Today, for an increasingly large section of our population, there is an unquestionable growing dependence on Government as not only the source of the basic necessities, but also for our general well-being. When we are offended by someone’s actions or speech, we gaggle together and enjoin the government to intervene on our behalf. We look to the State as our supreme standard and grantor of what rights we are willing to continue to assume.
The State has become the giver of law, the grantor of liberty and rights and the author and arbiter of morality. When hungry, we petition the State. When cold, we petition the state. When natural disaster strikes, we petition the State. When we look across the neighborhood and see someone who has more possessions than we have, we petition the state to take a portion of what our neighbor has earned and redistribute it more equitably.
After a decade or two, this seems normal. After nearly a century, our petitions begin to sound more like prayers. The twenty-first century is oozing with those who in their darkest moments turn to the State in what amounts to a demanding prayer to an omnipotent entity, the State. In the desperate moments of their lives human beings have instinctively turned to God or a god in prayer. When we turn to the State in prayer we have transformed that institution of man into God.
In the Episcopal Church, we have the Prayers of the People as part of our worship service. A lay person serves as intercessor and leads the congregation in prayer. The intercessor offers a petition aloud and the congregation will respond with a phrase such as: We pray to the Lord.
Since our new Federal Theology has substituted the State for God the prayers of the people might be something like the following.
The Prayers of the People
For peace at home and abroad: We pray to the State.
For our safety and the safety of our loved ones: We pray to the State.
For our basic needs of food, clothing and shelter: We pray to the State.
For our President, Senators and Congress that they may be right stewards of our lives: To thee O State we yield our hope, our dreams and our lives.
Under Federal Theology the president takes on the role of the Pope, the Senators are our Cardinals and Congress has become our body of Bishops. Our current president has been granted by his supporters and the press a status never really given the Pope or God for that matter. He is infallible whether sitting in his holy oval or reading from a teleprompter. In arguing with him, one runs the risk of being defined as a racist and bigot. In continuing such criticism, one assumes the liability of excommunication in the name of fairness. In fact, our current president came to office with messianic preludes never given to God the Redeemer. So how could anyone fail to recognize the transformation that is taking place?
We are not witnessing the rise of a collective mentality. We are not seeing the rise of Marxism. We are not experiencing a philosophical revolution featuring war on the individual as one of its primary tenants. These are symptoms of the cancer much as a headache could be the symptom of a brain tumor.
What we are witnessing is the progress of secular humanism taken to its logical conclusion resulting in the birth of a new religion. A religion in which the State is the Supreme Being and the Government is its church justified by Federal Theology. We have a new Baal. He is the State.
Our elected officials are our religious ruling class. Now kneel and kiss their ring.
How can we as a people escape the grasp of Statism? When our lives are sufficiently desperate that we are able to realize that we are in need of a savior, we must remember that God the Creator has already sent us a champion in the person of Jesus the Christ, God the Redeemer.
