Civil Religion

Saturday, January 06, 2007

What is there about your life or mine that can be compartmentalized and then considered as independent, not related to any or all other aspects of life?
What effects the social, economic, and political aspects of life more than the civil law we are subject to?
What individual or collective form of worship is not affected and interrelated to all other aspects of life?
What religion or religious society is not limited and largely defined by the civil law that it is built upon?
The civil law is religion itself. It always has been and always will.
The decisions we make individually first, and then extended through agreement and contract to others, constitutes the substantive reality of our lives. This is the inclusive condition that creates any possible spiritual reality.
The present civil law is the slavish condition of others making religious decisions for us. We have lost control over the most vital process of our lives as regards liberty and dignity.
The conservative right, more succinctly the Christian conservative right attempts to divorce its profession and practice from the reality of the civil law. It cannot reconcile its creeds and suppositions to the real fact of what creates its substantial practice.
The right does attempt to address the relationship individuals ought to maintain to the civil law. It then proceeds to advocate a belief system that is entirely non sustainable within that legal system. It incorporates to gain legal identity. It then supposes it is some other creature than a creature of the state.
The liberal left attempts to define itself not a church or religion. In its disregard for the sanctity of historical forms, it tenders itself impotent in the face of any possible return to divine interposition or access to any effective structural cohesiveness. It is as philosophically, doctrinally and morally intent as the right but somehow claims to be exclusive of legalistic religious statutes that are inconsistently applied to the right. The left is in fact as much a church or religion as anything else.
The secularization of the civil law is the fundamental deception of society.
That which is enforceable by the power of the sword, which can deprive a man of live liberty and property through legal adjudication, constitutes the true spiritual power over the individual and the collective. It is only when men return to self government, which is the power of the community to entirely constitute all civil process, will any real church, religion, or spiritual power prevail in society.