Official Religion

21 November 2021

Blog: Official Religion

I read the other day a headline about a group who promote making Christianity the official United States religion. This idea was said to be endorsed by several members of the United States Congress. Beside the fact that this is specifically prohibited in the United States Constitution (we all know that Trump/Republican/Public Christianity does not care about the constitution or norms in the United States based solely on what they have done over the last twenty or so years.). There are other problems with this Official Religion idea. There is a large irony here, as an aside: This same group do not believe the government should tell us we have to wear masks or get vaccinated to prevent covid but they do wish the government to tell us what god to worship and how they should achieve eternal life.This Official Religion idea always reminds me of the many discussions I was involved in in the early 80’s about prayer in school. Christians of the day believed strongly, and I think still do, that prayer should be allowed if not even promoted or lead by public schools. My standard question to this was, ‘what god will they pray to?’; the usual response was a blank stare. Everyone assumes that others agree with us about our belief and stile of worship and that the god we pray to would be the god everyone prayed to. (See Note below for more on this)

With this naivete in mind we get to Christianity as the official religion in the United States. Which flavor of Christianity do they wish to be installed? Episcopalian, Catholic, Lutheran; or Gnostic, Arian, Lollard; but surely not Mormon, Moonie, or The People’s Temple—most of the latter are dead anyway. The worst thing that ever happened to Christianity is Constantine making it the official religion of the roman empire. People had to be Christian so they faked it, they did the rituals but believed in their old gods at the same time. Examples like Christmas day and the celebrations of Saturnalia on the same day are holdovers.

Then there is enforcement. The history of this is brutal. Henry VIII, a good Catholic, wanted a divorce so he created is own official state religion, Anglicanism. Then he burned Catholics, Lutherans, and Lollards. When his daughter took over, she was called Bloody Mary so you get where this is going. She burned Anglicans, Lollards, and Lutherans. Then Elizabeth the first took over, well, she only burned Lutherans because she managed to change Anglicanism to be so generic that even Catholics could fake it. Speaking of Lutherans, German history is full of wars between the Catholic areas of Germany and the Lutheran areas of Germany. Should we mention here the Muslim world where the sect in power destroys the sect out of power and usual all the cultural history along with it?

What will happen is the creation of fifteenth century Catholicism because that was all about ritual and power and not about faith. To be fair their idea of faith was very different than ours. Theirs was more ritual based than relationship based—my protestant bent is showing here. They fulfilled their obligation to pretend they were believers in the official state religion. The point is do we want worship for show or worship for salvation and faith in God?

NOTE: The issue of prayer is schools had more to do with allowing Christian groups to use empty classrooms during lunch or after school for religious purposes, usually bible studies. (As often happens the label attached to controversial issues gets distilled and thus loses the actual meaning—’defund the police’ is a current example) Several of these groups were denied by administrations due to the constitutional idea of separation of church and state. The first amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”. Allowing the use of a schoolroom for a bible study, or any other study or prayer group does not violate the wording of this clause. When I was in high school group of us got together with two teachers and studied Socrates (thank you to Ms. Anderson Frye and Mr. Goodwin). This was not a religious meeting but a use of unused school space. No one would question this use but what if we were studying the statements of the apostle paul and the effect they had on world history, or the effect of Muhammad’s writings or the writings themselves. Why would this be different?

There are ways to violate the first amendment. The administration could decide that only one type of religion can meet, the teachers could promote the study in their classes. As in many things there is no absolute one size fits all rule about this. The administration and teachers need to be reminded; the school that violates the amendment should somehow face sanctions—no idea what that might mean in practice short of cutting some federal funding somehow. The wrong response is to ban all such studies or meetings.