Let’s take religion, particularly black religion in the United States. Once, during slavery, black religion was controlled by the slave master. In many cases, black preachers were "hired" to preach to black slave congregations. And, of course, the preaching they did reinforced slavery as Biblically mandated for the race. Ultimately, quoting Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses", internalized rage was deflected by a manipulated belief system which trained slaves to accept current conditions as their God-mandated lot in life--all from religous "leaders" who were bought and paid for by the slavemaster/plantation owner.
Hence, slave religion, as an institution created by slave masters, emphasized obedience to the master, as well as proclaiming that the black race was disfavored by God and it was predestined to forever be disfavored and enslaved. The modern version of slave religion emphasized acceptance of "mortal tribulations" in the form of earthly racism, lynching and second class citizenship, while "looking for the Promised Land" in another life.
In other words, "Don’t rock the boat black people. You are supposed to get the short end of the stick—God said so."
Now, along come folk like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his predecessors and followers who demanded from the pulpit that the United States live up to both the Constitution and the biblical admonition of charity, forgiveness and justice. Oh, my—people who demanded that Christians be Christians. What a radical concept.
Look at the history of the world and you will see dozens of cultures who manipulated religion to achieve social order. They knew what many of us have forgotten: religion is a powerful tool of social control and genocide.
For centuries, religion and religious teaching have been used to control blacks and Native Americans in the "New World." The ultimate marriage of church and state occurred in North America when the Canadian government created a church that was especially designed to "Christianize" Native people.
In 1925 "The United Church of Canada (was) created through an Act of Parliament, as a quasi-state church whose mandate (was) to "Christianize and Canadianize" all "immigrant" populations, including aboriginal people." ("Genocide in Canada: A Partial Chronology") For more than 100 years, Canadian aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their families and sent to reeducation camps masquerading as ‘residential schools.’
The Church was knee deep in the process, leading the way in a brutal re-education process which calumniate in the Natives losing the right to rear and raise their own children. By 1930, Native People in Canada had legal custody of their own children. "Legal guardianship over native children (was) transferred to the residential school Principal by the federal government, giving the Principal absolute control over the fate of (the) students."
At the time, Native parents were forced to sign over legal custody of their children to the state run religious schools—or face imprisonment. (Ibid) Hence, the malignant marriage of church and state combined to create a toxic monster of pseudo-education, which operated with impunity, without oversight, and with deadly consequences for Canadian Indians.
Under the banner of civilizing Native children with religion, church run schools became institutional hell holes, replete with massive outbreaks of tuberculosis, smallpox, abuse and venereal disease. The schools were so full of pestilence that one Indian School Superintendent wrote, "If I were given the task of wiping out every Indian in Canada, there is no finer instrument than your average Indian residential school." (Ibid)
In some schools, mortality rates were reportedly as high as 50%. Even worse, many diseased children brought more disease and death back to their villages when they returned home after a 10 year stint at the schools. As far as Canadian Indians and Native Americans are concerned, the marriage of church and state was nothing less than genocide. The trans-generational psychological damage inflicted on native children has manifested in later life as a variety of dangerous psychological consequences, including post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance abuse, sex abuse, suicide and homicide.
The dangerous mixture of church and state has already generated atrocities around the globe, including the above mentioned, church-run Indian re-education camps. Today, we find that a fair amount of Americans have jumped on this dangerous bandwagon once more, as long as their version of religion is the one sanctified and deemed "official."
For those who believe church and state should remain separate, for those who view flag desecration laws as a form of official idol worship, and for those whose religion promotes the welfare and well being of so-called outsider groups, "religious freedom" and our republilc are in great danger.
There is a pernicious, subtle movement of creeping religious corruption in the United States today. This is a movement which seeks to deify government and turn government symbols such as the flag into modern idols, whereby the failure to worship and "respect" such idols carries a civil penalty for ‘nonbelievers.’
One writer opines that ths has become a toxic movement in the nation, a movement "to criminalize "desecration" of the American flag", along with outlawing "criticism of the government with criticism of favored religions. (Austine Cline, "Criticism of the State is Blasphemy." The creeping blend of religion and government is a serious threat to the nation, a threat which the nation’s founders well understood.
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