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:Yes, that's right... no time to look further but I'm pretty sure Franklin did not believe in the divinity of Jesus and did not belong to an organized Christian church. Guess the whole list needs checking? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 05:45, 19 January 2007 (EST)
:Yes, that's right... no time to look further but I'm pretty sure Franklin did not believe in the divinity of Jesus and did not belong to an organized Christian church. Guess the whole list needs checking? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 05:45, 19 January 2007 (EST)
==George Bernard Shaw==
'''George Bernard Shaw'''... hmmm... I don't think he would have cared for being labelled as a Christian.
In his will, he said:
:My religious convictions and scientific views cannot at present be more specifically defined than as those of a believer in creative revolution. I desire that no public monument or work of art or inscription or sermon or ritual service commemorating me shall suggest that I accepted the tenets peculiar to any established church or denomination nor take the form of a cross or any other instrument of torture or symbol of blood sacrifice.[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,813999,00.html]
If he was a Christian, he was an awfully complicated and unusual Christian. He certainly did not belong to any organized denomination. He wrote that there was “not a single established religion in the world in which an intelligent or educated man could believe."
He did write that "Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it." And he wrote that "Christianity as a specific doctrine was slain with Jesus, suddenly and utterly." That is, he did not think any organized Christian religions actually practiced the teachings of Jesus.
He wrote a lot about Christianity in his Preface to ''Androcles and the Lion.'' I'm not going to try to summarize it, partly because I haven't read it through in a long time, but also because Shaw's ideas are so very original and unorthodox that they are really hard to pigeonhole.
He dealt with religiouss themes in his plays ''Saint Joan,'' ''Major Barbara,'' and ''Androcles and the Lion,'' but if you can tell "which side" he's on after reading those plays, you're better than I am.
He also dealt with evolution, in the play ''Back to Methuselah'' and the Preface to it—in a way which will not please either evolutionists or creationists. [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith]] 11:10, 20 January 2007 (EST)