Without God, It’s a Vicious Circle - (The Episcopal Ad Project)

"Where orthodoxy is optional orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed."
-Richard John Neuhaus

 "Nature abhors a vacuum."
-Aristotle

"The Lord is with you, while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will abandon you." -The Chronicler

"And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."
-Jesus Christ

Some of you will remember preparing for a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union upon the United States by hiding under your school desks practicing “Duck and Cover”. Today’s school children are learning to “Run, Hide, Fight.” Back in the day, the threat was from an enemy without. Today the threat is from a neighbor within. Nobody is destroying us, we are destroying ourselves. What is happening to us? There are a number of responses to this question, many with merit, most with counter-points, all without any sense of what to do about it or perhaps of even greater concern, no consensus on which to act.

I have my own point of view, which will not surprise you and which is not complicated: we are attempting to form a more perfect union without the leavening, unifying benefit of religion. We seem to have embarked upon a new project, that of creating a purely secular state. The effect of incessant Church vs. State decisions since the middle of the last century has been to effectively sideline or render religion impotent in its ability to effect its cementing magic on the body politic by banishing it from the public square. There’s plenty of religious freedom today but religion is now treated as a private, personal hobby not as a public, civic asset. If Jefferson were writing the Declaration of Independence today he would not be allowed to enter into the public discourse the idea that equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights conferred upon human beings by the Creator and not by the state and specifically not by King George!

Jefferson, by situating these unalienable rights as blessings deriving from the Creator, or transcendent reality, puts them beyond the reach of arbitrary human reasoning or action. By assuming that a Creator even exists, Jefferson sets out as the foundation for establishing national life, the notion that there are fundamental truths that are authoritative and accessible to human beings that are available to guide and shape the enterprise. Law and morality therefore proceed from a higher authority than what seems right to those in power, or in other words, might does not make right.

By religion, I mean and believe the Framers meant, what has been referred to as “civil religion”: the broad accommodating understanding that allows for vibrant religious diversity and even freedom from religion, but holds together in common cause and purpose a diverse people.

This shared consensus of the common good, largely shaped and undergirded by religious insights, the orthodoxy of our civic life, if you will, has collapsed and filling that void now is a radical individualism that is not answerable to any higher power other than the self.

The Chronicler of ancient Judah, writing after the experience of Babylonian exile offers his commentary on what happens when a nation, not an individual, abandons God. Our hope of course lies with Jesus Christ who promised never to leave us whether in times of plenty or scarcity, peace or war, joy or sorrow, righteousness or unrighteousness. In this season of repentance and renewal may we return to the One who has given us this heritage that we may be a people at peace with ourselves and a blessing to the other nations of the earth.