Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

This is great. The nerve this decision touched is Boston Tea Party strength.

There is a doctrine (true, standard-forming learning) in theology that the virtues and the civil laws aiming to foster them — for the welfare of all — occur only inside the matrix of Grace and cannot be adduced or made effective outside that matrix. A short-hand would be: morality is inside the religious function and none is outside that function. Even shorter-hand, Christian version: life is in Christ or not at all.

Comparable statements may be made from the discursive symbols of each of the other great religions.

From a theological point of view, Jefferson’s separation of church and state is the seed of the destruction of the Republic. The seed is a metaphor — and a merely silly one at that — and not in the Constitution. In numerous Supreme Court decisions over the past 50 years we have seen that seed sprouting, flowering and bearing more seed from which to replicate itself. This is not to be wondered at, given the nature of the seed, which, as it came to be used, may be compared to the seed of a noxious, invasive weed.

However, even Jefferson did not mean for the metaphor or seed to be used as it has been. Not himself a Christian, he nonetheless regarded himself as a religious man and he remarks and implies, as I recall more than a few times, the existence of morality as the basis of law and as occurring inside religion only.

The American Masons and Rationalists, among whom are Jefferson and most of the Founding Fathers, rejected the French Masonic/Enlightenment/Romantic assertion — Rousseau/Voltaire — that morality can stand outside religion. They did not want religious institutions receiving state support — this is in the Constitution, and rightly — but they were appalled by the silly argument of especially French Romantic Philosophy (Rousseau) that morality can be adduced from the nature of nature and/or the nature of man as we ordinarily see him. Thankfully they were, else we would have had The Terror here as well — and therefore never the country we have known.

Now we see The Terror coming our way, and in this decision, arriving clear and cold. The reaction is visceral and will be violent, unmindful and uncontrollable. Both Nazism and Communism are results of the assertion that morality can be adduced from outside religion. Structures like them are the necessary, unavoidable result of that assertion.

Anti-religionism (Liberalism) in this country has taken Jefferson’s metaphor of a wall separating church and state in a direction he did not intend and would not have sanctioned, to wit, arguing assiduously, one could say religiously, for over a century that a wall should separate religion from civil life and specifically civility, which, according to the argument, has law itself as its sufficient support and inducement.

As if! The argument really intends to marginalize religion into pariah status and thus extinction. The target is even more specific: it is Christians and their churches. Now, who would do such a thing? Answer: Judaism and Judaizing Chrstianity. Mr. Souter is numbered among the latter, as are the leaderships of all Protestant Denominations in this country, including the so-called “fundamental” ones. Only descendants of the left-wing of the Reformation — Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, etc. — and the leadership of the Roman Church — which inexorably promotes its own hegemonistic agenda vis-à-vis civil governments — hold fast the truth that morality and law exist inside religion or not at all. Regrettably, they also hold the untruth that morality and law exist inside Christian religion or not at all.

(Ecumenicity among the religions is the fully effective medication for intra-national and inter-national disruptions of the modern world. It is no more necessary for theologians and clergy to make claims of exclusive validity for their religions than it is for attorneys and judges to make beggars of beings or soldiers and police to make victims of prisoners. The model of ecumenical piety and propinquity is the Cadet Prayer of the United States Military Academy.)

There is a rough parallel to this recent decision, and the constellation of malicious intent which produced it, in the Germany of the 1920s. There in those days, people were unable to make their mortgage payments. Rather than accommodating the situation and helping all to pull together to carry on through the impossible burdens imposed by Clemenceau and Lloyd George, the mortgage bankers saw opportunity to own Germany and manifest sectarian hatred and so foreclosed on mortgages all over the country. (The first part of the word “mortgage” means death.) The reaction to that action was violent, unmindful and uncontrollable short of invasion by foreign powers.

There is no morality outside religion. Nor any effective — meaning, gratefully received — law, either. Law, of course, has no intrinsic power. Its power derives solely from a general agreement among its producers and beneficiaries that it does indeed make for their general contentment.

The relation between religion and culture is famously stated by Paul Tillich thus: Religion is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion.

Now a comparable attack has been mounted against the properties of American citizens by mortgage bankers in the name of morality outside religion, and specifically, morality as posited by attorneys and promulgated by judges. As the record consistently demonstrates, there is only one end for that process: Terror. Mr. Souter, a Judaizing Episcopalian, has been offered a fore-taste of it, a reaction to his action.

A new field for attorney employment has been opened: condemning private property! Trillions are to be made from it — until the shotguns start blasting away and the outraged reactions to them commence and demagogic leadership arises to pacify the situation.

There is no morality outside religion. Mr. Jefferson has been radically — and I would say maliciously — misrepresented. The truth is as Tillich says: Religion is the substance of culture, culture is the form of religion.

Update 1: Randy Barnett and Josh Blackman: The Next [Supreme Court] Justices

Update 2: The Wetumpka TEA Party

Update 3:
kevinstroup
Not believing in religion is not the same as not believing in God. You can be spiritual without being religious.

David R. Graham to kevinstroup
Well, Tillich is famous for saying that Christianity is the world’s great anti-religion religion.  I add Hinduism to that description, but that will be a bridge too far for many at this time.

Dragblacker to David R. Graham
I’m not sure I follow.  Does it mean that Christianity and Hinduism have elements in them that lead some people to eschew religion entirely?

David R. Graham to Dragblacker
Yes, that is what it means.  It also is in Hebrew Prophetism.  Religion is a means, not an end, much less the end.  Like all means, it is fraught with danger because it can lead either Godward or Godaway because there are right ways to be religious and wrong ways.  In fact, far more wrong ways than right ways.  Far, far more.  Religion is very dangerous in the absence of experienced and skilled guidance.  Religion (Latin re + ligare) means binding up that which has become unbound.  Once a body is repaired, its ligaments (ligare) grown or tied back together, it has no need for the doctor who or the procedures which repaired it.

Lawman45 to David R. Graham
Tillich is correct.  Christianity, shorn of the Elmer Gantrys of the world, is a great handbook to living in a large society.  Just remember that the substance is correct but all the rest is B.S.  And, as I learned at Notre Dame, the “Priests”, the “Rabbis”, and the “Ministers” are just ordinary folk who live life free off of the insecurities of others.

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA