is personal.  The sentiment has been repeated so often that it nearly seems self-evident.  Without doubt, it has become a ground rule for acceptable public discourse and interaction.  Author and apologist Ravi Zacharias refers to this phenomenon as the “privatization” of religion:

    Privatization may be defined as the socially required and legally enforced separation of our private lives and our public personas; in effect, privatization mandates that issues of ultimate meaning be relegated to our private spheres.

Even George W. Bush, who has been described as “among the most openly religious presidents in U.S. history,” often says that faith is personal.

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