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To: PatrickHenry; betty boop
Thank you so much for the clarification! IMHO, religious freedom cannot exist with a dictatorship because such people will not accept the absolute authority of the state.
475 posted on 10/10/2003 6:00:09 AM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: Alamo-Girl; PatrickHenry
...religious freedom cannot exist with a dictatorship because such people will not accept the absolute authority of the state.

Yes. People who love God would never accept a state trying to pass itself off as the redeemer and perfecter of the human condition or, more accurately, the tyrant pushing such an ideology. To a Christian, any tyrant/state with such presumptions is an idol, a false god, to whom one does not owe any obligation.

It used to be the general understanding of people within the Western cultural orbit that all states, all governments, functioned under explicit divine sanction, or they ceased to be legitimate. States/governments/monarchs who slipped the bonds of divine law were understood to be unjust, illegitimate.

There is the view -- certainly it was the view of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution -- that effective opposition from the people against the tyrant could be justified. "A little revolution now and then...." conceivably is restorative of the divine order for man and society.

PH, I strongly doubt that Hobbe's Leviathan could pass basic muster with faithful Christians.

483 posted on 10/10/2003 5:06:27 PM PDT by betty boop (God used beautiful mathematics in creating the world. -- Paul Dirac)
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