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Chris
08-07-2013, 11:14 AM
Religion and the American Republic (http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/religion-and-the-american-republic) is a very long piece by George Will to which in general I subscribe. I cite only the opening paragraphs which include his religion, none, and then the final concluding paragraph. I think the whole worth a read.


In 1953, the year before the words "under God" were added to the Pledge of Allegiance, President Dwight Eisenhower proclaimed the Fourth of July a national day of prayer. On that day, he fished in the morning, golfed in the afternoon, and played bridge in the evening. Were there prayers in the interstices of these recreations? Maybe when the president faced a particularly daunting putt.

This was not Ike's first foray onto the dark and bloody ground of the relationship between religion and American public life. Three days before Christmas in 1952, President-elect Eisenhower made a speech in which he said: "Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is." He received much ridicule from his cultured despisers for the last part of his statement — the professed indifference to the nature of the religious faith without which our government supposedly makes no sense. But it is the first part of his statement that deserves continuing attention.

Certainly many Americans — perhaps a majority — agree that democracy, or at least our democracy, which is based on a belief in natural rights, presupposes a religious faith. People who believe this cite, as Eisenhower did, the Declaration of Independence and its proposition that all of us are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

But there are two separate and related questions that are pertinent to any consideration of the role of religion in American politics. One is an empirical question: Is it a fact that the success of democracy, meaning self-government, requires a religious demos — religious people governing themselves by religious norms? The other is a question of logic: Does belief in America's distinctive democracy — a government with clear limits defined by the natural rights of the governed — entail religious belief?

Regarding the empirical question: I believe that religion has been, and can still be, supremely important and helpful to the flourishing of our democracy. I do not, however, believe it is necessary for good citizenship. Regarding the question of our government's logic, I do not think the idea of natural rights requires a religious foundation, or even that the founders uniformly thought it did. It is, however, indubitably the case that natural rights are especially firmly grounded when they are grounded in religious doctrine.

In both cases, then, I would answer that religion is helpful and important but not quite essential. And this view of the matter — which is hardly a departure from the American tradition — is neither hypocritical nor self-contradictory precisely because of the character of the American tradition: a tradition that has always marked out a division of labor between the institutions of politics and those of civil society, including especially those of religion. It is as the foremost of our civil-society institutions that religious institutions play a crucial role in sustaining our limited government — as shapers of citizens, and as limiting counterparts to the state.

That is why citizens concerned for our limited government should be friendly to the cause of American religion, even if they are not believers themselves. The nature of the division of labor between society and government in America, and with it the character of our political community — grounded as it is in the concept of natural rights — is very much in dispute today. Understanding that dispute can help us better grasp the place of religion in the life of our republic.

INDISPENSABLE SUPPORTS

I approach the question of religion and American life from the vantage point of an expanding minority. I am a member of a cohort that the Pew public-opinion surveys call the "nones." Today, when Americans are asked their religious affiliation, 20% — a large and growing portion — say "none."

...

We have long endured. We shall endure further. This is so in large part because of America's wholesome division of labor between political institutions and the institutions of civil society — including, especially, religious institutions — that mediate between the citizen and the state, and so make freedom possible.

Ivan88
08-11-2013, 10:25 PM
Our love of democracy:
3516
is a religion of naked force against the individual.
Our religion is reflected in our military policy since Lincoln at the very least:
"We are not fighting against enemy armies, but against an enemy people, both young and old, rich and poor, and they must feel the iron hand of war in the same way as organized armies."

As a nation, we love to firebomb whole cities into ashes. 50,000 young US males died in suicide bombing attacks on our relatives in Europe.

Our religion is really not much different from that of the Pharisees who murdered the Perfect Man.

And, in 1991, we officially adopted the Talmudic Noahide Laws, that make the Word of God of no effect, as local, national and internation policy.

That is a good portion of why we send trillions of dollars to the Synogog of Satan.