This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Is the State a "Civic Church" in terms of jurisdictional power, or am I overreading this?
Guys, I'm new here, so I'm not sure if this fits, but I've been wrestling with the relationship between the State and religion, and I want to run a thought by you.
We all know this Western ideal: separation of church and state. But after years of living it, watching the news and trying to understand the friction, it seems to me that you don’t get constant, systemic conflict unless two powers are fighting over the exact same piece of "real estate." And that "real estate" is moral authority.
Here is the nuance I want to add, because I know the counter-argument: "The State doesn't care what you believe in your heart; it only cares about public compliance." I grant that completely.
But here is where the jurisdictional land-grab happens: The State doesn't just say, "We have a separate rule for public conduct." It says, "Your religious rule is invalid inside your own institutions, and you must comply with our civic moral code—even when operating your own schools, charities, and hospitals." That isn't two sovereigns coexisting; that is the State asserting ultimate supremacy over religious bodies.
Now, I agree that politicians and judges likely aren't malicious. They genuinely believe they are defending "progress," "equality," or "women's rights." They see themselves as liberators from "archaic dogma."
But functionally, aren't they establishing a new civic orthodoxy? The medieval Church defined orthodoxy and punished heterodoxy. The modern State does the same—except the "sin" isn't heresy; it's "discrimination," and the "punishment" is fines, loss of tax-exempt status, or closure.
Let me give a concrete example, carefully: In Europe, it is generally legal to teach your child at home, in private, that homosexuality is a sin according to your faith. However, if you run a state-funded religious school, the State will intervene to compel the curriculum to reflect civic values over religious ones. The State is not policing belief, but it is policing the public expression and institutional enforcement of that belief.
To me, that sounds less like "neutral arbitration" and more like a rival institutional power asserting its dominance over the moral code. I've read that conflict over legal jurisdiction is the academic gold standard for proving institutional rivalry.
So my ultimate question isn't "Is the State a religion?"—because clearly, it lacks the supernatural elements. Rather, my questions are:
"If the State claims ultimate jurisdiction over moral conduct even within religious institutions, does that make it functionally equivalent to an established 'civic church' in terms of political sovereignty? If so, how can religious groups negotiate this without capitulating entirely?
And isn't the State constantly changing its beliefs? By doing so, isn't it effectively admitting that it was wrong before—and that it will likely be wrong again? That makes me doubt whether it even cares about being objectively right at all, or whether it is just running social experiments on us. And if it is just experimenting, then isn't it essentially messing with society however it wants, without caring enough about the long-term consequences—even if its leaders have 'good intentions'? I mean, the society is pretty polrized in many things.
My model of religion and governance (laws, welfare, etc.) overlap but are ultimately different.
Abstractly, both religion and governance are a set of opinions (and speculations, and manners, and practices, etc.) that adherents follow. The difference is that religion is stricter but voluntary, while governance is more flexible but mandatory. Church is between government and individual: both impose their opinions for the individual's own good and that of others around them, but government's opinions are less tailored and more imposed (by consequences and physical force).
In simpler words: Church tells you how to live your life in detail, but there are multiple Churches and you choose one, then can ignore it without much consequence. Government tells you less (broadly-applicable rules, education, etc.) but you only have one, and better listen.
When I imagine government, I imagine things like laws/enforcement against murder and theft, welfare to provide bare-minimum necessities, education that is facts and widely-held opinions (like "don't murder or steal")...things that are widely-agreed-upon or can be justified by widely-agreed-upon axioms. When I imagine religion, I imagine more specific rules ("no sex before marriage"), specific prayers, specific celebrations (Christmas dinner), specific customs (crosses)...that aren't widely-agreed-upon or justified by widely-agreed-upon axioms (instead axioms like "divine beings said so"). Both are important: the lowest-common-denominator provided by government is necessary to prevent anarchy, but not sufficient for human flourishing, because most people need more tailored guidance, and a bit of coercion, than they can provide to themselves.
Everything described before is simultaneously managed by culture (even enforcement, informally). Religion is a culture given structure, while government is the intersection of many cultures, or a large culture, given structure.
Sure, there exist (or have existed) religions with minimal beliefs and Churches that carry out laws up to executing people; and laws that are personal and controversial and governments with minimal enforcement. There are (or were) places where Church is more of a government than the official government. There are Church-government hybrids. This is just how I define Church and government and imagine how they work, based on my perception of them in modern Western nations and how other define them.
When Church and government opinions overlap, the government's take priority. This is obviously true in practice, but also according to this model, because the government's opinions should be strictly more permissive; if Church is right and government is wrong, the government should be more flexible so it permits the Church.
Thanks for your answer—it made me realize something scary, though. You see the State as a neutral floor that permits religion to exist above it. But I actually see it as a moving ceiling. Because the State doesn't just stay at 'don't murder or steal'—it actively redefines what counts as acceptable public morality.
Today it says 'teach our civic values in your schools.' Tomorrow it says 'stop hiring based on your doctrines.' The day after, it says 'publicly stating your doctrine is hate speech.' Over time, that moving ceiling pushes religion out of the public square entirely, without passing an outright ban yet. Doesn't that become a slow jurisdictional takeover? Someday religion may be banned for limiting the State.
ChatGPT (or whatever LLM)'s metaphor is wrong. We both see the state as a floor, your concern is when the floor rises above the Church (and what's reasonable), i.e. the state's morality isn't flexible enough to permit Church doctrine.
When we talk about "state" we may refer to two separate things: the theoretical state with laws as they're written (which for most real nations isn't even coherent), or the physical state with laws as they're enforced. As previously said, religion is a set of opinions. The state can (theoretically) ban opinions from being practiced and discussed, but not the opinions themselves, and it's (physical) enforcement is limited.
Sure, in a 1984-esque state with total control and invasion of privacy, a religion will be physically destroyed (although the non-physical set of opinions will always exist, so it may be revived, maybe that's unlikely). Or perhaps a Brave New World-esque state may voluntarily convince the masses to abandon the religion, leaving it all-but-destroyed physically. But otherwise, in today's states (states without total control or persuasion, even Iran), a conflicting religion may at least survive by teaching its opinions (secretly, publicly covertly, publicly if allowed), even if they never get to be practiced; and they may be secretly practiced, moreso whenever the state becomes weaker, and eventually may influence the state so they become legal. Even the Aztec blood religion (although fortunately, a state today may be powerful enough to prevent them from actually carrying out any blood sacrifices).
More options
Context Copy link
It's actually worse than that.
Aztec blood sacrifice is a legitimate religion. How should freedom of religion operate for people who wish to adhere to that religion? The answer, speaking plainly, is that it doesn't and can't, right here and now, not in some hypothetical "someday" far in the future. If we have a significant population that wants to seize outsiders and rip their hearts out, there's no way we're going to be able to coexist with that population long-term. Nor is there any principled distinction between their claim to toleration of religious practice or mine; there is, in fact, no objective definition of "harm", and yet there is no way to maintain society without enforcement against those inflicting harm; this enforcement will be both necessarily subjective and entirely indispensable.
The logic of the First Amendment assumes that the range of religions is much narrower than the observable range of religions, just as it assumes that the range of ideologies and of values is much narrower than the observable range of ideologies and values. When you get out past the borders of the range it was built for, the logic it runs on simply stops working. The fact is that you cannot actually run even a minimally-cohesive society if your population is too values-diverse to cooperate.
The comment above yours is still filtered.
I think your point is the most valuable in several good posts in this subthread. The more pluralist a society becomes, the less classical liberalism works for it. But America of all places is kind of in a bind on that front. A change in immigration policy might help us stop digging the hole we're in, but even that much is outside the Overton window.
That's one of the fundamental questions on the American right at present: Does classical liberalism necessarily produce a level of pluralism it cannot survive?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link