The Religion of the State

This post, written by Rodney Peterson, was originally published (with additional supporting footnotes and sources) on the Altar & Throne website here. Please check out the Altar & Throne website for additional content from Christian market anarchists and libertarians.

Two weeks ago, on July 28, 2016, A commentator on MSNBC [I think it was Chris Hayes, but I can’t be sure] called Obama a ‘preacher of civic religion.’ I have never agreed more with something I heard on MSNBC, but I don’t see such an accolade in the positively praiseworthy way it was meant. A few moments later, the same commenter used the term ‘apotheosis’ (the “becoming God”) to describe a political moment.

Many people (self-identifying religious and non-religious alike) believe that the United States of America is a secular country with a firmly entrenched and well-defined line of demarcation separating Church (viz. ‘religion’) and State. For most, however, this belief is not one arrived at after serious thought and consideration but is the product of immersion in America’s Founding Mythology for the lion’s share of their most formative years.

In short, the commentary mentioned above is not euphemism or metaphor but an accurate description of the essence of the State and our attachment to it–despite the commentator being aloof to this fact. The State is not a secular institution; it is a religious institution–complete with doctrine and orthodoxy, preachers and priests, sinners and saints.

A BRIEF BUT NECESSARY ASIDE

Some, if not many, may take issue with my characterization of the State as a religious institution. I admit that calling the State a religious institution requires people to drastically reconsider their accepted definition of religion and reformulate their understanding of the essence of Religion and the essence of the State.

I define religion as “a way of life.” Particularly, that way of life which one follows regardless of whether he derives such a way from a deity, a hallucination, another person or his own thoughts. And a person’s way of life implies what he/she believes about life at its most fundamental levels, and thereby what he values as most important in his own. An essential feature of Religion is that it binds separate and diverse people together–it ties them to what is proclaimed and accepted as the “way of life” which is implicitly the accepted “way to life.”

As such I believe religion and mythology are intimately intertwined. America has a mythology which it uses to support its civic religion the same way in which Rome did.

Religion can never go away or outlive it’s usefulness though certain forms of religion can. Religion, in my view, is innate to life, be it a religion of theism, polytheism, or atheism. It cannot go away without life going away for to live is to have a way of living and that is to have a religion.

Still, some may contend that even if the State is rooted in religion and is therefore a religious institution, it is one that we cannot be rid of lest we fall into chaos and death. Some may even welcome the view of the State as a religious institution and contend that it is a creature of divine will.

As for Government (viz. the State), I believe it is something humans constructed as a means to create a superhuman entity to serve as a type of deity–of no particular heritage or creed except what history and circumstances have dictated.

Also I don’t believe society is posterior to the state (a sovereign government) nor are society and government synonymous with one another.

I think we do a fine enough job ripping people apart with and through our governments. Furthermore, they enable us to do so through a ‘sanctified’ proxy. More people have been killed by governments (including their own governments) than any private criminal entity. And yet we treat government as this superhuman entity without which life could not exist. This necessity of a sovereign authority as the source of life is present at the conception of the modern sovereign state. The modern State emerged when the ‘secular’ or ‘temporal’ authorities and powers wrestled away the Papacy’s claims of sovereignty and adopted the Papacy’s claims of being the representative of God on earth, if not the very icon of the invisible God.

As the society further removed itself from more transcendent and supernatural (or superstitious) predispositions, these representative claims simply became stand-alone claims to absolute sovereignty from which the likes of Jean Bodin and Louis XIV drew their claims to the first true reappearance of Absolutism in the modern age.

Whereas the Papacy found its authority in claiming to be as God — in a very perverted sense of humble servant-hood and self-righteousness — the State finds its authority in claiming to actually be God. In short, the State adopted the shameful blasphemy of the Papacy and proclaimed it shamelessly to the fullest and most absolute limit. The ancient demi-god kings and their proto-states claimed the same power and authority, but Christ came and dismantled such claims; however, these same institutions, post-Jesus, have been able to use the Church’s perversion of the claims of Jesus to reclaim a whitewashed version of their pagan power of old. The State is a pagan invention by which divine power and authority can be claimed by unholy men.

This God called State then, depending on its particular political theory (which is in essence the theology of the State) takes on the character of the Sovereign. In a humanist culture, this sovereign openly adopts the will and nature of man. In a pious society, this sovereign adopts the nature of what is perceived by the populace to be the character and nature of God or the divine. The nature of this sovereign (or ‘State’), its laws and its sense of justice, are determined by how the people conceive of God and the nature “we the people” superimpose upon him. How ‘we’ view the nature (the image) of God provides us with the point of reference for how we define and view what is holy/sacred. We measure our earthly institutions against this standard.

We view the king, the prince, or the anthropomorphic earthly sovereign State as the visible image of the invisible God; we see our creature as the agent of his benevolence and wrath while we define the nature of both. Therefore the nature of the visible image reflects the image we hold of God which in reality is the image of ourselves we project onto God–or what we call or treat as God.

THE RELIGION OF THE GOD CALLED STATE

The religion of the state is the dominant religion of America. It is a religion of power, pride, violence and ultimately death that exalts the pharisee who feigns servant-hood most effectively. It is a religion built on deception of others and the self and champions beautifully euphemistic rhetoric to hide the ugly hypocrisy that all innately know is lurking under the surface. For evidence of this, simply objectively observe every political election season, the various scandals, blame-shifting, and scapegoating engaged in, to greater or lesser degrees, by all parties and candidates — as well as those stumping and proselytizing for them.

From these observations of historical and present phenomena, we can soberly state that the “Great Divide” never occurred. The sacred and the profane have simply traded places. We do not live in a non-religious polity but a religiously secular one.

The state has become our sovereign lawgiver, judge, and protector/provider for which we are willing to sacrifice our lives fortunes and sacred honor in service to it and in our efforts to have it serve us as we–individually and corporately–deem fit: to make a God in our image so that we may, with feigned humility, serve it while we are merely serving a self-righteous reflection of ourselves.