There are some essential principles of our society, that is supposed to be a republican-democracy. One of the most important, but not often thought of, is that, in their wisdom, our founding fathers knew from previous experience that written words are subverted before the ink is dry.
So they set up the organization of our government with many balances of people in groups with competing interests, in the idea that they would help “to keep each other honest” in following the written law. Not a perfect system, but not bad. And certainly better than any known alternative.
But though this exists in all societies, this highlighted the obvious: that government pays attention to the needs and wants of the majority, and the larger minority factions among the public.
Yet they only do so with “The squeaky wheel gets the grease” attitude. A majority or a larger minority may be powerful, but unless they assert their rights, their rights are ignored.
And all of that is background to a discussion of religion in America.
From its founding, the US government has continued to grow in power. But not power in a vacuum. That is, for it to have *more* power, the states and the citizenry must have *less* power.
This means that only when the states and the citizenry, and yes, religion, asserts their rights, will the US government back off, at least sometimes. But if they *do not* assert their rights, they lose them. And the pressure is constant.
At the founding of the republic, births of children were registered in churches. But today, government registers all births, at the state and federal level, and religion is cut out of the deal. Churches no longer register births for the most part.
So religion allowed government to take that sacrament away from them.
At the founding of the republic, marriages were also registered in churches. But government has now taken that away from religion, declaring that only government approved marriages are official. And religion let them.
At the founding of the republic, deaths were registered by churches. Now even death is absorbed by ever growing government, and certainly the paperwork of death.
And religion has let them do this as well.
Government continues to take over the functions of religion, but only does so because religion does not stand up and resist, but meekly renders its authority unto Caesar.
In China, the government appoints all religious leaders in the Christian faith. For anyone else to preach is a serious crime.
Is that contemplated in the US? Yes it is. The IRS is now trying to control the speech from the pulpit, at first only to forbid political speech. (And in Canada, to prohibit speech against homosexuality). But eventually, the government will demand the authority to control sermons and religious doctrines, under the basic principle, “Because we can!”
And, if religion continues to be a willing slave, the government will oblige. It will only stop, and not stop, but to retake their authority, if religions stand up and show some backbone.
It makes you wonder if they have them.
Our representative Republic was designed to pit opposing forces against one another to constantly guard against excessive power. The states were intended to be the natural foil against the federal leviathan. The states’ people were given the power to constrain the power of the states. Religion held moral authority over the people.
While the power structure seems hierarchical, the actual effect was the inverse. The ultimate power lay with the churches, but any influence over society as a whole had to pass through all the other spheres to control the government. As shown by history, no religion has been able to significantly influence federal law until the rise of atheism.
Once the states became agents of, rather than participants in, the federal government, the entire structure collapsed.
States now compete for federal favor, and individuals now compete for state or local control and the church trawls for social acceptance because she abdicated her moral authority in exchange for tax exemptions. Individuals struggle for whatever hedonistic pleasure they can gather and know nothing of their history or the ideals that guaranteed their liberty.
Atheism has aligned itself (naturally) with those who have subverted our republic and turned the guardians into agents. It is content to force submission under an authoritarian behemoth, and attracts those hungry for power.
While many atheists will decry this as a personal attack, it is nothing of the sort. It is a matter of where authority belongs in the structure of our government. Moral authority belongs at the base of the structure and has direct authority over individuals. Whereas no religion, or lack of religion, has any right to use legislative power to control or influence federal powers. When this principle is not heeded, you get the Inquisition or the Communist purges.