I would agree, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, and Walton are all very well known and well represented in the concert hall and by recordings.

Bax and Parry would be possible candidates as not being well represented or well played in the US, but Bax has a following.  Poulenc is also rather well know, Nielsen, should be much better known as should Parry.

I can think of one composer...let's see his initials may or may not be A. S.

Overture to Les Horaces

What I worry about is the slow moral slide that allows people to become complacent in a political situation that allows for the corruption and rot to set in, most estimates of Hitler support range from 30 to 40%, but the other 60-70% went along with it just long enough for a police state to become operational.

We don't face anything like that, but what do we as citizens do in the mean time, during the slow slide and drift to reverse course, talk, vote, is that all we can do that is moral and constructive.

Is there anything more, or any way to remain non-complicit in the long slow slide. 

I think the desire of some to throw up their hands, not vote, etc. worry me, as does things like Claire Berlinski's article on the NSA.

Looking more closely at the image, the military and guards have the various Nazi symbols on their uniforms, so while the article is before his rise to power, the photo is afterward.

Is the photo from 1932, I wasn't sure on that point, you would be very correct about #1, but Hitler was still a celebrity in 1932, even if he was only the Furher within Nazi circles.

My word, but modern architecture is so anti-human.  Chapel of ugliness...more like, I don't understand why the value of life, re-birth, reconciliation, let alone God incarnate in Jesus Christ has to be represented by ugliness, because humans indulge in ugliness...it makes no sense.

I actually don't like predestination/election, but it is there in the New Testament, it is a hard doctrine, but Augustine has the clearest and most powerful exposition of it; although his ideas are not the only approach to those passages in the Church fathers.  

“in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity”  

Marco Antonio de Dominis or Peter Meiderlin (Rupert Meldenius)

Yes, I thought it was a useful short hand (perhaps not so much) for those who are convinced and confirmed in one world view and suddenly find themselves compelled to reject it.  Not literally experiencing a Christophany in the manner of St. Paul.  

Although, in another sense, as I think about this - I believe that all people must be converted by the grace of Christ to enjoy him forever, therefore in a sense all must have a Damascus moment, when we fall down and worship the living God.  However, it seems for many this is a life-long process, or at least a long term process, sometimes with twists and turnings towards and away.

I do not think that my religious convictions are the end or beginning of God's mercy, love or power.  I hope that what has attracted me here is a true understanding of God's word, but I may be in error, and if so, God have mercy on my should; and I think all within the great sweep of the church have hope, and perhaps those beyond, for only God can know and judge their heart's aright.  In the meantime we must use our human reason and other divine gifts, though tainted by our sinfulness and frailty, pride and egos, and at best our truth is seen through the glass darkly to try to understand and serve God aright.  Trying to discover the clearest idea of what he wants of us, and to fulfill that idea with love, charity and acts of kindness to all.

No, The elect are known only to the counsel of God.  If we contemplate the idea of predestination (and here I follow the less rigid and less tidy pre-Dort English reformers) the contemplation that God in His mercy will sustain, support and delivery those who are elect is a comfort, because if one searches after the things of God, this is a sign of hope of one's election, but one cannot be presumptuous about the matter.  If we feel pulled and compelled by the inner prompting of the spirit to be lovers of Christ and doers in the Kingdom of God, it is to be hoped that this is a sign of God's favor, and it helps energize us to be zealous - but it could be false piety, pride, arrogance, etc., we must be humble, hopeful and faithful.  The 39 Articles of Religion are very useful in this regard, nos. 9-20, but especially 17-19

Additionally about other miracles.  There are other beings in the universe than God, spiritual beings, and there are other forces at work (some surely materialistic that we are still mightily ignorant of), and as Hamlet said,

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

So that there may indeed be miraclous beyond those recounted by Christians that are true - but what their signifigance may be - that is another matter.

I realize as well to a materialist my views are as fallacious as I feel Joseph Smith's were, and somehow I'm ok with that.

Mormonism does raise some interesting questions, but that is why if a claim for the miraculous is made, reason and evidence must be brought to bear.  

I do not believe in the LDS Church because I think the account of its miraculous origin and the subsequent outflow of theology from the account of their founding history is inadequate to overturn my understanding of Christian orthodoxy and at points is in conflict with it and with the historical record of the early life of Joseph Smith.  

Their reasoning and their evidence seems lacking, and I'm willing to wager my soul on it; but if it is as he claimed, it raises more problems in it's relationship to the biblical account of the New Testament church than it answers, and the accounts of life in ancient America that is contained in the Book of Mormon is unrelated to any known history or archeological understanding of pre-Columbian America, that is accepted outside Mormonism, which I think is another huge problem.  For while many archeologist and historians argue about the relationship of the Bible to the historical record there are endless parallels and points of congruence between Christian and nonreligious historians.

I think the changes to belief are wrought by God, by that's why I'm a Calvinist, albeit (in 17th century terms) a liberal-Puritan Anglican Calvinist.  

There is always a danger for Christians to embrace materialistic explanations for some miracles to prove their historicity, ie an earth quake far away could have allowed Moses to cross the Red Sea, or Israel to cross the Jordan dry shod.  

At the center of Christianity is the great miracle of Christ's physical and bodily resurrection from the dead to eternal life.  If that miracle has no power, no other miracle matters (they may or may not be true), but no other system of religion has any claim on the human being in the same manner that Christianity does.  

Mohammad's authority is not predicated on any miracles, but rather on his purity of communication from God.  I know of no other religion outside the Christo-centric that requires the belief in the power of a specific miracle, one can be a fine Roman pagan and not actually belief in the gods.  Also all of those other religions have more to do with the value of human action for salvation. 

Or there is another possibility, I am given evidence of something that is could be miraculous and I reject it because of the implications it might have for my world view and understanding of life, so no matter how compelling I reject it because the consequences would be too much to bear.

Or conversely, the lack of evidence for miracles requires me to reject my world view and that is too painful so I reject materialism.

I don't think framing it in terms of God's power and control, or as events such as a smiling wife or sunset, or a tear in the fabric of the material laws of physics changes any of these consideration for an actual person.

Aside from a "Damascus" road experience there are few people I suspect who really change over the course of a life time.  I think we grow into the position that we feel more comfortable with and probably already have.  If I'm a skeptic in Sunday School at age 8 I will likely be a non-believer at 48; and vice versa...some people do dramatically change, but I think a true and complete change is rare.

Of course, Josephus would likely not be inclined to invest it with any significance that would be favorable to the Christians (or at least to Christians alone or in a pro-Christian theological sense), but would recount the event to suit his polemical purpose.

Did the Angel of the Lord really smite Herod, or was that just an owl and a coincidence of a collapse followed by death?

I think that it is true, that are acceptance of any evidence will be predicated on our ability, desire, willingness, pre-determined belief to accept the possibility of A. a God/divine being, force, power, etc., and B. whether or not even if we accept A., we believe that such a being can act in/on/through/by the world, universe, etc.

If I accept A. and B., then I must then evaluate as thoroughly as human reason will allow the claims of a miraculous event before I believe it.

If I reject either B., or A. and B., then of course no evidence will ever convince me, because it simply cannot happen.

Objectively presented with an event, I will find some way to understand it without A. and/or B.

Well there is the interesting comparison to be made between Josephus Antiquities, Book 19, Chap 8, sec. 2. and Luke in Acts Chapter 12, verse 20-23.

Herod is described in much the same terms, in the same setting (although the reason given by both authors for being there is different, but possibly complimentary), an event occurs following an outburst of hubris with the death of Herod.

A case of a (possible) miracle in the New Testament being described in detail by a non-Christian author.  Result: the same as this argument.  Josephus sees a perfectly naturalistic event, places it in a context that makes sense to him, and colors it for his audience, although he might have seen it as an outworking of God's providence, he does not invest it with a miraculous event.

The same event in Luke's account the event is substantially the same, is seen in a slightly different context, has a miraculous component (possibly), and ends in such a way as to leave a possibly more providential interpretation, but is not necessarily at odds with one detail (whether Herod died at once or lingered in pain for five days) from Josephus.