Of Civic Religion
Recently a friend pointed me to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract to help understand the idolatry/worship of Trump, MAGA, and the American government.
Its worth reading if you get a moment. Book 4, chapter 8 discusses the idea that a society requires a sort of idolatry called the “Civic Religion” to exist to hold people into a cohesive society.
He mentions 2 other forms of religion, the “natural” religion that’s grown from every society of idols and gods and myth, and the “revealed” religion.
Rousseau specifically supports the Natural religion saying that its easy to turn it to the kind of idolatry required in the Civic Religion (the belief that the State is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and by virtue of its nature, “good”).
However, he argues (and I would agree) that Christians can never be good citizens. That they will reject (or should) the Civic religion, doubt their masters (relying instead on their God), refuse to fight or kill for the State, and generally live the Gospel incompatibly with the Civic Religion.
Its refreshing to see a man who helped articulate the idea of idolatry for ones government, hold the Christian in such high esteem that he would think that they would reject the idolatry of the Nation.
It’s my prayer that he’s right.