Last week, I began an in depth look at the structure of the Cult of the State. The original intention was to create one large article that addressed all the ways that the government operated as a religion in society, but the article ran long before I could get even halfway through the different characteristics of religious belief and action that the government meets, so I had to divide the whole into two parts, Sections A and B. Section A focused on the foundational beliefs of the Cult of the State– its sacred texts, some of its major sacred symbols and idols, one of its most common communal prayers, its holy temples and places of sacred pilgrimage, and its gods.
Section B is designed to pick up right where we left off last week. Having looked at the more esoteric, cosmic aspects of the Cult of the State (gods, temples, idols, etc.) this section is dedicated at exploring how the cult operates in its day to day aspects. We will be looking at its equivalent of churches, the church leadership, how the different political parties are merely sectarian or denominational divides, its rituals that bind the religious community together, and its holy wars that are wage din the name of its sacred texts and idols for the purpose of spreading what its worshippers believe to be its glorious message to the infidels and apostates of the world. In doing so, I once again will use the United States as my example as it is the nation I am most familiar with, but have no doubt that the same principles apply to every nation on the planet and all one needs to do in order to make this article relevant to them is substitute the examples from their own countries and histories. Without further ado, let us begin.
Churches of the State
Before we can determine what the church buildings of the government cult are, we first have determine what a church does for the believers of that religion and how it accomplishes that objective. It is important to note here that while the word church is generally a Christian term I am not using it in that sense. I am using it as a place of public worship and in that sense mosques, synagogues, and the like all are meant. But instead of trying to list all the possible terms that could be used I have chosen to use church as a term that is most likely the most familiar to my general audience.
The first purpose of a church is its most obvious- it is a place of worship. It is a place where members of the religious community gather to pray together, sing together, praise their god together, preach about their religion together, and make sacrifices to their god together. Typical religious services in most public places of worship include communal prayers. In these prayers sometimes they are led by a congregational leader, sometimes they offer the prayer as a community. Hymns, sacred songs, are often incorporated as part of the communal worship experience- though it is not always the case as the example of Quaker worship services can attest. Of course Divinity is praised during the worship service through one form or another- music, sermons, testifying, etc. Messages on the teachings of the religion are shared where it is explained what good things the gods have provided for the people and what beliefs the people should hold to have a righteous life. Finally, sacrifices are made. Most often today this takes the form of money and charitable services rendered and not animal sacrifice as the ancients did.
The second purpose of a church is perhaps less immediately obvious, mainly because it often takes place outside of the main worship service. Churches are indoctrination centers. I know that is a strong word, often with negative tones, but the actually definition of the word is not negative. Indoctrination is, “the act of indoctrinating, or teaching or inculcating a doctrine, principle, or ideology, especially one with a specific point of view.” Is this not the purpose of the Christian Sunday School, the Jewish Hebrew School, the Islamic School many masjids offer to Muslim children- to teach the children the doctrines and tenets of the faith, why they are correct, and help develop within the children the faith and desire to live according to them for the rest of their lives? The other purpose then of churches is to educate the members of the religious community in the demands, culture, and morals of the religion itself. As Encyclopedia Britannica puts it:
A second function of worship is the creation and maintenance of views and attitudinal stances that identify the members of the society to each other and in relation to other groups. Worship thus involves social learning… Worship displays and reinforces the character of the society; the traditions are passed along through the worship of the community. In this way, acts of worship sum up and reinforce the moral and cultural commitments and understandings of the community.
So then, what are the churches of the Cult of the State?
Why else do you think the government is so involved in education?
As Dr. Christopher Koliba explained at the University of Vermont:
[E]ducation is a democratizing force that helps to prepare students to participate actively in all aspects of democratic life. The John Dewey Project on Progressive Education grounds its work in Dewey’s assumption that the aims of education should be oriented towards preparing young people to be full and active participants in all aspects of democratic life. The skills and dispositions needed to actively participate in all aspects of democratic life include: the ability to think critically, a sense of efficacy, a commitment to compassionate action, and a desire to actively participate in political life by engaging in local decision-making processes, lobbying, voting, etc., as well as the basic need to be able to read, write and do arithmetic.
Democracy and Education
Similarly, Professor John J. Patrick taught:
[T]he development of an authentic democracy depends, in large part, upon the education of competent citizens. They want to teach students what democracy is and what it is not, how to practice democracy, and why it is good—or at least better than the alternatives to it.
Essential Elements of Education for Democracy
Notice that the point here is not only to merely indoctrinate children into accepting the current political system and its ruling government powers, but to convince children to love the current system, to take part in it fervently, to find within it their sense of belonging and purpose, to arrange and dictate the order of society and civilization, to create a united community, and only distantly actually educate them in reading, writing, and math (notice history didn’t make the list.) Notice that children are to be indoctrinated into believing that there are no greater forms of government than democracy and that they should be happy with it. Another source takes this even farther, including ritualistic repetition of public rituals such as Mock UNs and formal voting in order to indoctrinate children into thinking within, and only within, the current regime’s power structure as well as the “transmission of our culture since cultural ideas, literature, stories, and our core values.” In other words, schools are to indoctrinate your children in obedience to the formal system the state has placed in power, teach them submission to it and its forms, to enact public rituals to train them in the proper forms of action and worship to follow (more on that in a minute), and to teach them the culture and values of the State itself as the central social norms. Children are to be taught that there is no sense of complete self or society outside of government control, ideals, and purpose- a purely Fascist idea that explains why some are so violently opposed to any sort of private education or homeschooling of any kind and want them banned.
Public schools also engage in public worship. Each morning students stand and, in unison, face the idol of the government- the flag- and chant a solemn prayer of obedience and subservience to it while praising it as the source of liberty and justice for humanity -the Pledge of Allegiance. I won’t treat on this more here –I did it in detail in Section A. Often public exercises will have either or both the prayerful Pledge and the nation’s hymn The Star-Spangled Banner. So we see both aspects of a church unified in a public school- children engage in acts of worship, they are taught how the great gods of the State have ensured safety, liberty, and prosperity to the masses, and they are taught to believe, think, and act out the rituals of the government as the direction for what defines righteous living and as a guide for life. Schools, especially public schools but even private schools in most states, are nothing less than individual churches for promulgating the government’s ideology.
Church Leadership
There are many different forms of leadership in the religions of the world. Some, like Christianity, often display highly organized and centralized forms (such as the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), while others, like Buddhism or Taoism, display highly individualistic, decentralized forms where leadership positions are often fluid and based more on how well said leaders fulfill the religion’s ideals in the eyes of local congregations than upon central direction. But in all these cases, the general purpose of religious leadership is fairly straight-forward. It is the role of those in positions of authority to encourage greater faith among the believers and work to ensure obedience to the faith’s beliefs. In these roles religious leaders often find themselves oversee the spiritual life of their congregations or those in their stewardship, providing direction for the lives of the people as guided by the doctrines of the faith, ensuring the people are living the moral dictates of the faith, and providing correction when they do not. Sometime this may be dramatic- such as an excommunication court- or it may be simple- such as meeting the local leader for guidance.
So, who are the leaders of the Cult of the State, of the government religion?
The Cult of the State is a highly centralized religion and a highly brutal one at that. In the United States, the highest positions its leaders hold are President and Congressmen/women. Its dictates are law and its authority is absolute. If you violate them then you can, and will, be beaten and kidnapped (arrested), sexually assaulted and locked into a cage (searched, stripped, and jailed), your property will be seized for your apostasy (fines and asset seizures), and if you rest, well really quite often even if you don’t, you will be killed (murder by police, shot by soldiers, gunned down by federal agents, the possibilities are multitudinous.) Just ask Eric Garner or George Floyd. Like all cults, the demands and power of the church’s leaders are absolute. You cannot come or leave without their permission, meet new people and make new friends without their permission, marry without their permission, decide what you eat or drink without their permission, or even decide what clothes you want wear without their permission. If you do then they will seize your property, imprison you, and/or even kill you. Their divine edicts are endless and pervasive, and that isn’t even getting into the more local branches of the Cult’s leadership such as states, provinces, or cities. The megalomaniacal leaders of this dangerous cult imagine they, can through their will and order, completely control society, dictate every aspect of your life, and destroy everything that matters to you if you disobey and it has many of us so brainwashed, thanks to the decades of indoctrination most of us are compelled to undergo at the local churches (aka schools, see above), that we applaud them when we do so.
Mystic Rituals
For something so important, the definition of ritual – “the prescribed procedure for conducting religious ceremonies” – truly is boring. Rituals are transformative. They’re about transcending the banal experience of life and taking part in actions that make us all part of something greater than ourselves, that, in the words used by the Prophet Joseph Smith to describe the purpose of the Endowment ritual, “bring you out of darkness into marvelous light.” There are almost an endless variety of rituals that vary greatly between cultures, but they all seem to have a few main characteristics:
- Rituals divide the sacred and holy from the common and profane. The difference between a cracker and the Body of Christ, for example, is that the latter has been through a ritual that transformed it. Before it was bread, after it contains the literal Presence of Divinity within it.
- Rituals give society form and structure, which in turn tells those involved their role and place in society. In doing so, rituals create formal communities of members and non-members. Dr. Murray Edelman, in his book The Symbolic Uses of Politics, defined ritual as any “activity that involves its participants symbolically in a common enterprise, calling their attention to their relatedness and joint interests in a compelling way.” Think of the rite of communion. Sure, anyone can eat the bread and drink the wine, but it is believed that only those who have made the covenants of baptism gain any special sacred blessing from the act. Thus the ritual defines who is in the religious community, what connects the, as a body, and does so in the form of a very specific and compelling act.
- Rituals define the stages of life -childhood, adulthood, marriage, and death- and provide the means of transformation, moving from one to another formally. These rituals, whether they happen only once or whether they’re repeated, therefore instill within the individual life the values and attitudes of the religion into the very life of the believer, imbuing the lived experiences of the believer with the essence and ideas of the faith.
So, what rituals does the Cult of the State have to reinforce government power and its right to rule? A lot, actually, but for space’ sake I’ll only hit on two big ones:
Billions of dollars are spent drumming into the individual the belief that “voting is a sacred right – the fount from which all other rights flow” and that if they don’t vote then you’ve failed your community or society as a whole. We are even told that voting is “the most important thing you will ever do” There is a reason poet Les Murray described the voting booth as a “closet of prayer.” Voting is one of our most lauded state rituals and it meets all the qualifications for the term.
- Voting determines the difference between a madman and a Fuehrer, a rich buffoon and a President. Because those who come to power come to it through the ritualized system they are seen as having legitimate power to demand and compel obedience. This despite that millions may see said ruler as evil, incompetent, or both. The ritual position has made the decisions of those in power sacred- they are to be obeyed.
- Voting creates a community of members and non-members. It is restricted only to the true members of the community- the citizen of the nation. Citizens are given their position as superior to non-citizens, with rights and powers others do not have. This in turn creates order in society as the state determines your rights and powers base don your citizenship status and being a citizen grants you a specific, protected legal status with special powers and immunities others do not have. If a citizen commits a crime he or she may face fines or imprisonment. The same crime can have non-citizens lose their jobs, their homes, everything they own, and be driven from the nation under threat of extreme violence if they do not go.
- Voting helps demarcate childhood from adulthood. In the USA you can vote at 18, the same year you’re first considered a legal adult. Thus, voting itself becomes a communal ritual that signifies to society and the individual that one has left adolescence behind and become a man or a woman, with all the rights and privileges of such. Voting is a way of “affirming the faith” of the citizens in the power and legitimacy of the rulers of the nation. Because those elected are chosen by “the People,” they are imbued with the collective authority of the community. As Dr. Vadym Zheltovskyy articulated it so well, “Presidents represent the nation, not merely themselves. They speak on behalf of the people and represent the views of the nation[.]” But not only are those ordained through the ritual of election imbued with authority, participation itself becomes an act that justifies the faith of those who take part, allowing voting to ritually renew the belief of the citizens who are part of the nation.
Standing during the singing of hymns and the recital of prayers is an ancient custom which, in the Western tradition, can be traced all the way back to before the birth of Christ. Catholics, for example, stand during Mass out of respect for God, for hearing His word, and to honor Him in prayer and song. The Orthodox Christians stand for nearly their entire worship service for the same reason and almost everything is sung as well. There is a controversy over whether to stand or kneel during the US national anthem currently because of the standing and singing of the national anthem is a sacred ritual.
Standing during the national anthem is about respecting the country and honoring it and those “who died for our freedoms,” and professing our faith in the ideals of liberty and justice embodied in the nation and its sacred texts (see Section A). It is, in short, an act of ritual worship. Even the act of singing is itself a liturgical act or reverence and worship. Which is why kneeling is controversial. It isn’t any more or less respectful. After all, kneeling is a sign of submission. The issue is the variation in the ritual that creates a disruptive effect; instead of uniting the community in one grand act of honor and worship the kneeler stands out and thereby draws attention to his or her self as opposed to all attention being directed towards the object of veneration- either than ineffable State itself or its national idol, a flag.
Worship
The discussion of voting as ritual worship that imbues the public with meaning as citizens and those elected with power from the masses and the singing of the national hymn as an act of liturgical veneration leads us naturally into a more general discussion of the nature of worship itself. Worship pervades the life of the believer whose actions, beliefs, and words are all influenced and directed by what he or she believes, which in turn is directed by his or her faith. As Christ directed, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15) Then there is the worship service, when the believers gather to praise their divinities in the forms that custom and command dictate. Finally, there are ritual acts of worship. Often these are incorporated into the worship service, such as when Muslim congregations bow together in prayer, for example. But this not necessarily the case. Christian baptismal services are acts of worship but are not always part of the Sunday worship service. Buddhist monks will meditate and chant throughout each day. For Muslims paying zakat is one of the most sacred acts of their faith, but it can take place any time, not just when one is at the mosque for worship.
So, what are the Cult of the State’s acts of worship?
As schools act as churches for the Cult they also act as places of worship. The Reverend Rosalind C. Hughes explains it well in a telling story about her daughter’s first week in public school:
Three weeks after I first moved to the United States with my family, and one week into our American public school adventures, my youngest daughter asked me, “Mummy, did you know that we pray to the flag every morning at school?”
But the Cult actually affords us even more dramatic scenes of mass, communal worship:
Though other nations have more influential denominations, in the United States there are, essentially, two main denominations of the Cult of the State- the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. At these mass revival meetings, held every four years, the “platform” is decided- the denomination’s official statement of beliefs and goals that not only direct the beliefs of the faithful but act as missionary tracts to try and convert voters. This is also where the chosen cult leader, appointed in a truly archaic and byzantine but highly formulated and ritualistic system, is formally invested with denominational authority and power. The acclamation also signals submission as those who supported rival pontiffs are now expected to be subservient to the victor. During these revival meetings, both denominations take free advantage of music to captivate and entrance their followers in moments of the ecstatic and deliver political messages directly to the soul of those experiencing the performances. And of course they both have to have the national hymn, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” sung. The passion and faith that the idol of the State can solve everything and that their denomination’s particular cult brand has the real understanding of the truth drives is driven into the core of the sectarians, such that defeat and victory summon the most powerful forms of crushing sorrow or euphoric joy.
The dedication of people to the their denomination of the Cult of the State pervades everything they do. It not only arouses within them powerful emotions of loves and dedication, but it dictates their morals. Traditionally is has been thought that your morality and your worldview dictated what political party you would join. Today we are coming to understand it is the other way around. As Dr. Peter Hatemi, a political-science professor at Pennsylvania State University, explains: “We will switch our moral compass depending on how it fits with what we believe politically.” We pick our political party and warp or ignore everything else in order to make our morals fit that party’s political stances, whatever they may be at the time. This is how supposed Christian Evangelicals who believe in moral sexual purity end up supporting Donald Trump even though he is known adulterer, pornographer, and accused rapist. It is also why Democrats, who promoted the #MeToo Movement end up supporting accused rapists like Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. Their loyalty to their cult denomination comes above and beyond all other loyalties- to the True God, morality, or family.
Crusades and Human Sacrifice
I’m actually highly critical of the concept of a holy war- whether it be labeled a Crusade, jihad, or anything else. This is the topic of a future lengthy article, but, briefly put, this is because when you investigate the underlining justifications for holy wars they’re almost always political. The Crusades, for example, were but then present-day manifestations of a conflict between European and Asian powers that can be traced at least as far back to the Greco-Persian Wars beginning in 492 BC, long before there was a Christianity or Islam to blame for the conflicts. Likewise, modern so-called Islamic terrorists almost always frame their actions in terms of political justifications and goals, not religious ones. (See my recent War on Terror article.) That said, any war waged by the State is either to extend or maintain its ruling power and since the government is a cult, any such war would by its nature then be a holy war as it is waged by the Cult.
Human sacrifice, on the other hand, has a long history in religion. Human sacrifice has appeared on every continent on the planet. The Europeans practiced human sacrifice, as we can see among both the Romans and the Norse. The Mayans, Aztecs, and Incans of the New World are infamous for offering humans to their gods. Human sacrifice appears across Africa and the history of sacrificing children to Molech in the Canaanite religion gave this series of article their names. In Part 1 of this series I explained the role of human sacrifice in the Cult of the State as it demands that people sacrifice themselves and their loved ones in war to preserve its power. In Part 2, I explained how the Cult’s power to sacrifice any human life to itself in order to preserve its power and the development of veneration for soldiers defines the Cult of the State as a Cult of Death, that is it is founded upon and maintains its power through the destruction of human life sacrificed to it either by war or the legal system. So I do not want to belabor the point here will confine myself to explaining why human sacrifice is so important to the Cult of the State.
Essayist Randolph Bourne famously wrote, “War is the Health of the State.” War is necessary for the survival of the State. War is the “great herd-machine” in which:
They then [the population of a country], with the exception of a few malcontents, proceed to allow themselves to be regimented, coerced, deranged in all the environments of their lives, and turned into a solid manufactory of destruction toward whatever other people may have, in the appointed scheme of things, come within the range of the Government’s disapprobation. The citizen throws off his contempt and indifference to Government, identifies himself with its purposes, revives all his military memories and symbols, and the State once more walks, an august presence, through the imaginations of men. Patriotism becomes the dominant feeling, and produces immediately that intense and hopeless confusion between the relations which the individual bears and should bear toward the society of which he is a part.
…The best proof of this is that with a pursuit of plotters that has continued with ceaseless vigilance ever since the beginning of the war in Europe [WWI], the concrete crimes unearthed and punished have been fewer than those prosecutions for the mere crime of opinion or the expression of sentiments critical of the State or the national policy. The punishment for opinion has been far more ferocious and unintermittent than the punishment of pragmatic crime. Unimpeachable Anglo-Saxon Americans who were freer of pacifist or socialist utterance than the State-obsessed ruling public opinion, received heavier penalties and even greater opprobrium, in many instances, than the definitely hostile German plotter. A public opinion which, almost without protest, accepts as just, adequate, beautiful, deserved, and in fitting harmony with ideals of liberty and freedom of speech, a sentence of twenty years in prison for mere utterances, no matter what they may be, shows itself to be suffering from a kind of social derangement of values, a sort of social neurosis, that deserves analysis and comprehension.
When war is declared, the public sacrifices whatever liberties they may have and goes out to destroy their brothers and sisters. If any dare apostatize and question the State dogma of war, they are persecuted and destroyed with all its might. In war, the State gains total power as the Almighty Savior of the People. As the great Dr. Murray Rothbard expounding upon Bourne’s idea, summarized:
It is in war that the State really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. Society becomes an armed camp, with the values and the morale—as Albert Jay Nock once phrased it—of an “army on the march.”
This is why war is so important to the State- whether that be wars against foreign peoples or through war with those here at home. Whenever a “war” is declared the people sacrifice all to the State- their liberty, their children, their humanity- in the name of victory. And once that war is past -whether it be a war against a foreign nation, drugs, or a virus- the power the State has seized never recedes back to what it was before, but stays permanently increased. In the past, the ancients spilt the blood of the people to empower and sustain the gods. Today the blood of the people is shed to empower and sustain the State. Thus, war is not just the health of the State. War is the lifeblood of the State, the ultimate manifestation of the faithful’s dedication.
If we truly desire to end war and to create a peaceful world, then we have to rid ourselves of the machinery and institutions of war. As French anthropologist René Girard says in his book Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World:
To leave violence behind, it is necessary to give up the idea of retribution; it is therefore necessary to give up forms of conduct that have always seemed to be natural and legitimate. For example, we think it quite fair to respond to good dealings with good dealings, and to evil dealings with evil, but this is precisely what all communities on the planet have always done, with familiar results. …Violence is always perceived as being a legitimate reprisal or even self-defence. So what must be given up is the right to reprisals and even the right to what passes, in a number of cases, for legitimate defence. Since the violence is mimetic, and no one ever feels responsible for triggering it initially, only by an unconditional renunciation can we arrive at the desired result.
To give up war, we must give up the State- which is why the power to enact wars abroad through military violence and at home through police violence is the most jealously guarded power of the State. It is also the power which we must most openly defy if we are to escape the Death Cult of the State and live the Gospel command to love our enemies and serve them. ( see Luke 6: 33-35)
Final Thoughts
Taken together Sections A & B are an attempt at a basic explication of the manner in which the Cult of the State functions. All our lives we are indoctrinated into its veneration and worship, told that within it alone can we find our greatest communal purpose and fulfill our greatest duties. Its gods are held up as our sages, prophets, and exemplars. Its pilgrimage sites are often literal temples constructed and dedicated to the man-gods whose names we are told have shaped our history and character. From childhood we are taught to chant its prayers and sing its hymns. Participation in its rights are sacred duties that all are commanded to obey. Its political denominations hold immense influence in our lives and can determine our very morality. The greatest good is to slaughter and die as a human sacrifice made in the name of protecting or expanding its power, spreading its ideals –such as democracy– to foreign lands by brutal force in seemingly endless holy wars. But, as long as this has all been to explain, this is merely the tip of the iceberg on this topic.
Nevertheless, it should be enough to cause the faithful to pause. Do atheists really want to worship the Death Cult of the State? Do Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoist, Zoroastrians, and the countless others of faith want to have their religion subverted to the Death Cult of the State and the faithful subservient to the worship of the government, its idols, and its creeds? Along with the Apostle Paul, I hope we can all acclaim, “God forbid!” Having seen the cult, having had the curtain pulled back on its machinery of indoctrination and idolatry, I hope and pray that we will take a stand against it. Christ taught no man can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and Mammon; you cannot serve God and Moloch; you cannot serve God and the Government.
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Next week this series will be back with The Modern Moloch Part 5 wherein we we will explore together the messianic role of political leaders, how they have always presented themselves as secular saviors, and why this is deeply anti-Christ. See you August 14, 2020.