Can Temporal Sovereignty Disappear?

Why is this (Obama’s intended massive government growth) significant for the vitality of religion in America? A recent study of 33 countries around the world by Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde, political scientists at the University of Washington, indicates that there is an inverse relationship between state welfare spending and religiosity. Specifically, they found that countries with larger welfare states had markedly lower levels of religious attendance, had higher rates of citizens indicating no religious affiliation whatsoever, and their people took less comfort in religion in general. In their words, “Countries with higher levels of per capita welfare have a proclivity for less religious participation and tend to have higher percentages of non-religious individuals.”

W. Bradford Wilcox
More Government, Less God: What the Obama Revolution Means for Religion in America

First, as is our custom we must point out that it is not possible for people to become “non-religious individuals.” We understand what Wilcox and the study he cites is getting at but it is unfortunate that the impression is given that people ever somehow become less religious. What happens when the state grows geometrically is that the religion of the people becomes statist (humanist).

In Scripture we find at the very least three different spheres of authority (some would posit more). Those three spheres are Civil, Familial, and Ecclesiastical. Even within those three spheres sovereignty is distributed and so is not located absolutely in any one place or person. In the Civil realm sovereignty is distributed vertically between Federal and State authorities and then is distributed horizontally between legislative, executive, and judiciary in both Federal and State arrangements. In the ecclesiastical realm when ordered according to Scripture, sovereignty is distributed between consistory, classis and synod. In the familial realm sovereignty is held by the Husband and Father but that sovereignty is necessarily informed by the wisdom of the wife that God has given to the head of the home.

God has ordered reality so that no one sphere should hold unlimited sovereignty over other spheres and he has ordered reality so that no individual sphere has a place or a person who holds absolute sovereignty.

While we should confess that God’s sovereignty is infinite and unlimited, we should try to think of temporal sovereignty as being finite and limited. Temporally speaking, there is only so much sovereignty to go around between the spheres we have mentioned. The upshot of this is that when one sphere enlarges its sovereignty it always does so at the expense of the sovereignty of some other sphere. So when Wilcox informs us that the consequence of sovereignty increasing in the state means sovereignty being diminished in the church we should not be surprised. When the state grows in sovereignty (and dimensional growth of the state is akin to its growing its sovereignty) it does so at the expense of the sovereignty of the church (and dimensional shrinkage of the church is akin to its sovereignty being diminished). Since temporal sovereignty is limited and finite, when the state grows the welfare state it can only do so by shrinking the church and the family.

In the article cited above Wilcox goes on to mention the effect on the family when the state becomes behemoth. This is a subject we’ve covered here before many times but briefly when the state grows it results in taking on responsibilities of the family. In stealing these responsibilities (sovereignty) of the family the consequence is that natural family ties are loosened. Families have no need to have reliance on one another since the state takes upon itself what families are normatively responsible for. The consequence of this is that parents no longer teach children turning them over to the state for the state to fulfill that parental responsibility. The consequence of this is that children no longer feel responsible for elderly parents since the state will take care of them. The consequence of this is that wives no longer sense a need for husbands since the state will take care of them and the children if the husband is absent. The consequence of this is that husbands no longer sense a need to protect and provide for their wives and children since they know that the state will take up those responsibilities in their absence. When the state grows its sovereignty it grows it by sucking the responsibility out of the other spheres.

Eventually what happens in such a scenario is that the state becomes the family and the church to the point that the state not only aspires to all limited and finite sovereignty but also it begins to aspire to all unlimited and infinite sovereignty. In short the state desires to usurp God. This is the story of all collectivist states. In collectivist states the state seeks to create the context that in it, its citizens live and move and have their being.

This is why the growth of the state that the Obama administration is pursuing is such an anathema of Christians. Long before Obama showed up Christians have been convinced that the Federal state was already idolatrous, and with this move by Obama to massively grow the state into a collectivist hive all right thinking Christians are (or should be) apoplectic.

The final explanation for why the church and family shrinks when the state grows is that the state becomes the defacto church and family. When the state grows the way that Obama is trying to grow the state it fills the whole horizon so that the state becomes everything. It is not as if people become less religious or less family oriented. It is only that people’s religion and family are located in the state. Family and religion haven’t diminished, they have merely been relocated into the Unitarian state.

Gideon Redux

25 Now it came to pass the same night that the LORD said to him (Bret), “Take your father’s young bull, the second bull of seven years old, and tear down the altar of the state that your people have taken, and destroy principled pluralism (multiculturalism) that is produced by it; 26 and build an altar to the LORD your God on top of this rock in the proper arrangement, and take the second bull and offer a burnt sacrifice with the wood of the image which you shall cut down.” 27 So Bret took ten men from among his servants and did as the LORD had said to him. But because he feared (Bret had always been plagued by cowardice) his father’s household and the Radical two Kingdom men of the church who propped up the city of man by their “theology” too much to do it by day, he did it by night.

28 And when the Radical Two Kingdom men of the church who propped up the city of man with their “theology” arose early in the morning, there was the altar of the state, torn down; and the principled pluralism (multiculturalism) that it produced was beside it, and the second bull was being offered on the altar which had been built. 29 So they said indignantly to one another, “Who has done this thing?” And when they had inquired and asked, they said, “Bret the son of David has done this thing.” 30 Then the Radical Two Kingdom men of the church who propped up the city of man with their “theology” said to David, “Bring out your son, that he may die, because he has torn down the altar of Baal, and because he has cut down the principle pluralism (multiculturalism) that it produced.” 31 But David said to all who stood against him, “Would you plead for the state and principled pluralism? Would you save it? Let the one who would plead for it be defrocked by morning! If the state is god, let the state plead for himself, because his principle pluralism has been torn down!” 32 Therefore on that day he called him Jerubstate, saying, “Let the state plead against him, because he has torn down his principled pluralism.”

Not A Member Of The Obama Is A Great Speaker Club

Obama is not a good speaker. I’ll say it again …. B. Hussein Obama is not a good speaker. His cadence is sing song. His phraseology is cliche. The height of his rhetoric is constrained by his Marxism. Obama’s content is vapid and void. Obama’s speeches are perfectly crafted in order to allow anyone of a dozen interpretations as to his meaning, and as such his purpose in speaking is more to conceal his mind than it is to reveal his mind. If Obama’s speech pattern takes on any quality it takes on the quality of “mesmerizing.” Obama’s speeches are perfectly crafted for a people who can not think but who instead are looking for the quality of the experience. The result of an Obama speech is not to make his listener’s think but rather to make them swoon, in the same way that women swooned over Elvis or the Beatles, or in the same way that Germans swooned over Hitler. Obama’s speeches are like the Green Witch’s song in C. S. Lewis’ “The Silver Chair.” Like the Green Witch’s song, Obama’s speech’s are intended to put people, who would otherwise resist, to sleep. Finally, in my book anyone who can’t speak effectively without a teleprompter is not a communicator. Like so much of Obama, the whole “great communicator” thing is smoke and mirrors.

The first advantage that Obama has is that as President he followed a man who would make Buckwheat from the Little Rascals sound eloquent. Secondly, Obama is advantaged by a media that is almost as inarticulate as he is and this monosyllabic media keeps on saying over and over again what a great speaker Obama is. I suppose, that just as in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king, so in the land of the inarticulate the barely articulate is taken for Cicero. The media keeps on swooning over Obama’s speaking ability over and over and so pretty soon most people take it for the truth. Thirdly, Obama is advantaged by his audience. A people who had not experienced generations of being dumbed down would never consider Obama’s ability in speaking to be deserving of anything better than a leading role in the Vermontville Adult community theater. Fourthly, Obama is advantaged by being black. Nobody really believes that if Obama were white people would consider him a great speaker. No, this is a case where we dare not speak the truth for fear of violating the affirmative action code.

Freedom Of Choice In Abortion Debate Finally Defeated

The Obama administration’s move to rescind broad new job protections that allowed the freedom of choice for health workers on whether or not they would contribute in providing assistance in elective health procedures, such as abortion, that they find morally objectionable triggered an immediate political storm yesterday, underscoring the difficulties the president faces in his effort to find common ground on anything related to the explosive issue of abortion.

The new policy of the Obama administration, pursued in support of a woman’s right to choose, demands that those medical workers who have religious and moral reasons against abortion are denied freedom of choice to honor their religious and moral convictions. In this reversal medical workers will be compelled by work place laws to violate their convictions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701104.html

With this decision President Obama reveals his deep commitment to the abortion cause as it is the second major decision making abortions more easily accessible in Obama’s five short weeks in office. This denial of choice to medical care workers follows an earlier administration decision to lift restrictions on federal funding of international family-planning groups that perform abortions or provide abortion information. These two decisions seems to promise an eventual pursuit, by the Obama administration, of the euphemistically labeled “Freedom Of Choice Act.”

We might as well admit it

Yesterday, in cities throughout the nation, small pockets (numbering, in the 100’s at each location) of people gathered to have tea parties in order to protest the socialist / communist policies of B. Hussein Obama and his administration. I looked at the pictures of the protests at these gatherings in Lansing Mi., Hartford Co., Nashville Tn., Austin Tx., Houston Tx., Tulsa Ok., Chicago Il., and Los Angeles Ca. and one thing that you couldn’t help notice is that how thoroughly White these protests were. There were a extraordinarily small sprinkling of minorities in attendance but by and large these protests were organized and attended by White people.

Now, I realize that this observation is hardly scientific in the way that Gallup or Roper would do a poll but I still think it says something about the way the opposition to the socializing of America is shaping up.

The Obama administration has made it clear in subtle and not so subtle ways that they are waging racial economic warfare on White people. In one of the more not so subtle ways we had civilian economic adviser, and former Clinton Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, explicitly say in testimony before Congress that the stimulus money need not go to “White construction workers.”

Obama Economic Advisor Robert Reich: No Stimulous Money for White Construction Workers – Rangel: The Middle Class is to Busy to Notice What We Are Doing

Approximately ten days ago we had Vice President Biden introducing alleged President Obama (alleged because we still don’t know, due to citizenship issues, if he is even qualified to be President) noting that this was going to be an economic recovery characterized by “fairness.” Now if you listen to Biden in the context of Reich, who is also clearly concerned about “fairness” you begin to wonder if “fairness” is code language for a racial transfer of wealth from White people to minorities.

But lets not stop there. We have yet to mention Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder stating that,

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RtzGraUV9c

Now, while we won’t spend any time refuting Holder’s asinine statement where he seeks to foster white guilt while inciting a sense of Black entitlement, does any body with half a brain believe that Attorney General Holder believes that Black people are cowards when it comes to things racial? I think not. It is my decided opinion that Holder has White people in his sites with this kind of statement. It is White people who are cowards when it comes to things racial.

But we are not finished with this verbal racial onslaught of the Obama administration against white people — a verbal onslaught that is now getting translated to economic racial socialism. Consider the Benediction that was given by Rev. Joseph Lowery at the Obama inauguration.

Lowry intoned a benediction based upon a song titled, “Black, Brown and White”

“We ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to give back, when brown can stick around, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get ahead, man, and when white will embrace what is right.”

Now, take all of this that has been provided and remember Michelle’s comments during the campaign season that revealed that during Barack’s campaign Michelle, for the first time in her life, was proud to be an American. Was it perceived racial oppression that took Michelle’s pride to be an American from her?

Take all of this that has been provided and remember B. Hussein’s comments during the campaign about people in small towns in Pennsylvania (hardly a bastion of Black demographics) that,

“It’s not surprising then they (small town Pennsylvanians) get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Take all of this that has been provided and now add the specter of B. Hussein Obama’s Spiritual mentor for twenty years — Rev. Jeremiah Wright — easily one of the most White hating people to hit the public spotlight for quite some time.

Add all this together and it is not difficult to see why minorities are not showing up at protests against the Obama’s proposed socialism agenda. Minorities rightly believe that this transfer of wealth is going to go from White people to minorities. Now, there is little sense trying to convince people that in the end this racial socialism won’t lift the impoverished minorities but will merely eliminate the producing class that the welfare class so desperately depends upon.

In closing I am perfectly aware that there are minorities out there that exist that are as disgusted as any White person is concerning Obama’s racial socialism. These minorities understand that in the long run this kind of program reduces their people to slaves to the state and so are radically opposed to it. These people are to be applauded, but we must admit that their numbers in comparison to those minorities who support this racial socialism (as seen in voting patterns) is scant. Secondly, I’m perfectly aware that there are White people who are for Obama’s racial socialism. White people, on one end of the wealth spectrum, have always had their ‘poor white trash’ they have had to deal with, while on the other end of the wealth spectrum, White people have always had ‘rich white trash’ who would sell out their people if by doing so they could enrich themselves. All this to say that I realize that one can not speak in absolute racial universals on this subject, but instead only in predominant racial tendencies.

We might as well admit it that much of the Obama administration has a racial chip on their shoulder and that they are seeking to implement not just socialism but racial socialism.

What is humorous about a post like this is that people will insist that my noticing objective patterns of behavior by the Obama administration proves that I am the racist. It will be contested by some that all because I perceive how they are waging war on White people that therefore I am the racist.

Oh well…