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An abundance of evidence suggests that *state subsidies* for organized religion result in weak leadership, a dull congregation and a dying society. Why do so many Christians, Jews and atheists put up with it?

There are some practices so superficially alluring yet destructive and habit-forming that they linger on for generations with little attention to the personal and public damage they cause. This essay makes a case for subsidized religion being one such a practice—with the common alternatives of militant nationalism or aggressive self-glorification being no better.

This writing will look at the evolution of how Christianity became so entangled with state power and refute the popular myth that American churches and other religious temples are “free” or “independent.” It will also address the undue influence of detached “academics” (religious and otherwise), the weak nature of such leadership, and attempt to offer some corrections to, astonishingly, roughly 18 or 19 centuries of creeping institutional rot that once again smothers the Western church and its secular imitators.

While researching and writing this piece, I re-visited a decent (largely anti-Christian) book from a mainstream scholar that provides two points I found worth including. The first point gives overdue attention to arguably a millennium of hospitable Christian-Muslim coexistence in Eastern civilizations—something Western theologians and neocon war-enthusiasts would rather forget. The second point refutes the teaching of “lost” Gospel fantasies that now permeate many college religious studies departments.

Notes on Writing Style

For starters, I’ll be attempting to cover significantly more relevant content than almost any *book* I can find on the subject with less than a tenth of the typical volume of words. That is to say, this essay is arguably too short for refuting nearly two millennia of intensive “academic” malpractice. But I will try my best.

The historically rare opportunity to bypass the FCC licensing cartel and the Legacy Media crowd—at one of America’s very few independent websites—is duly noted as well. A website with no ideological litmus tests, no reliance on corporate sponsors and no government stamp of approval is such a magnificent thing… well, I’m almost speechless. (Figuratively speaking)

For those expecting a diatribe of pure hostility towards Big Religion or whatever, I issue this trigger warning. I recognize the pattern among state-sponsored “professors” and self-appointed “experts” where any critical analysis of organized religion ends up being at least 99% negative. That tiresome neo-sophist style is not my intent here. However, to avoid going to the other extreme of pretending “everything is awesome” in the corporate church, I’ll settle for 5-10% of my material featuring positive influences of traditional religion, mainly towards the end of this piece. Along the way, I’ll throw in a few rebuttals to some popular conspiracies theories over basic theology of the early church; I’m counting that a “neutral” content, as in criticizing some unhinged critics. Ditto for some analyses of the overrated pagan “classical” period.

For a point of clarity, when I use the word “academics” in quotation marks it refers to the collection of subsidized stage preachers, classroom teachers, book-enthusiasts, conflict avoiders, and pro-government and/or pro-business apologists who usually bear no resemblance to independent scholars. Such “academics” also bear little resemblance to the original thinkers of Plato’s Academy from whence that lofty term has been misappropriated. Beyond those general flaws, religious “academics” have for centuries shown an overwhelming bias towards Greek ideals of philosophy and reason (as fits their subsidized worldview) with little or no need for God, justice, mercy, kindness, charity, compassion, truth, wisdom, progress or anything of actual human value. The results of such “academic” pursuits have been so abysmal that mainline Christian denominations are virtually DEAD in Europe and are rapidly moving in that direction in North America. And the secular “academic” culture around us has gone completely mad.

For those who make it to the latter third of this essay, you may notice that I’m not a fan of the Name & Shame routine that’s popular among some professional agitators. For the more hostile theological experts that I will be citing a few times, I prefer to deal with their puzzling statements and avoid giving free advertising to people who probably don’t deserve it.

Regarding the phrase “self-worship,” the term doesn’t literally mean bowing down and saying prayers to yourself. It just means elevating your personal opinions and self-image beyond the opinions and images of others. It usually involves forcibly imposing those opinions on unwilling victims and inevitably leads to personal attacks on outsiders to injure their image relative to yours.

Since the term “self-worship” is still foreign to mainstream circles, I’ll elaborate a bit. One example of this behavior includes “academic” racketeers who exalt themselves with honorific titles like “doctor” and “professor” etc. in open disregard of Constitutional prohibitions on any state-granted titles. Another example is the “Publish or Perish” ritual of colleges and universities where school administrators push their staffs to publish (often cryptic) research articles in any of the 28,000 English-language “scholarly peer-reviewed journals” to boost school prestige while padding the resumes of people who can’t point to any lifetime accomplishments. Hollywood elites get into the game with annual self-promotion ceremonies to celebrate their own awesomeness and remind the public just how blessed we are to have them around. Pouring truckloads of gasoline onto that bonfire of narcissism, the fairly recent explosion of “woke” gender-sexual-racial-military-gun fetish “identity” cultures all point in the direction of self-glorification, even if their participants are too dull to realize it.

In hindsight, a condition of self-worship is probably inevitable for any culture that embraces the notion of self-governance. People who still cling to the latter will probably never admit to believing the former.

I will stress that this essay is not a screed against any traditional belief system, including any of the major monotheistic religions. Smug, sneering and mocking attacks on monotheistic beliefs (e.g., Christianity, Islam and Biblical Judaism) are so common in Western culture that another such venture would hardly warrant the effort. My focus here is on the poor excuses for and harmful outcomes of mingling personal belief with the brute force of government.

One would hope that any reasonable Christian, Jew, Muslim or atheist should be able to find common ground that no religion should be subsidized. But as of today, it appears that this position is extremely unpopular—at least among public intellectuals of any significance.

Unwritten Rules of Modern Churches

To begin with a snapshot of where mainstream corporate religion stands on core teachings across a broad spectrum of Protestant, Catholic and Jewish congregations in the U.S., I’ll take the liberty to summarize, to the best of my ability, what I have learned in my 5+ decades of life in direct involvement or close proximity (via marriage, school and work) to all three of those bolded entities. For exposure to pagan and self-worshipping cultures, I endured the standard 17 years (K through college) of indoctrination from government schools in New York; 30+ years of witnessing various corporate management styles in the private sector should help there as well.

For purposes of this essay, I will be identifying as a non-practicing atheist. Membership in ((certain groups)) does offer some advantages. Avoiding the vulgar Us vs. Them mentality, to the greatest extent possible, is also important.

For this initial task, I’ll attempt to use more candid language than most modern clergy—nearly always scholarly mumblers and book-thumpers with no real-world experience—are willing to risk. Ten predominant themes of Western subsidized religion can be summarized as such:

God wants me to build a castle. And he wants you to pay for it.
– paraphrase of any Stage Preacher/Priest/Rabbi on any given Saturday or Sunday

God wants me to be elevated and amplified. And he wants you to sit still and be quiet.
– same

Turning religion into a business is a great idea. Turning it into a centrally

managed behemoth is even better. – same (HQ-franchise model)

As the neutered mascot of this Church of the One Commandment, feel free to join us in celebrating all forms of stealing, killing and coveting. Your idols and addictions are safe here as well. Just don’t have sex with the wrong person. – same

I’m on a mission from God to preach to believers. I reject all forms of teaching that involve spontaneous discussions. I also renounce all efforts for financial independence—such as working in the marketplace. The people I’m lecturing will provide all my financial needs. And it won’t involve pandering. – same (also secular Left/Right “sponsor me” cucks)

Real bombs, Yes! F-bombs, No!
– conservative Preachers, particularly on Sundays preceding the 4^th of July or Memorial Day

We’re ashamed of the Gospel. Seriously. Leave that ‘evangelism’ crap to those vulgar upstarts.

– Old Guard mumbling pietists and corporate stooges

Everyone hates us… for no reason whatsoever!

Only OUR suffering is worthy of remembrance.

– Reformed Judahite synagogues and Jewish Pride groups

Friends of Israel: March to battle, kill the sand-Negro! (Just don’t use the N-word)

– Zionist Churches, particularly in the Deep South and federal broadcasters

It’s not stealing, it’s a program. Forced sharing is pleasing to God.
– liberal Preachers, particularly in the Deep North and federal broadcasters

A central theme of the above teachings could be reduced to the profound but unspoked assumption that: “I’m special, I deserve special treatment.” (The presumed entitlement behind this massive favor leads to the arrogance, along with the eventual blindness, that now celebrates much of the West’s cultural decline.)

If there’s a Christian or Jewish congregation in America that rejects any five or more of those ridiculous themes—and makes a passable attempt to hold to Biblical teaching—it would be generous to call them extremely rare. But of course, subsidized religious idiocy and associated problems don’t stop there.

As a long-time church member (three decades in upstate New York, 4 years in Nashville, and the last 15 years in the suburbs of Dallas) I’ve often wondered: how is it that we’ve come to a point where rampant debt-servitude is tolerated ($103 trillion and rising), blind faith in governing officials is expected and supported by a daily loyalty oath at schools and mandatory hymns before sporting events, unprovoked violence against defenseless third-world nations is openly encouraged, organized theft is celebrated and official policies of divisive double standards are the norm?

Despite the fact that all those harmful actions are expressly anti-Biblical (or in the case of debt slavery, just strongly discouraged), all those attitudes are common inside the church today and have been for many decades. Outside, in the secular world, the chaos is even worse. But since Christians are generally held to a higher standard and are expected—even by their harshest critics—to provide some attempt at ethical guidance, I’ll focus today on the misdeeds of the church and the many opportunities for improvement.

As noted, this essay is not at all a broadside against religion itself. However, I will briefly touch on alternative religions as well as the myth that pagans and “atheists” don’t have (often fanatical) levels of faith that many wish to impose on others.

Instead, I’ll be focusing on the widespread corruption and paganistic drift of the New Testament religion—once the basis of Western civilization—that modern clergy and participants have allowed to fester far too long. (Similar conclusions could arguably be made about the Talmudic Theocracy in New Israel—which bears remarkably little resemblance to classical Jewish culture—but that is largely outside the scope of this writing.)

Since America (as of 2010) had about 345,000 religious congregations with 151 million members, I think it’s in everyone’s interest to gain a better understanding of how traditional believers (who founded and built America, Europe and much more) apply their faith in the real world. I have no intention of questioning the object of any traditional faith; it’s the weak application that will be critically analyzed today.

Which brings us to my first observation on the colossal void of logic when it comes to public discussions of religion. Deep thinkers and demagogues alike—of all backgrounds and beliefs—simply will NOT touch the subject of subsidized religion, even if they profess to despise all forms of traditional theology. For starters…

I’ve searched through hours of statements by each of these prolific and powerful individuals and can’t find ONE acknowledgement that Western religion is subsidized by the government, much less any criticism of that arrangement.

At minimum, any reasonable person should recognize the official silence on subsidized religion as an enormous red flag that should prompt greater attention. The idea that tax-grabbing extremists who usually hate “religion” suddenly get bashful when it comes to taxing extravagant religious temples is yet another tip off. (I’ll again note the futility of America’s left/right “sponsor me” crowd on these crucial points and that loss of independence is a killer. For now, I’ll defer my comments on the immense problems associated with political favoritism that render the corporate church largely impotent—as its detractors prefer—and have corroded Western culture to a level approaching catastrophic meltdown.)

One might hope that traditional Christians in particular would recognize subsidized theology as a warped imitation of legitimate faith and a mockery of the concept of “freedom of religion” that Americans supposedly cherish. As arguably the single biggest public policy issue over the last two millennia—causing countless wars and suffering when handled poorly; uplifting society from centuries of pagan squalor, liberating the West from theocratic domination and sparking the original European development of North America when handled more gracefully—much rides on getting it right here. But since the “academic” takeover of the Western Church many centuries ago, questioning the taboo of subsidized religion remains off-limits.

Although the two gentlemen in the lower right corner pictured above (Jordan Peterson and Alex Jones) would normally be classified in the conservative camp, I included them here to be inclusive and also because those figures are rare examples of outspoken Men of the Right with the guts to say something original. Yet I can’t find any instance of either man acknowledging or criticizing religious subsidies. I could easily have cited hundreds of regime conservatives (literally all of them) who steadfastly embrace government support of religious institutions, but are too dense or too dishonest to admit that in public. And I think those are major problems—both the stupidity and the subsidies that encourage lying for a living.

Weak Excuses for Subsidized Religion: Distract, Deny, then Fully Apply

Since the topic of subsidized religion has huge ramifications—and is defended by religious conservatives, garbled by liberty zealots and avoided by timid liberals—some elaboration seems necessary. And I’ll begin with the narrative of the status quo.

For a standard viewpoint on subsidized religion (to the extent that anyone is willing to touch it) we have some academics who insist that tax breaks are entirely different than subsidies. Two such libertarian thinkers are Laurence Vance and Joseph Salerno (link below). Both make weak arguments of circular rhetoric, essentially that… government grants of special benefits are not a “subsidy” because subsidies are bad; “tax breaks” on the other hand are good because any effort to starve the Beast of Government must be good.

This wildly simplistic logic, couched in rambling essays, overlooks the enormous problems of official favoritism and divisive double standards that happen to be driving the nation into turmoil. As discussed towards the end of my previous essay, I cannot find ONE person who publicly says anything along the lines of: I support universal rights applicable to everyone and oppose all forms of political favoritism. Political favoritism is just too entrenched, including among conservatives who supposedly disdain government interference.

Any decent historian or religious scholar should be well acquainted with Biblical teachings on the troubles of both practices (differing weights and measures denounced as “detestable” and “abhorrent,” along with the “perversion” and “evil” of favoritism) not to mention the pridefully blinding result of such favor. But leashed “academics” are only allowed to stray so far.

Loyal members of the Church of One Commandment still insist that strongly condemning language (detestable, abhorrent, perversion, evil) is only used in the Bible for certain unapproved sexual practices. This cowardly pandering to inherently conformist—and overwhelmingly married, heterosexual—audiences has increased hostilities, dulled countless minds, and vastly amplified divisive favoritism within our culture. (For what it’s worth, the best political commentary I’ve ever seen on the topic of homosexuality comes from a Russian Christian who identifies as The Saker. Besides his astute “sad/gay” observation, he makes a case for the East’s more tempered approach to sexual deviance as compared the West’s cruel decision to imprison people for private sexual activity.)

Support for subsidized theology is so prevalent among Western religious professionals, as well as secular institutional leadership, that most don’t bother to question or defend it. To the vast majority of Western elites, subsidized religion is merely a fact of life—as universal as death and taxes and as easily triggered as a college student. The two gentlemen cited above (and two more mentioned below) should be given credit for at least having the guts to publicly defend their views, even though I disagree with them.

Mr. Vance—who frequently makes valid arguments against the madness of war, federal drug prohibition and racial revenge—attempts to burnish his politicized religious arguments by invoking the spirit of “libertarianism’s greatest theorist, Murray Rothbard.” Vance echoes his hero and says that all “Taxation is theft. It is theft on a grand scale.”—statements that are foolish and make libertarians look like anti-government extremists. (Even if you strip government down to the legitimate positions of public safety and resolving disputes as a last resort among opposing parties, there is still an administrative cost to that. Ditto for protecting essential property rights and enforcing legal contracts that most libertarians hold dear.)

Mr. Vance clarifies his ideological position in a piece titled: “We Need More Tax Credits and Loopholes.” Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute adds more libertarian orthodoxy, beginning a 2015 post with the declaration: “The position that a tax exemption is a subsidy has always been wrong.”

Mr. Salerno also furnishes lengthy quotes (not reproduced here) of his revered polemicist, Murray the Great, to boost his case. Rothbard’s anti-government fixation led to his belief that any tax break inevitably hurts the State (which is false, since division empowers the State), thus all tax breaks are always “good” (more anti-government fundamentalism).

Both Rothbard and Salerno fail to grasp that: All tax breaks as well as subsidies are a “special grant of privilege,” otherwise they would be universal to everyone. (Rothbard and Salerno claim that the “special grant of privilege,” which they deem as pure evil, only applies to their narrow definition of direct government payments. People who work at tax-favored “non-profit” institutions tend to think that way.)

From any common-sense application in the real world, the special privilege aspect is much more broad, thus more unpopular to criticize. This is true whether the tax deduction is granted to a large swath of wealthy homeowners at the expense of poor renters, given to land-hoarding and water-wasting rural farmers at the expense of urban and suburban citizens, showered on flamboyant castle-church isolationists or applied via thousands of narrow loopholes to a phalanx of corporate lobbyists. Tax breaks and subsidies are always divisive, as they expressly favor one group over the rest of society. (The “moral hazard” of subsidizing wasteful practices is yet another issue.)

All four of the above experts (and everyone else I can find) fail to explain the functional difference between a “tax break” and a “subsidy” for the following real world scenario that so many conservative ideologues choose to ignore. For example, consider these two options for a modest $10 million dollar church or temple that would normally be assessed at a 2% property tax levy:

1. $10 million dollar church is initially treated like everyone else, pays $200,000 in annual property taxes, then gets a $200,000 government check to offset the taxes. This would be viewed as a “subsidy.”

2. $10 million dollar church is treated like royalty, gets a secretive tax exemption, pays nothing, no money exchanges hands. This is supposedly a “tax break.”

How is Option A any different than Option B? In both cases, the church pays no property taxes. But in Option B (our current situation), the special favor is kept quiet and the smugness is allowed to fester in darkness. Option B (favoritism, secrecy, etc.) is what professional libertarians and conservatives prefer. So do approximately 100% of federal politicians—including many God-hating Democrats—an obvious red alert for anyone paying attention. Politicians want corporate religious groups dependent on government favor. Unfortunately, most religious leaders and their bamboozled congregations agree to go along with that bargain.

The additional federal tax benefits/interference for IRS-approved “501(c)(3)” religious bodies since 1954 may have accelerated the decline of the American church, as conservative pastor Chuck Baldwin and a few others have claimed. But government meddling into church affairs didn’t start there. Not even close.

The common defenses for special treatment use arguments like the “government knows that church organizations provide valuable social and religious benefits to the community” and other similar statements, which are pure fantasy. The Deep State hates Christianity so greatly that its acolytes have turned the phrase ‘Jesus Christ!’ into a common curse.

California progressives even used the Corona virus as an excuse to shut down churches (but not strip clubs), while the L.A. Dodgers showed that religious hatred is welcome at big league baseball. Back in 1993, the D.C. Death Cult mercilessly attacked a peaceful group of Christians in Waco, Texas—something they would never attempt to Jews in NYC or Muslims in other cities—then projected their own derangement onto the victims with widespread taunts of the dead “cult” members. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau called recent church arsons “unacceptable” but “fully understandable.” Across the pond, bigotry towards Christianity is now official policy in Britain and considered fashionable in Germany; but Europe got a long head start on these matters.

Furthermore, any legitimate church or charity can survive without a government stamp of approval. The supreme arrogance of seeking special governmental favor and the blinding fear of ever losing such benefits—thus having to contend with “vulgar upstarts” in the open marketplace—are a much bigger problem, as many centuries of subsidized church folly should make apparent.

An even greater absurdity emotes from some conservative Christians who still fuss about “separation of church and state” and often advocate more government intrusion into spiritual matters. These groveling clowns fail to grasp that the imperial headquarters of Washington, London, Paris, Moscow, Rome and elsewhere fiercely despise any expression of independent faith. They always have and always will. If misguided conservatives had any historical bearing or a shred of financial integrity they might realize that separation of church and state exists to protect religious liberties, not to protect the state from too much religious influence.

Of course, far greater government interference infects the secular religion presented as “education.” Government funding of K-12 classroom instruction totaled a whopping $905 billion with another $420 billion spent to control college indoctrination for FY2023. Episodes of extreme intolerance involving the latter institution are chronicled daily by groups like Campus Reform and The College Fix—above and beyond the tyranny of routine self-censoring. I would think it logical and consistent to reject both the slow poison of religious subsidies and the rapid-onset-dementia of educational subsidies. But I realize that such viewpoints rarely go together.

I count it as small progress that in April 2022 a few liberty warriors woke up to the nature of some corporate tax breaks… at least when left-wing companies like Disney and LGBTQ politics are involved.

But that still leaves some huge loopholes for the original “woke” corporation, namely organized religion.

The Best of Pagan Culture

To provide some balanced perspective to what has so far been predominantly critical analysis of corporate Church bureaucracy, I’ll switch over to the “secular” side of history. For some reason, the failures of atheistic and pagan societies have largely been excused, and often praised, in Western “academia” despite the repressive and violent nature of those cultures over many millennia.

I’ll start with a look at the best of secular achievements, as picking on the worst of pagan dysfunction would be too easy. Let’s keep in mind that it took roughly 300 years (or 15 generations) and many cycles of extreme duress for Western Christianity to go off the rails for an extended period of time, most noticeably starting with Emperor Constantine in the 4^th century. The dreadful “crusades,” which many still anguish over, began centuries later.

In ancient Greek culture, it took only three generations for followers of its most enshrined teacher, Socrates, to descend into the blood-thirsty psychosis of megalomania. His star pupil, Plato, went on to set up a free Academy and taught Aristotle, among others. Aristotle drifted considerably and accepted payment to tutor political prince Alexander “the Great,” the mass-murderer and serial rapist who tried to take over the world. So one can conclude that the intellectual yet hollow teachings of Socrates and Plato leave something to be desired. Yet their big thoughts and empty rhetoric are still admired by many who think and talk for a living.

As to the alleged glory of the “classical” Greek and Roman Empires, their modest literacy rates and intellectual openness coincidentally (or perhaps by design) helped develop and spread the Christian gospel in its early centuries. But the combined Roman Republic and subsequent Empire—while commendable on protecting property rights and creating a stable currency for a while—did rather little during its nearly ten centuries of dominance (509 B.C. to 476 A.D.) to promote equal application of law or individual rights. Evidence of actual scientific progress is also sparse… unless you give inordinate credit to rambling speeches, mindless sports fanaticism, mid-quality concrete, gravity water conveyances and stone arches (as many folks do). It’s often forgotten that the Roman Republic and Empire both had widespread slavery and extremely cruel senses of justice, harsh treatment of women and children, along with their relentless habits of imperial warfare against weaker neighbors. Hardly what any rational person would call “classic.”

Where Christianity eventually recovered from the 1300s to 1500s and went on to build virtually all that is the Western culture of prosperity, enlightenment and personal freedoms of speech/worship/assembly, pagan society never again contributed anything of significant value in those bolded areas. Putting aside Hollywood, mass media and university glamorization of Anything-but-Christian (ABC) cultures—the more submissive and impoverished, the better, in their view—can we honestly name one majority “atheist” or pagan culture that has amounted to anything but servility or madness?

Imperial Japan, with its polytheistic culture of Shintoism and reverence towards ancestors, was probably the closest thing to sustained growth, up until the recent ascent of China. But their militant nationalism, grueling work ethic and smothering conformity would not please many Westerners if they had the option to live there.

India, also polytheistic, was (and in many ways still is) a fractured mess to put it nicely, before semi-Christian British authorities infused a common language, extensive infrastructure upgrades, healthcare advances and educational systems, albeit with much unnecessary abuse. To this day, millions of wealthy and middle-class Indians use class warfare and licensing gimmicks to exploit poor “untouchables” as their cooks, drivers and cleaning servants. (Tribal hatred of *only Britain* by Indian nationalists denies any benefit whatsoever from Western influence, just as they conveniently omit prior Indian subjugation under the oppressive Muslim Mughals from roughly 1526 to 1757. Western isolationists selectively operate under the rubric of “anti-imperialism” only when it involves anything too European.)

After a promising start a few thousand years ago followed more recently by zealous isolationism and many centuries stagnating in poverty, China now stands as arguably the greatest example of human progress in the entire world. Two important ingredients that get almost zero credit from mainstream pundits: 1) China’s growing underground church of many millions that provides a calming stability while challenging its lingering culture of honor and shame, and 2) its wise rejection of the divisive influence of “democracy.” A third and somewhat mutually beneficial “gift” from formerly Christian nations to China would be the trillions of dollars in local investments and technology transfers, which many hypocritical Western corporatists denounce as “IP theft.” Regarding the Chinese Renaissance of today, the alternative explanation that communism really works will no doubt be preferred by those still enthralled by the Cult of Mao.

Even the more intelligent assessments of China’s stunning growth usually overlook all of the above plus seven additional benefits to prosperity (most of which are consistent with Biblical teaching, it just so happens) namely: 4) being free from devastating union fascism that cripples productivity, 5) being free from the racial revenge industry of poisoning political favoritism, 6) being free from the anti-growth mentality of mindless eco-zealotry (which cares little about real pollution), 7) being free from the crushing hyper-legalism of the lawfare industry that attacks productive enterprise, 8) being free of the extreme feminist aversion to male leadership, 9) being free from public displays of “woke” cultural suicide, and 10) encouraging intact families by rejecting the lure of “social security”—all traits that currently suck the life out of Western populations.

One common thread that linked Japan, India and China—long before any Christian influence—was that none of those enduring civilizations showed any significant evidence of self-worship. With the possible exception of Indian Brahmins, the aura of the supreme individual is an overwhelmingly Western invention. So is the off-shoot of LGBTQ+ sexual identity dysphoria—an alleged proof of “progress” that some wish to export eastward.

Mighty Europe, the jewel of civilization from roughly the 1500s up until World War 1, was a primitive hoard of tribal foraging before the Roman Catholic Church and later the Eastern Orthodox Church—in their more vibrant and tolerant years—brought life-affirming vision, hope and purpose to millions. (Prior Roman occupation and Muslim culture in some areas probably left some positive influences as well.)

By a similar vein, any objective person—regardless of one’s view of Zionism or Talmudic teachings—should be impressed by the stunning economic growth of New Israel in comparison to its impoverished fundamentalist neighbors. (Most rich Arab leaders today owe their wealth to the free inheritance of vast oil deposits which are extracted and refined overwhelmingly by foreign contractors and European “colonists.”) Along with the previous paragraphs on unrecognized Christian influences, the wildly hostile attitudes for and against modern Israel reveal a major folly of our time.

Hatred of Israel is so great that everyone from Christian nationalists like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn to “anti-religious” ideologues give a free pass to the abject failure of subsidized “Orthodox” Christianity in Russia circa 1917 and blame The Jews, The Jews, The Jews for Russia’s spectacular collapse and pretty much everything else wrong with Western culture. In turn, some Zionists exploit this hatred to promote fantasies of their own suffering, endless wars in the Middle-East, cruel treatment of Palestinians and bewildering claims that everyone hates us… just because we’re awesome and they’re evil.

Over in the pagan world, well into the 1600s or in some cases the 1800s, common cultures seen across North and South America, parts of Africa and Asia consisted of subsistence agriculture, not a hint of science, not a single page of written literature, no personal liberties… but lots of “wise elders” and “proud warriors” if you listen to PBS and similar types that seem distinctly anti-progress and uniquely bigoted against Christianity.

To be sure, cultural evolution is slow and always challenging. And expanding nations governed by subsidized Christians, Jews and Muslims have often been apathetic or cruel to less-advanced natives. Also worth noting, none of the Western “successes” cited above suggest the superiority of the people involved—an easy mistake made by some on the “winning” side of history.

But there seems to be a general correlation between devout religious attitudes and cultural enlightenment. That is, a healthy “fear of the Lord” leads to actual progress, where idol worship and self-love lead to the debilitating “fear of man,” blindness, bitterness and rage now gripping the West.

Worst Kept Secret in Western Christianity: The 4^th Century Political Takeover

If genuine paganism has its shortcomings, Christianity infused with pagan idols and relics doesn’t do much better. When it comes to independent faith communities morphing into subsidized religious sects and then the complete madness of the Dark Ages—which again threatens us today—the digression didn’t happen all at once. And it wasn’t caused by only external pressures.

The early church of the late 1^st century A.D. through the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries had already given far too much power to “academic” officials (Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Origen, etc.) who pushed other sincere believers to the sidelines. While all of these men were primarily sophists, the theologian Origen (who lived mainly in Alexandria, Egypt) stands out for special recognition. Wikipedia’s positive account of Origen (185 – 253 A.D.) states:

He was a prolific writer who wrote roughly 2,000 treatises in multiple branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, homiletics, and spirituality. He was one of the most influential and controversial figures in early Christian theology, apologetics, and asceticism. He has been described as “the greatest genius the early church ever produced.”

… Origen was able to produce a massive quantity of writings because of the patronage of his close friend Ambrose of Alexandria, who provided him with a team of secretaries to copy his works, making him one of the most prolific writers in all of antiquity.

In short, Origen (and others like John “golden-mouthed” Chrysostom and Augustine after him) were subsidized shills who loved to dazzle their sponsors, other deep thinkers and timid commoners with exhausting flourishes of empty rhetoric that lulled people into submission. These “academic” quibblers unwittingly sabotaged the early church by inventing the particularly toxic and non-Biblical divide of professionals and amateurs (clergy vs. laity), concocted strict “ordination” processes (more on that later), and started infusing pagan superstitions of mystical “relics” and other sacred objects.

Then when Emperor Constantine in 313 A.D. gave Christians a reprieve from frequent persecution—with his Edict of Milan that legalized Christianity—church leaders eagerly took the bait to partner with worldly power. After Constantine (a brutal warlord and life-long practitioner of sun-worship and other magic) got directly involved with ordering church affairs over the next few decades, Christianity would degenerate into something unrecognizable from its first century roots. Subsidized religious officials gave little opposition to his imperial meddling.

From a multitude of available accounts of this politicized church transition, I’ll quote one concise mainstream scholar, Bruce Shelley, Professor of Church History at the Denver Theological Seminary. His book Church History in Plain Language (3^rd Ed.) states (emphasis added):

The Emperor Constantine is one of the major figures of Christian history. After his conversion Christianity moved swiftly from the seclusion of the catacombs to the prestige of palaces. The movement started the fourth century as a persecuted minority; it ended the century as the established religion of the empire. Thus, the Christian Church was joined to the power of the state and assumed a moral responsibility for the whole society. To serve the state, it refined its doctrine and developed its structure. (page 89)

Professor Shelley, who is comfortably on the side of subsidized religion, continues:

The advantages for the church were real enough, but there was a price to pay. Constantine ruled Christian bishops as he did his civil servants and demanded unconditional obedience to official pronouncements, even when they interfered with purely church matters. There were also the masses who now streamed into the officially favored church. Prior to Constantine’s conversion, the church consisted of convinced believers. Now many came who were politically ambitious, religiously disinterested, and still half-rooted in paganism. This threatened to produce not only shallowness and permeation by pagan superstitions but also the secularization and misuse of religion for political purposes.

By 380, rewards for Christians had given way to penalties for non-Christians. In that year the emperor Theodosius made belief in Christianity a matter of imperial command. … Church buildings in the Christian empire were carefully designed to emphasize the new hierarchy of Christ and emperor. (pages 96-97)

As for the ruler Theodosius who tried to mandate some version of Christianity, he was the same guy who—in retaliation for a local uprising in Thessalonica that killed one of his officials—had his guards seal off a stadium of 7,000 innocent spectators and slaughter all of them in revenge.

Regarding the great Christian thinker of that era, Augustine (whose government job as a teacher of rhetoric allowed him time to write the 22-volume City of God), Professor Shelley has this to say:

His defense of the Catholic church in the Donatist controversy also led Augustine to support the use of force in the suppression of the rivals. Initially he was strongly opposed to coercion. But step by step he came to another view. …What looks like harsh action, he said, may bring the offender to recognize its justice. Had not the Lord himself in the parable said, “Compel people to come in” (Luke 14:23)? Thus, Augustine’s prestige was made available for those in later ages who justified the ruthless acts of the Inquisition against Christian dissenters. (page 128)

I’ll stress that this professor’s account is nothing new or controversial. For a more balanced (less generous) history of 4^th century political interference, one can see books like Organic Church by Neil Cole or anything in that genre.

Of course, no shortage of “traditional” church intellectuals still cling to a narrative that Emperor Constantine’s extensive political interference was an absolute blessing to the worldwide church, where Christians “emerged from the catacombs, triumphant, a light unto the pagans.” This type of tribalist fantasy appeals to people who yearn for political favor and earthly power, no matter how deadly the results.

The “academic” drift of the early Western church—led by babbling sophists with spiritually immature crowds of passive followers—made it susceptible to political enticements for worldly power in the 4^th century. In the weakened state of subsidized (corrupt) religion, Western culture was so confused and defenseless that illiterate nomadic barbarians would soon overpower it with little effort.

What came next was the Sacking of Rome in 410 and the Fall of the Roman Empire in 476. After those disasters, the Western world entered an extended period of Dark Ages where education and art collapsed, skilled trades largely vanished, science was non-existent, and the condition of life was both squalid and short. (It should be noted that pagans and atheists had ample opportunities to organize and provide better leadership during that chaotic period, yet did nothing constructive to fill the power vacuum.)

During the many dreadful centuries afterwards, the Corporate Church of the West would develop levels of intolerance that first led to dubious condemnations and expulsions, then eventually tens of thousands killed or tortured (and millions terrorized) for bogus claims of “heresy” (i.e., challenging the absolute truth of any Church teaching). Meanwhile, the general public endured centuries of suffering until independent scholars and workers like Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, William Tyndale, Jan Huss, Martin Luther and thousands of their supporters would sacrifice much to reestablish a better understanding of Christian teachings and help society slowly climb out of that pit of misery.

The only real debate on the post-313 A.D. politicization of Christianity amongst modern church officials (Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant) is whether the political intrusion was overwhelmingly good (with minor inconveniences) or entirely great. And the craziest part of all, the same clergy who express some reservations over the political intrusions still practice many forms of imperial religion, with all of its culture-killing, anti-Biblical traditions.

Epic Failures of Subsidized Religion

While the Fall of the Western Roman Empire had many contributing factors—such as monetary debasement, a bloated welfare state, moral decadence, barbaric invasions, etc.—at least two elements stand out for both their lasting importance and their ongoing lack of attention. Elsewhere throughout recorded history, the decline of one great empire had always led to the rise of other(s)—Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, etc. before Rome; Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French, Russian, German, British, and American in more recent times. But the 5^th century fall of Rome was unique.

Only in the case of the imperial Church of the Rome did there exist such a void of stable power and condition of widespread calamity, known appropriately as the Dark Ages, when past cultural advances went into reverse in terms of education, science, architecture, commercial trade and anything resembling human rights. And the darkness lasted for seven or eight grueling centuries.

A second perplexing factor is that—despite abundant evidence of church-state interference under emperors Constantine and Theodosius—even atheists (and of course church officials) give subsidized religion a nearly absolute free pass for their heavy-handed meddling. Without a hint of irony or disapproval, atheist college professor Kevin MacDonald makes the incredible claim: “I have never seen a scholarly argument that the institutionalization of the Catholic Church contributed importantly to the fall of the Empire.”

I’ve searched and can find only one such argument, based on atheist economist Doug Casey’s review of Edward Gibbon’s classic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire first published in 1776. Assuming Mr. Casey’s summary is correct—claiming that Gibbon credits “Christianity” (with no mention of subsidies) as a major factor in Rome’s fall, that is still a rather old and vague account. Wikipedia’s page on Edward Gibbon cites numerous experts that discount Christian influence in Rome’s decline and contradict Casey’s assessment of Gibbon’s views. (I’m more interested in why civilization languished for so long and less concerned about why the Roman Empire fell. I can’t find anyone who has addressed this important question. But I can find many opinion pieces about Islamic mathematicians who for 12+ centuries were just moments away from realizing nuclear fusion and why the Dark Ages were actually rather splendid.)

Moving along to the subsidized Church of France… whatever benefit that may have transpired from its allegiance to Roman Christianity since 800 A.D. doesn’t come close to outweighing the centuries of abuse inflicted by Vatican legions soaking the public for Papal glory. For instance, the previously cited Protestant professor and author, Bruce Shelley, gushes that: “Between 1170 and 1270 more than 500 great churches were built in Gothic style in France alone” in his Church History in Plain Language (p. 183). Like many, he leaves out the millions of poor Frenchmen who actually paid for that extravagance. The professor also downplays the rigid caste system imposed by church-state officials that trapped the vast majority of France’s “third class” commoners in lifelong squalor. (In my analysis of epic failures, I’ll be generous and skip the disastrous “crusades,” sadistic “inquisitions” and other sectarian strife directly tied to France’s totalitarian religious system. Some of those travails might be understood as normal for the era.)

By the time the late 1700s came around, official members of the French clergy (known as the First Estate) were entirely politicized, with special rights for imposing taxes on the public, vast holdings of tax-free property, and out-of-touch leaders who disdained public interaction—all dramatic departures from what the early church stood for. Further privileges included exemption from military service, immunity from civil courts and, of course, a complete monopoly on religious teaching.

Centuries of mistreatment from these church-state elites (and the nobles they engendered) triggered the violent outburst of the French Revolution, from which the country has never fully recovered. Yet modern accounts from both Christians and critics alike either say nothing at all about the lavish church-state privileges or callously blame France’s long history of sectarian bloodshed on all “religion” in general.

Imperial Russia’s long alliance with the Orthodox Church of Moscow provides another example of overlooked malignancy. Russia’s formal conversion to Greek “Orthodox” Christianity in the late 10^th century most likely provided some stability and enlightenment as compared to the primitive economies and tribal warfare of previous pagan cultures. At least for a while.

To its credit, the Eastern Church never descended to the levels of overt violence and intolerance as did their Western counterparts during the Roman Catholic crusades and inquisitions. But the high price of subsidized religion—repeating most mistakes of the West such as the clergy/laity division, strict “ordination” rites, lecturing passive believers, embracing sacred objects, flowing robes and other pomposity, etc.—eventually took its toll on any original vestiges of legitimate faith. By 1721, Peter the Great had seized control of all Russian Churches or in the blasé account of Wikipedia, “made the church effectively a department of state.”

Throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries, Russia’s state-church alliance created a fragmented culture of disparity ranging from refined luxuries for the nobility to stifling oppression of the masses. By the late 1800s, its millions of factory workers were increasingly furious about poor wages and limited opportunities. And in 1905, many hundreds of thousands of exasperated laborers went on a peaceful but “illegal” strike, prompting the violent Bloody Sunday overreaction by imperial guards and an attempted revolution.

Even with modest reforms in the 1860s through the 1910s, Russia’s State religion—very much the “opiate of the masses” that Karl Marx had railed against—was emptied of its vitality.

By 1917, weakness of the monarchy and growing discontent among workers yielded a complete breakdown of social order. The resulting chaos was such that a small group of mostly Jewish Bolsheviks could overrun a mostly Christian nation then of 136 million. Scholars at the anti-Zionist website Biblicism Institute claim that during World War 1:

the Jewish Bolsheviks, who took over the Russian government in the 1910s, killed 66 million Christians, including 200,000 members of the Christian clergy, and destroyed 40,000 churches. (links theirs, numbers questionable)

Another outspoken critic of Zionism, Nathanael Kapner of Real Jew News makes similar claims of Jewish treachery during the Russian Revolution. Mr. Kapner and all other critics of Jewish Bolshevism that I can find have one thing in common: no one is willing to offer a hint of suggestion that subsidized Christian atrophy played any part in this account of a tiny minority overwhelming its majority host nation.

In addition to the spectacular collapses of France and Russia, similar examples of subsidized religious failure across Europe, parts of Asia, Canada and Mexico all trigger similar apathetic responses from a spectrum of observers. In Buddhist Thailand, the royal family is still feted with state-sponsored idolatry. Western elites have no problem with that or the rapturous worship of political leaders in communist slums of Vietnam and North Korea. Likewise for the prior centuries of squalor and weakness in subsidized pagan kingdoms and chiefdoms of South America, Africa and Australia. Ditto for about 1,400 years of impoverished subsidized Muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East.

They say that “politics makes strange bedfellows.” But this one may be an all-time record in idiotic group-think. Know nothings, bigots, Bible-thumpers and alleged “skeptics” all agree: never blame subsidized religion for the failures of subsidized religion.

But they’re wrong. And have been for a very long time.

Roman Pagan Religion Before the Time of Christ

To understand the pagan influences on the early church, it helps to understand pagan influences before Christianity ever existed. With any mention of “pagan” culture, the modern reader may be tempted to imagine crowds of spectators cheering on bloody gladiators or a bathhouse of naked elites reveling in drunken orgies. While those events did occur to some extent in ancient societies, pagan religious practices were far more organized than those two examples would suggest.

Before the time of Christ, pagan religious officials had significant power and prestige, and played a specific role in maintaining civil order. Roman pagan priests go back at least to their first king Romulus around 750 B.C. and lasted well into the periods of the Roman republic, its subsequent empire and far beyond.

Touching on the basics here, using the mainstream source of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the entry for “pontifex, Roman religion” provides the following text (bold and italics in original):

pontifex, (Latin: “bridge builder”) plural Pontifices, member of a council of priests in ancient Rome. The college, or collegium, of the pontifices was the most important Roman priesthood, being especially charged with the administration of the jus divinum (i.e., that part of the civil law that regulated the relations of the community with the deities recognized by the state), together with a general superintendence of the worship of gens and family. … The immense authority of the collegium centred in the pontifex maximus [chief priest], the other pontifices forming his consilium, or advising body.

Among other things, the chief priest (pontifex maximus) was responsible for administering public atonement ceremonies in times of famine, consecrating sacred temples, regulating practices relating to worship of dead ancestors, supervision of acceptable marriages and selecting official documents for the state archives.

The website ThoughtCo provides historical artwork depicting the wardrobes of pagan officials, specifically the Rex Sacrorum or sacred advisors to the king.

That same ThoughtCo link provides a useful definition of yet another pagan priestly class—the “augurs” (or sometimes augures)—that holds direct sway on modern American culture, although they declined to make the connection:

The augures formed a priestly college separate from that of the pontifices. … The job of the augures was to determine how the gods felt. They accomplished this by divination of omens (omina). Omens might be manifest in bird flight patterns or cries, thunder, lightning, entrails, and more.

The concept of pagan Rome’s priestly college of “augurs” remains alive in the West and most visibly reveals itself every November in the USA. After the modern state pageantry of a “democratic” election, the new leader is said to be inaugurated (a word originally meaning “a person chosen for priesthood or other office”).

Today this highly emotional and symbolic inauguration event only occurs after modern augurs of college intellectuals and media pundits have dutifully informed the public whom they should vote for in order to appease various gods of tolerance, equity, justice, environmental stewardship, health, security, war and the supreme god of democracy itself. Immense tribute to these gods in the form of punitive taxation is essential in the opinion of modern augurs to ensure a civil society that appreciates their divine guidance.

Examples of Modern Paganism

Since government education and subsidized religion have botched pretty much everything they talk about, I suppose it’s worth elaborating a bit on examples of pagan culture in America. Of course, it goes beyond the superficial trend of fawning over sports and entertainment celebrities. And it runs far deeper than the occasional drunken orgies that some associate with pagan folklore. A few highlights of our pagan worldview include:

• The love of public humiliation via “reality” TV shows like Survivor, American Idol, Biggest Loser, etc. At the climax of these weekly extravaganzas—once the top dozen or so are culled from the herd—one or two unfortunate candidates that failed to join an alliance or excite the masses has their quest for fame and fortune summarily canceled, until only One Prize Specimen remains.

• The cruel hyper-legalism of pre-crime “permitting” approvals, self-incrimination reporting and countless millions of “must” and “shall” mandates that smother all productive enterprise for spurious excuses of environmental protection and the bungling interference on modern healthcare, education, racial revenge and union militancy, etc. This lawless hypocrisy somehow approves of the open borders and urban crime wave terrorizing millions of Americans and also overlooks rampant bank fraud, corporate monopoly “patent” abuses, racketeering medical cartels and federal speech rationing that keep the middle class silent and suppressed.

• The obsession with death, starting with the ongoing search for the next eloquent brute such as Napoleon, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Churchill, MLK, Clinton and Obama. That is, a great orator who connects with the masses. A bold man of action who can implement the plans of the collective intelligentsia. A firm leader unlike the mousy book-worms who know their limitations and studiously avoid the rigors of the open marketplace. Such attitudes have given us an incredible 70,000 books about World War 2, leaving enormous gaps of competent scholarship. That mentality also gave us the 34-foot tower of nearly 7,000 books (out of at least 16,000 volumes available) on Lincoln’s brutal assault on the South along with countless movies and TV shows glamorizing State violence. Veteran political commentator James Bovard probably has the best explanation for this phenomenon, saying: “The easiest way to achieve sainthood in Washington is to cover up a federal atrocity.” Thousands of “academic” devotees have spent their careers applying for sainthood by praising the most egregious of federal onslaughts.

• The new MONO-theisms that probably exceed anything seen during the culture of empire worship that once plagued Greco-Roman societies. To signal our approval of modern political and corporate abuses, the majority of U.S. citizens now accept monetary monotheism of ONE legitimate currency—the U.S. bank note—as a matter of orthodoxy. This thinking fits well with the dominant public belief in the ONE true system of governance, ONE indivisible nation, ONE honorable military, ONE flag to symbolize liberty, and ONE correct way of thinking on nearly every issue. To help instill these new American values, it was essential that monologue books and lectures be viewed as the ONE acceptable method of teaching. And if some people get their way, there will soon be ONE omnipotent committee responsible for the healthcare decisions of 335 million Americans and ONE global climate agency to protect 8 billion earthlings from a phony crisis that will cost at least $100 trillion to solve. The comparative complaint that traditional monotheism offers “only” one true God—a unifying concept to billions in the real world, as opposed to the guaranteed chaos of many small gods—turns out to be mostly hot air and rank hypocrisy from “academic” twits with an axe to grind.

• If that’s not idol worship… To be kind to pagan sensitivities, I’ve omitted the photos for today on these most solemn elements of national pride. Instead, I’ll allow readers to use their own imaginations (or utilize a mouse click in some cases) to visualize the evidence. Whether it’s a daily loyalty oath imposed on public school kids, a giant flag draped over a football field, sports fanatics belting out hymns to that sacred piece of cloth, or politicians carved onto a mountainside in South Dakota (begun in 1927, finished in 1941) … over the past century, Americans have really taken a fondness for national relics. None of that stuff would have passed the sniff test with American colonials or its enshrined “founders.” But what do they know?

• Or take the seemingly innocent act of putting politicians on U.S. coins. No big deal, right? You’ll probably never hear this in civics class, but America somehow survived all the way from its start of federal minting in the 1790s until 1908—roughly six generations—without resorting to this common maneuver that European monarchs and pagan emperors before them employed to enhance their standing with the public. Conservatives today absolutely love this instant “tradition” that began with the Lincoln penny in 1909 then expanded to the Washington quarter in 1932, the Jefferson nickel in 1938 and finally the Roosevelt dime in 1946. All imposed via “democratic” leaders without voter input. All perfectly acceptable to the army of sham teachers and “sponsor me” shills of the flabby “left” and “right.”

One key element of pagan theology that connects Greco-Roman culture with today is the demand that everyone must worship the official gods of the state. Oh sure, you can add personal idols and secondary gods to the mix. But the one true god of national identity must reign supreme and be honored by all—or the divines will get angry and smite the land with destruction. This coercive fear and mass conformity is central to paganism, now and always.

An expert in Greco-Roman civilizations, Ryan Reeves of the Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, provides more background in two roughly 30-minute videos available on YouTube titled “Roman Pagan Life and Worship” and “Rome and the Third Century Crisis.” Reeves explains what it was like “to participate in the day-to-day rituals” and for “understanding the Greco-Roman world.” At around 2:30 in the first video, Reeves talks of:

The way that the Romans engaged in their religion—not in their faith. Romans are very keen on this. They do not have faith; they have a cultic worship. They have a sacrificial system that pays tribute to the gods and therefore gains benefit to them.

During a smallpox pandemic circa 250 A.D. that was sweeping through the empire, political leaders intensified their efforts to promote the “civic religion” among the masses. Starting at around 13 minutes in the second video, Reeves explains:

In Roman pagan religion, it’s not simply the fervent belief of the few that win the appeasement of the gods. But as we see throughout Greco-Roman mythology, even a few who abstain in a culture, those who might be attending, say, a public event and there’s a sacrifice to the gods. Well, if not everyone participates, even a small few, then according to the old pagan ways of religion, the gods could become angry because not everyone has at least given some mental ascent to the pagan sacrifice to them.

Unfortunately, at least in those two videos, Mr. Reeves failed to mention a single example connecting ancient pagan theology with modern American practices. Even the best of today’s subsidized teachers can only stray so far.

Thankfully, there are still a few scholars who understand church history and strive to stay independent of government and denominational politics. In this case, the two best living examples I can find happened to jointly write a book on the topic I’ll be exploring next.

Pagan Christianity?

To explain the drift from the humble vitality of the early church (arguably lasting two or three centuries in the West and many centuries longer in the East) to the ostentatious fatigue exhibited for centuries thereafter as well as the last few generations in America, it helps to understand the pagan influences that have dogged organized Christianity for longer than some may realize.

It turns out that independent religious scholars have frequently commented on Western Christianity’s heavy influence from the pagan environment it evolved from. One of the more prominent writers to make such an assessment was the secular historian, Will Durant (1885 – 1981). Mr. Durant authored the 11-volume The Story of Civilization, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1968 for volume 10, and made the blunt statement: “Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it.”

But such clarity from scholars is rare today among secular historians and virtually non-existent by writers closely attached to organized religion. One notable exemption to this pattern of neglect is the comprehensive reference book Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna, Christian writers with no allegiance to any specific denomination.

Published in 2008 to moderate displeasure among corporate church supporters, the authors chronicle the political intercessions and fluctuating church vanity over the last 20 centuries. They also document (with hundreds of explanatory footnotes) the scores of modern anti-Biblical embellishments common throughout mainstream Christianity, adding historical context as well as insights on why such departures are mildly to severely destructive. (Aside from the minor weakness of avoiding the topic of American-style subsidized religion, I found the book to be well written, exhaustively documented and persuasive in making its case.)

The chronology of some embellishments detailed in Pagan Christianity include:

• the condescending term “laity” came from Clement of Rome in the late 1^st century;
• regular “sermonizing” migrated from Greek sophists into the church in the late 2^nd century;
• the concept of “sacred spaces” came from pagan beliefs attached to the burial sites of Christian martyrs in the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries;
• the “church” building and tax-exempt status for clergy were decreed by Emperor Constantine in the 320s; and
• tithing became formalized in the 8^th century under Charlemagne.

Skipping ahead to more recent times, the “sinner’s prayer” of spoon-fed salvation came from evangelist D.L. Moody in the 19^th century and was popularized by Billy Graham starting in the 1950s. The now-ubiquitous “youth pastor” was “developed in urban churches in the late 1930s and 1940s as a result of seeking to meet the needs of a new sociological class called ‘teenagers’.” The “worship team” of church musicians came from southern California’s Calvary Chapel in 1965 “patterned after the secular rock concert.”

The book’s Chapter 4, titled “The Sermon: Protestantism’s Most Sacred Cow,” illuminates much of the dullness that has rarely escaped modern churches in the 500 years since the Reformation broke somewhat free from the grip of Rome’s church-state monolith. In that chapter, Pagan Christianity provides an abundance of historical documentation that directly ties the “sermon” to the pagan Greek practice of “rhetoric”—the art of delivering passionate, organized speeches to dazzle the intellect of their audiences without attaching any personal responsibility or challenging common vices.

Among other things, the ubiquitous title of “Sermon on the Mount” (used to describe Christ’s announcement of the New Covenant that succeeded Rabbinical legalism) was not uttered by Jesus or any Biblical writers. That misleading caption—used widely in English Bibles and repeated by professional sermonizers of today—was introduced by the church celebrity Augustine, a pagan teacher of imperial rhetoric in the 4^th century, who converted to Christianity but remained attached to Roman indulgence.

This popular distortion is no minor accident. A regular “sermon” to a passive audience of believers has little similarity to an occasional extemporaneous speech delivered to a hostile crowd of questioning non-believers—although professional sermonizers routinely equate the two. More importantly, our reliance on scripted “sermons” (at churches, in schools and from media personalities) crowds out the more effective and more common Bible teaching method of personal dialogue, where spontaneous questions were openly encouraged and students could observe: Does this guy practice what he teaches? Is it logical and consistent? Does it lead to any positive outcome?

Centuries of drift resulting from by non-working “academic” mumblers and the associated weakness of passive church and school observance have made significant impacts. The docile “sermonizing” approach can fairly be linked to the pagan values of superstitious relics, public veneration of sacred objects, teaching exclusively via monologue books and lectures, the supreme authority of central planners and even the celebration of mass violence for the Glory of the State—themes now common in the West and rarely questioned by church officials.

The Forgotten Legacy of the Eastern Church (with some Muslim Cooperation)

If history tends to be written by the victors, rarely is this maxim so true as with the pro-Western bias of both major factions (Protestant and Catholic) of American and Western European scholarship when it comes to church history.

For this essay, I don’t intend to dwell long on this important era that has been almost entirely neglected by the West. And I certainly don’t mean to imply that the Orthodox Church (headquartered in Moscow) or other surviving variants of historical Eastern Christianity have some surplus of virtue beyond their institutional brethren in the West. But this was not always the case. One mainstream religious scholar—openly hostile to Christianity at times—sheds light on two points that I find worth noting here.

The title of Philip Jenkins’ book The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle-East, Africa, and Asia—and How it Died, pretty much sums up the first point. That is, for many centuries in various parts of the Middle East (now Syria, Iran, Iraq and parts of India) and nearby regions, millions of Christians survived (but hardly thrived) under Muslim political rule. (A less apologetic historian, Raymond Ibrahim, provides missing details on the forced tribute and second-class citizenship imposed upon Christians by their Muhammadan rulers, which Jenkins omits.) A mix of church apathy, corporate conformity, Muslim hostility and violent overspill from Western crusades put a stifling chill to most of that Eastern Christian civilization by the 1300s, with its final collapse following the 1453 fall of Constantinople.

The evidence presented in Lost History, supported with significant but somewhat tainted scholarship, refutes so much Judeo-Christian dogma—promoted by FoxNews, AM talk radio, right-wing Republicans and countless neocons—that alleges non-stop violence by Muslims towards Christians since the birth of Islam in the 7^th century. To that extent, Lost History provides some overdue buffer to misguided Zionist and pseudo-Christian tribalism regarding the Middle East.

My second point of interest from Lost History refutes the cottage industry of anti-Bible religious cranks at government schools—an elite group that Mr. Jenkins is solidly part of and presumably does not wish to offend. This point was only mentioned in passing in his book but has greater significance in rebutting our pagan theocracy—a topic entirely avoided by Jenkins and most of his cohorts.

The fact that hundreds of state and federally funded college staff are employed to “teach” the government’s viewpoint on religion—almost always hostile to Christianity yet favorable or ambivalent to other religions—makes further mockery of our withering Constitution and the impotent “conservatives” who defend it. My point is not to “censor” these quacks and bigots; it’s to defund all of them and allow people to teach their desired messages without a government stamp of approval, whether they agree with me or not.

Since the Bible contains the wisdom of Solomon’s proverbs, the poetry of King David’s psalms, the legal foundation of Moses (or whoever wrote the Torah), the moral warnings of the Prophets, the historical accounts of four gospel writers, and the theological and organizational brilliance of the Apostle Paul, etc.—only an idiot or a wounded person lashing out in anger would dismiss this collection of great works as mere ramblings of “goat herders.” (Sadly, that particular image on the right is from a frequent commenter who is clearly not an idiot.) But that Butt-head level of reasoning is now common in Western pop culture.

Some of that bitterness comes from petty jealousy. Government libraries are now full of divisive, contradictory nonsense from modern authors who would just love to have people read their voluminous writings even a small fraction of the extent that the Christian Bible has been analyzed, discussed and put into practice.

Among U.S. college theology departments—where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 70 to 1 according to a major study from 2018—besides the standard teaching that the Bible is a dangerous pack of lies, a more recent doctrine claims that the New Testament was corrupted by the Roman papacy in the 4^th century by excluding other “lost” Gospels that would have been included in the Bible except for political interference. (Why those writings should have been deemed canon-worthy is rarely mentioned.)

Before expanding on this second point, I’ll stress that Philip Jenkins is no partisan of conservative Christianity. Not even remotely. When his book was released in 2008 by big league publishing house, HarperCollins, Mr. Jenkins held teaching positions at Penn State University along with Baylor University in Texas. He had also been published in assorted neocon (Wall Streat Journal) and neoliberal (New Republic, Atlantic Monthly, Washington Post) newspapers and magazines according to the book’s back cover.

If anything, Mr. Jenkins’ Lost History is more friendly to Muslim and Jewish sensitivities, consistently taking the sides of those groups when any conflict arises between either of them and neighboring Christian communities. Among many examples of anti-Christian bias to choose from, I’ll cite two examples that provide a good indication.

Towards the end of Lost History, Mr. Jenkins (or his publisher) felt a need to remind any Christian readers in his audience of theologically correct attitudes towards Muslims and Jews. Starting with the former, Mr. Jenkins optimistically states (emphasis added):

Might Christians someday accept that Islam fulfils a positive role, and that its growth in history represents another form of divine revelation, one that complements but does not replace the Christian message?

Mr. Jenkins goes on to deride the mere mention of the Christian Bible’s “Old Testament” and New Testament (which he says “has unacceptable implications of supersession”) and salutes the perceived growth by some modern theologians:

More recently, many contemporary Christian theologies accept the eternal value of God’s covenant with Israel, with the implication that Christian evangelism of Jews is unnecessary and unacceptable. (pages 258-259)

In Lost History, Mr. Jenkins treads lightly and only briefly around the minefield of “lost” Gospels, providing contrary scholarship originating from the Eastern churches that rarely finds public display:

Around the year 170, [Eastern Church scholar] Tatian created a Syriac version of the four canonical Gospels combined into a single harmony, the Diatessaron, the “Through Four.”

… The Syriac Bible was a conservative text, to a degree that demands our attention. In recent years, accounts of the early church claim that scriptures and gospels were very numerous, until the mainstream Christian church suppressed most of them in the fourth century. This alleged purge followed the Christian conversion of the emperor Constantine… According to modern legend, the suppressed works include many heterodox accounts of Jesus, which were suspect because of their mystical or even feminist leanings.

The existence of four official Gospels by 170 A.D., written generations prior and having traveled and been put into practice by independent Christian communities far from Roman influence has important ramifications in itself. Mr. Jenkins goes on to state:

The problem with all this [alleged purge of inspired writings] is that the Eastern churches had a long familiarity with the rival scriptures, but rejected them because they knew they were late and tendentious. Even as early as the second century, the Diatessaron assumes four, and only four, authentic Gospels. Throughout the Middle Ages, neither Nestorians nor Jacobites [leading denominations in Eastern Christianity] were under any coercion from the Roman/Byzantine empire or church, and had they wished, they could have included in the canon any alternative Gospels or scriptures they wanted to. … The deep conservatism of these churches, so far removed from papal or imperial control, makes nonsense of claims that the church bureaucracy allied with empire to suppress unpleasant truths about Christian origins. (pages 87-88)

For court intellectuals who instinctively attack all rivals to their master’s authority—and the Bible has persistently been attacked and controlled for such reason—the above two passages on the authentic Christian Gospels are quite problematic. As such, they are dutifully ignored by most members of our modern ruling class.

Academic Malpractice: Phony Titles, Fake Degrees, and Dull Men with an Axe to Grind

Instead of acknowledging inconvenient facts, entrenched scholars with an axe to grind—and usually living off the government payroll—continue to make wild claims that coincidentally pander to their sponsor’s lust for complete societal fealty. Of the many such examples I could cite, I’ll just note a few recent claims by top “experts” in the field of anti-Bible apologetics that has grown into a cottage industry over the last couple of centuries.

A retired professor of evolutionary psychology for the State of California dropped this claim in one of his essays on The Jesus Hoax and related topics:

For example, the oldest copy of the complete Gospel of Matthew, which, as noted below, contains the most inflammatory anti-Jewish passage of all, dates from the mid-fourth century, well after Constantine had legalized Christianity in the Empire…

The professor’s misleading statement omits any mention of the Syrian Diatessaron text of all four Gospels published around 170 A.D. He also omits any mention of the many fragments of New Testament books that date back to the early to mid-second century—all matching well with later complete manuscripts. This sleight of hand plays to the popular fantasy that the Bible “evolved” over the centuries, a claim that has no basis in legitimate scholarship.

Another “academic” who calls himself Doctor Dalton recently claimed on this website:

Here I will focus on “the Man”: Jesus of Nazareth… First, I should note that there is a high likelihood that no such man ever existed. We can say this with confidence because there is no—literally, zero—contemporaneous evidence for his existence…

First of all, Dalton’s claim is refuted by at least a dozen contemporaneous witnesses—Jesus’s disciples—all of whom faced enormous pressures to disavow their miraculous accounts and 10 of whom (omitting John and the traitor Judas) likely accepted death rather than succumb to demands from Jewish and/or Roman officials to recant. Other non-Biblical accounts by Jewish historian Flavius Josephus around 93 A.D. and pagan Roman scholar Tacitus around 116 A.D. in his Annals of Imperial Rome also attest to the factual existence of Jesus.

Additional evidence comes from the harsh persecution meted out to 1^st century Christians. If Jesus never existed, that doesn’t explain why he had so many followers that by 64 A.D. Roman Emperor Nero chose to scapegoat Christians for the burning of Rome. Regarding Nero’s blood lust for killing Christians, Tacitus recorded that the emperor blamed:

the persons commonly called Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius.

Roman historian Suetonius (c. 69–122) recorded a similar account that Emperor Nero’s capital “punishment was inflicted on the Christians” during his reign from 54 to 68 A.D.

One of the more cantankerous anti-Bible intellectuals—a man who calls himself Doctor Scholar Bart (or D.S. Bart)—lectures unsuspecting college students in North Carolina for a living. For starters, this fellow (like many of his colleagues) identifies as a disinterested “agnostic” textual critic who passionately believes in nothing and wrote 30 books to prove it!

Mr. Bart (like most of his colleagues) delivers his one-sided harangues in predominantly monologue presentations. But he let his guard down in a Question and Answer session (at 52:40 in that video) after a public lecture in San Francisco and got busted by a rather simple audience query he wasn’t expecting:

Moderator: Someone’s asked, how about a new book? How about working on the Koran?

D.S. Bart (awkward smirking): Yes, when I stop valuing my life, that’s what I’ll do.

Moderator: Alright. So, there’s a prudential… (laughs, moves to another question)

Owing to the low standards of college in general and liberal arts departments in particular, this slur against the Islamic religion of peace has yet gone unpunished by Bart’s academic masters at the public research University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a school considered to be one of the “Public Ivies” according to Wikipedia. Furthermore, this spontaneous admission (along with his entire body of work) should remove any pretensions as to his genuine interest as a “religious scholar” as opposed to a person who (like many others) focuses every waking moment on trashing the only faith that Western intellectuals despise.

In the broader sense of self-worshipping cranks taking over college instruction, as noted above, with totalitarian Democrats outnumbering more traditional Republicans 70 to 1 in U.S. college theology departments, no one should think that students at most American institutions get anything close to a “balanced” presentation on Biblical merit.

One takeaway I glean regarding theological and other educational styles is that academic quackery thrives in a controlled monologue setting. If you want to actually learn something of value, I find that a more spontaneous (i.e., “human”) dialogue setting of mentoring from a true expert is vastly more effective. (Mentoring succeeded in America for over three centuries without government subsidies, by the way. Of the books cited in this essay, the only one whose author(s) show signs of competency in the field of dialogue is Pagan Christianity.)

It helps to remember that the greatest teacher in world history (and the renowned Greek teacher, Socrates, as well) never hid behind puffy honorifics and never handed out meaningless “degrees” to their students. In addition, Jesus of Nazareth never accepted a penny of support from his 12 disciples—much less, coercive government tribute. As such, many subsidized “academics” instinctively despise someone who succeeds—and does so remarkably—where they consistently fail. Anyone seeking competent instruction on religious or other topics would also do well to study the methods of Jesus—not just his words—and try more dialogue style learning/teaching and less pedantic pandering from a pulpit.

Maintaining Control of the Subsidized Church: ‘Ordaining’ Abuse

Turning attention back to Western church development… the ongoing perversion of early (i.e., Biblical) church practices for the benefit of consolidating power goes even deeper than the pagan Greco-Roman influences already described. And very little of the institutional abuse was corrected by the Protestant Reformation, at least as far this next topic is concerned.

For many centuries, virtually all denominations of corporate Christianity (including Eastern Orthodox churches) have practiced two harmful and entirely non-Biblical practices that get surprisingly little mainstream attention today. The first major drift in the wrong direction was the false teaching of an upper caste “clergy” and lower caste “laity.”

In the book Pagan Christianity, authors Frank Viola and George Barna trace the clergy/laity concept to “the pagan notion of the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane” that results in life “being divided into two parts: secular and spiritual.” While clergymen were viewed as “guardians of orthodoxy” and situated above lowly commoners

The laity were the second-class, untrained Christians. The great theologian Karl Barth rightly said, “The term ‘laity’ is one of the worst in the vocabulary of religion and ought to be banished from the Christian conversation.” (page 122)

Among other things, this elevated view of “clerical” roles explains why so few priests and pastors burden themselves with legitimate jobs (i.e., actual service in the marketplace). These leisure suit luminaries prefer a lifetime spent reading books, crafting their lectures and developing talking points to solicit financial support—only increasing their isolation.

To reinforce the elite status of who gets promoted into the ranks of “clergy,” elaborate “ordination” rites were gradually developed and cemented by increasingly politicized church leaders. Here is where the power and the poison still fester profusely.

An odd thing happens when you allow subsidized, tax-favored, theocratic politicians the power of translating the original Hebrew Old Testament and Greek New Testament into Latin and subsequently German, English and other languages. Completely different words can be bended and transformed into the desired result of increasing and maintaining corporate prestige. If you read any English Bible that uses the word “ordain,” you are most likely witnessing the end result of this distortion.

Modern readers (including me) may find this shocking: authors Viola, Barna and their cited references note that “Translators of the KJV [17^th century King James Bible] have used ordain for 21 different Hebrew and Greek words.” Thanks to better scholarship and more available manuscripts obtained in the ensuing centuries since then, scholars (many are cited by Viola and Barna) now know that those words would be better translated as “acknowledge” or “recognize” or “endorsing, affirming, and showing forth what has already been happening.”

None of these words or New Testament examples convey any concept of a formal (now heavily structured) “ordination” process, where corporate officials maximize the opportunity to indoctrinate the aspiring pastor or priest into the realm of subsidized religion. This institutional world now invariably involves turning religion into a money-making business, creating rigid divisions of professionals and amateurs, preaching to a passive audience of believers, vesting all power in non-working church officials, strictly controlling the ordination process and crushing any hint of Spiritually relevant teaching. Nearly all recognized denominations also defend the practice of seeking and accepting noxious tax breaks and labor law exemptions from, one might conclude, their true masters in political power.

And all of those bolded practices have perfectly valid alternatives—starting with actual service in the marketplace and voluntarily supporting the public from personal savings instead of trolling for contributions. Finding competent teachers, regardless of credentials, is also important. Such cooperative service, support and teaching were once common in America and elsewhere. (Failure to recognize those snares has led to the whack-doodle theology of brainwashed fanatics who believe in Real bombs, Yes! F-bombs, No! and the other absurdities noted earlier in the Unwritten Rules of Modern Churches section. Complaining that America is insufficiently “godly” when the Church is simply atrocious will never get us anywhere.)

The authors of Pagan Christianity (pages 123-127) explain the transition from organic “support” to institutional “control” that evolved under the rubric of “ordination” during the third and fourth centuries. Suffice to say, the changes always did (and still do) favor the consolidation of corporate power into the hands of remote officials. This results in a paganistic worship of power, in alignment with practically every aspect of post-World War 1 American and European culture.

Portrait of an Unconventional Teacher: Not a ‘Sermon’ for your Entertainment

Jesus of Nazareth announcing a New Covenant. The epitome of grace under pressure combined with wisdom, substance, clarity and compassion.

Not a detached stage preacher. Not a Sunday sermonizer or a weekend matinee idol. Definitely not a groveling politician telling people what they wanted to hear in exchange for financial support. Intriguing to some; life changing to others; too challenging for many; and despised by the ruling religious authorities—both then and now.

Contrary to so much sloppy and self-serving scholarship, there’s actually no such thing as the (usually “The”) “Sermon on the Mount.” That’s a term invented by a pagan teacher of Latin rhetoric in the 4^th century A.D. who converted to Christianity but stayed connected to the State. This rare example of spontaneous monologue (when declaring a major new teaching) does not replace Christ’s more frequent style of directly teaching via dialogue conversations—yielding entirely different results than lecturing a passive audience… week after week after dreadful week. It’s both sad and funny how some “academic” quackery can find such widespread acceptance among other subsidized teachers—almost 17 centuries after that bit of dispassionate “Sermon on the Mount” deception was slipped into Augustine’s other voluminous dissertations.

What has Traditional Religion Done for Anyone Lately?

Since the pagan influences on Christianity took centuries to develop—and consistently pander to human weaknesses—I don’t think a movement away from pagan idolatry or the extreme idolatry of self-worship will advance without major effort. And I don’t suspect many corporate religious institutions will risk abandoning their comforts of worldly prestige no matter how much pressure they receive from their congregations.

But I do think individuals or families can more readily walk away from that nonsense and help to build better communities for themselves, their neighbors and eventually the larger society. The reason I’m reasonably optimistic about that is because private religious cooperation has succeeded many times in the past—often enduring for centuries—and sometimes quite recently.

Since critics of traditional religions loath to admit socially positive outcomes of any faith (other than selective nationalism or self-worship), I’ll note a few overlooked accomplishments from the last millennium in cultures where subsidized religion was largely resisted.

I will also note the bizarre mainstream habit of overlooking most or all positive accomplishments while celebrating the worst of pseudo-Christian sociopaths. Such failures would include the Unitarian zealots in Massachusetts who imposed coercive government indoctrination on school children in the mid-19^th century then expanded their mission to the entire nation; the crusading religious fanatics like Woodrow Wilson, FDR and his New Deal berserkers who dragged the U.S. into deadly European wars in 1917-18 and 1941-45; and the Judeo-Christian militants of the 1960s who exchanged decades of black progress for the bitterness and violence of ongoing racial revenge. That those disasters are overwhelmingly praised by subsidized scholars speaks volumes to their true allegiance and our collective ignorance.

More positive examples of private religious cooperation include accomplishments such as:

• the early Reformation under French/Italian associates of Peter Waldo (c. 1140 – 1205) and later Englishmen Wycliffe, Tyndale et al, then other European Christian scholars breaking the Hebrew/Greek/Latin stranglehold over Scripture (subsequently plagiarized and distorted by King James in 1611)
• Gutenberg’s printing press revolution c. 1450 and other contributions to the Western Enlightenment that ended centuries of grueling Dark Ages
• longstanding private or semi-private court systems run by Muslims (Sharia) and Jews (beth din and kahal) that probably ran circles around America’s partisan show trials and fascistic Administrative Law Judges at weaponized federal agencies
• the Methodist Movement of 1700s and 1800s that spared England from the bloody rebellions in “egalitarian” France (in stark contrast to the secular rantings of Voltaire and others that fueled French violence)
• the development and incredible growth of colonial and then post-Revolutionary America for two or three centuries
• America’s First Great Awakening (1730s-40s) that gave us separation of church and state for the first time in world history, granting genuine tolerance that bore unparalleled innovation and personal liberty
• the brave mix of European- and African-Americans in seven states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) that peacefully ended slavery between the 1780s and 1850s, before a Civil War was supposedly “needed” to end that ancient practice (something pagan Rome failed to achieve in 10 centuries of dominance)
• similar people made sure another five states (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin) were prohibited from beginning the practice of slavery during their subsequent inception via the Northwest Ordinance of 1787
• the Harlem renaissance of the Abyssinian Baptist Church starting in 1808 that was a center of community life for the next two centuries
• early YMCA and JCC community movements in thousands of cities and towns across Europe and America
• thousands of hospitals built by Christians and Jews with their own private funding
• 20^th century student ministries (Young Life, Newman Centers, Navigators, Campus Crusade, etc.) that offset campus radicalism
• pluralistic Muslim civilizations in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, etc. who lead the world in protecting their people from predatory debt dealers and the inflationary theft of fiat banking (liberty squibs ranting about “The Fed” couldn’t be more pathetic)
• the extensive Christian role in giving American parents an alternative to K-12 government school monopolies (with almost zero help initially from organized religion)
• the extensive Christian role in giving Americans a choice in health insurance options with cost-sharing cooperatives Medi-Share and others to counteract the stranglehold of the bloated $4 trillion medical racketeering industry
• the vastly improved living conditions in Christian South Korea vs. atheist North Korea
• the Christian role in modern China’s cultural advancement out of centuries of squalor, along with other common-sense traditional values cited above (in The Best of Pagan Culture section) that align remarkably well with Biblical teaching
• probably millions of other large and small examples of community enrichment that have been lost and forgotten

Besides the complete scrubbing of mainstream history for most of these accomplishments, four major components of the above successes that stand out are: 1) people involved with the noted examples put their faith in God over a faith in sacred relics or national symbols, 2) said groups were primarily focused outwardly on what they could do to tangibly improve their communities instead of puffing up their own appearance, 3) government involvement played little or no role in those accomplishments, and 4) participants faced actual hardships in most cases, far beyond what Western Christians and most Jews have experienced from anything resembling a peaceful expression of faith.

To that extent, the millions of Roman Catholics since the mid-1800s who didn’t like what was being taught in U.S. public schools deserve credit for undertaking the enormous effort to build and staff thousands of private parochial schools—instead of demanding that the government accommodate their beliefs.

Despite all of the above evidence of the fraudulent nature and lame excuses for subsidized religion, church-state advocates still fantasize the next Great Awakening can only come about by attaching religious devotion to coercive government favor. With charlatans and lunatics solidly in control of our religious and secular educational systems, no amount of facts and logic will ever make a dent in their fossilized worldview. As has ever been the case, any hope of progress will primarily come from people working outside of that institutional approach.

Conclusion

For at least the last two millennia of recorded history, subsidized religion has shown itself to be a great stumbling block, distraction and cause of division. European reformers of the Renaissance era and American immigrants of the 17^th and 18^th centuries understood that well. But their descendants—fattened by prosperity and lulled to sleep by eloquent sophists—eventually forgot it.

Willful ignorance across pagan and self-worshiping communities would rather have people believe that “religion” itself is the core problem, while its adherents actively or passively support subsidies for religious institutions they supposedly despise. Similar ignorance among traditional believers has blinded many to the harmful effects of mingling voluntary faith and coercive state authority.

One would hope that any reasonable person would agree that religious faith (including traditional beliefs, self-adulation or reverence toward national symbols) should be a decision left to personal choice. Any literate person with a decent study Bible and having a grasp on history should be aware that God can’t be cultivated with tax-free castles and shiny objects. Special exemptions from labor laws for church officials and their underlings don’t help either, no matter how many fatuous titles a person accumulates. Instead, the arrogance of demanding and accepting political favor cheapens and eventually negates any honest religious belief, then poisons the surrounding culture with imitators who want in on the racket of special privilege—a mindset that is killing America and Europe today.

While I’m waiting for these suggestions to gain wider traction, I need to do a better job minimizing my contact with the dysfunctional environment of subsidized religion and increasing my involvement with those who show more signs of productive faith. I suspect many others face a similar decision.

By Steve Penfield

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