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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   23721 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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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.

I think what we're seeing here is modern woke secularism is a religion that has adapted to American law around the separation of church and state, such that it is able to infest the perquisites of religion without being expunged by the court's religious protection pesticides. Wokeness is a religion in the sense of acknowledging an ultimate reality and seeking to answer metaphysical questions about life, the universe, and everything; but it avoids the legal American definition of religion and thus can seek to be enforced by laws and taught in schools and discussed directly in the workplace. It satisfies the need for religion without being a religion.

The separation of church and state fundamentally, but silently, assumed that we all had a church we were leaving behind when interacting with the state. The Founders assumed that each man had religious beliefs, likely a formal denomination, which answered questions about life, the universe, and everything and that we would all lay those disputes aside when interacting within government structures. The assumption was that our public schools would be secular, but that was ok because nobody in the room fully believed in what was being taught in that school, we were all setting aside and sacrificing some separate religious belief and finding common ground in the secular.

Wokies have in essence hacked the system, where Hindus and Jews and Christians and Buddhists and Muslims and prots and Catholics and Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons* all need to set aside their identity at the door and learn to accept secular stuff they don't actually believe, Wokies seek to impose their metaphysical understandings within the classroom and the office as orthodoxy. "Just being a decent person." Yeah, we're all trying to do that, and we all have different definitions.

This will ultimately require reworking the concept of freedom of religion.

*the Overton window of religious acceptability varied with the Founder in question and the era of the American Republic, Jefferson certainly in his writings at least fantasized about including hindoos and Mohamedans in the range of religions accepted in the land, but Missouri only rescinded the Mormon Extermination Order 50 years ago.

I've always liked James Buckley's thoughts on this matter.

  1. The undercurrent is an argument for Natural Law. Where do rights come from? Mutually-agreed upon rules isn't enough, that's just a fig leaf in front of tyranny.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington would ask, “Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths ….?” And in an opinion quoting the judicial oath of office, Justice Samuel Chase would write, “No position can be more clear than that all the federal judges are bound by the solemn obligation of religion, to regulate their decisions agreeably with the Constitution of the United States.”

  1. You want religiously minded people in positions of power because they take their faith seriously, and may be more consistent than a humanist-rationalist who might find new and inventive ways to weasel out of things.

When I took my oath of office as a federal judge, I solemnly swore that I would “administer justice … according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States.” The authority that was vested in me on taking that oath was derived exclusively from the Constitution. Thus the justice I was sworn to administer was not justice as I might see it in a particular case, but justice as it is defined by the Constitution and laws and legal traditions of our country. And if I consciously deviated from that body of law to do justice as I saw it, I would have violated my oath of office and undermined the safeguards embodied in the Separation of Powers.

  1. Religion governs personal behavior in ways that laws fundamentally cannot.

Thomas Cooley noted in his 1871 treatise on Con­sti­tu­tional Limitations, the Framers considered it entirely appropriate for government “to foster religious worship and religious instruction, as conservators of the public morals and values, if not indispensable, assistants to the preservation of the public order.” As that perceptive observer of the American scene, Alexis de Tocqueville, put it, “while the law allows the American people to do everything, there are things which religion prevents them from imagining and forbids them to dare.”

Wokeness is absolutely a (pseudo)religion in that it gives its believers a sense of being among the "elect" and "right" in the metaphysical sense. Where it falls woefully short, of course, is in its role as a cohesive and consistent worldview and moral compass. How do wokies deal with the very common idea of "You don't like thing x, but you have to do thing x as part of your job / role / responsibility?" They don't, the cry out "oppression!"

How do wokies deal with the very common idea of "You don't like thing x, but you have to do thing x as part of your job / role / responsibility?" They don't, the cry out "oppression!"

I wager most of them just get on and do it. We could also turn that around of course. Christians sometimes refuse to do their jobs and cry oppression (Kim Davis and gay marriage?), and often complain about being persecuted for their beliefs. So it goes. It's nothing to do with being a religion pseudo or otherwise, just that people who believe things strongly enough understandably may not want to violate their beliefs. And if forced to will often complain about it.

Nothing special about wokeness in that regard.

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