Every despot in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism and religion. People are more likely to tolerate oppression from a ruler whom they consider pious. Piety — encompassing both moral and dogma, aspects — is a very confusing concept.
Dogma – Faith, beliefs, and doctrines that differ among the various religions.
Moral – Behavior, the application of the various Dogmas in the earthly plane.
“The United States Constitution was made only for a moral people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other kind.” –John Adams
The Constitution has moral authority because it contains the three prior laws — natural law (the first law), canon/ecclesiastical law; and common law (custom and precedent); includes concepts of freedom, equality and justice; specifies civic responsibilities of leaders and led; and was ordained and ratified by the people.
Governmental rule founded upon religion, Theocracy, has motivated history’s most brutal barbarisms, including slavery. The belief that one’s chosen “God” sanctions the killing of his enemies is not new — “I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them mine enemies.” (Psalm 139:22)
You may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations (Africa?) that are around you. (From Leviticus 25:44-46)
I adopted the moral branch of religion because the example was set by my most influential religious mentor, my maternal grandmother. She attended church a lot, and I went with her as often as I could; but it was her behavior outside the church that made the greatest impression on me.
From the beginning of American slavery, the most effective contrivance among White Supremacists’ resources they used to oppress Black people has been the religion defined by Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephenson, Franklin Graham, Lorenzo Sewell, and Donald Trump.
By embracing Donald Trump, Franklin Graham, for example, endorsed for the religious masses the principles of a bigoted, misanthropic, psychopathic, deceitful sinner, who lives contrary to all of their own Jesus’ teachings. The White Supremacist philosophy of Trump includes racism, misogyny, treason, masculinism, and politicized religion, which melds and galvanizes white male heteropatriarchy and sacerdotalism into Theocracy. The Enlightenment marked the end of theocracy in most Western countries, but it has resurfaced with a vengeance under Trumpism. When Jefferson discussed the separation of church and state, he clearly opposed Theocracy and put the emphasis on moral behavior.
God has formed us moral agents that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own, necessary for the well-being of society. –Jefferson
Without question, morality in America has been usurped by religion. Too many people assume that religion and morality have a necessary, inextricable connection. Morality does not require religion; but giving up that notion seems impossible for a significant number of allegedly “religious’ Americans.
As for the victimized: There is not a more repulsive spectacle than a people who will not seek with unrelenting power and perseverance to transform the world which has already forsaken, oppressed, suppressed and exploited them, whether the tools enemies used to inflict harm were political, social or religious. (From T. S. Eliot)
Octavia Butler stated: “I have a huge and savage conscience that won’t let me get away with things.”
One author said: Butler’s line lands with the force of a personal, even Moral, oath. A huge and savage conscience, Butler asserts, is not gentle; it is relentless, suspicious of excuses, and allergic to shortcuts. It hunts down rationalizations and insists on seeing things through to their consequences. That kind of inner sentinel demands honesty. It rejects easy morals and tidy endings, presses for complexity, keeps pulling back from comfort toward truth, and refuses to let sentimentality, convenience, or self-protection override truth. Religious hypocrisy is a thing the hypocritical pious get away with.
What makes people abandon their principles in support a corrupt movement? And once abandoned, how do they find their way back? (From Anne Applebaum)
Hypocrisy is acidic to the soul. A savage patriotic conscience would certainly eradicate the hypocrisy between what people pray and hear in church on Sunday morning, and the way they live the rest of the week.
With sufficient passion for truth, people can change immoral consciences into huge, savage and positive ones. If so, they would reject outright the notion that the following rationalizations are acceptable:
I can compartmentalize myself into my various roles – parent, teacher, preacher, patriot, political party member, church member, and human being – that may have effected different moral standards, without my actions in one role negatively affecting my other roles; and I can embrace Trumpism and still call myself a patriotic American.
