Through the May 13 Fox News item “Faith fight: Churches at odds over teachings” (http://www.fox10phoenix.com/story/29058247/faith-fight), I learned that some Fundamentalist church pastors in Fountain Hills have started a campaign against Progressive Christianity, with the slogan “Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction.”

Unlike in the good old days, since the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, the sole basis for determining whether whichever ideas qualify as being labeled as either “fact” or “fiction” has universally been the application of rational thinking in evaluating them. God supplied brain to human beings for rational thinking.

During the Age of Enlightenment, intellectuals in Europe emphasized reason, analysis and individualism rather than traditional lines of authority.

One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Thomas Paine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine), was born in the Age of Enlightenment. In 1776, at the start of the American Revolution, he wrote the highly influential pamphlet “Common Sense.” He later wrote “Rights of Man” and “Age of Reason.” All three works of this intellectual giant are dazzling in their respective subject matters.

Paine’s “Age of Reason” is pertinent to the “Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction” campaign of some Fundamentalist church pastors in Fountain Hills. The book is readily available in http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/reason1.htm for reading by whoever interested in applying her/his rational thinking for determining for herself/himself as to which between Fundamentalist and Progressive Christianity is “fact” and which is “fiction.”

I ask all Fundamentalist pastors in Fountain Hills who are starting their “Progressive Christianity: Fact or Fiction” campaign to use as their most effective tool their rational refutations, point by point, of the statements by Paine in his “Age of Reason.”

When they do so, they will have won hands down in their campaign against Progressive Christianity.