| </span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (the_anawim)
The roots of civil religion go back 313 AD when Christianity merged with the Roman Empire.<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>Err, Rome already had a civil religion, with many gods already. If you don't remember, it was Rome's trying to instill that religion on the Jews when Rome conquered the area that caused all the trouble in the first place. You know, putting non-Judaic statues in Jewish temples and requiring people to offer to Roman gods, followed by angry incursions, to which they send in the troops, followed by more incursions, then more draconian crackdowns, and after a while Rome essentially said, "fuck it, we don't ask, they don't tell." And even before Rome there was Greece, and before Greece, the entire Middle East was a hodge-podge of theocratic city-states. Whaddaya MEAN civil religion doesn't go that far?!
. . . whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. |