One of the perspectives I take in the study and advance of Religion and Theology in relation to Civics in the U.S. was expressed by the nineteenth-century American esotericist, Alexander Wilder.
“The endeavor has been made to give an accurate outline of the ancient religion of the countries from which we derived our classical literature; and thus to afford correct ideas of the nature and the signification of their worship.”
ALEXANDER WILDER
This serves as a kind of map and layout of the study of religion in the U.S. for this site, and why I am concerned and thus focus on the country of my birth. However, I do not limit my work to only the U.S. context as you ease more into the writings.
RELIGION AND THEOLOGY IN THE AMERICAN REPUBLICAN TRADITION
CIVIC REPUBLICAN VIRTUE: Many early American thinkers argued that republican self-government requires a virtuous citizenry, and they believed religion supported that virtue.
FOUNDING-ERA POLITICAL THEOLOGY: Sermons, covenant theology, and Protestant political thought influenced ideas about liberty, authority, and rights. Even this general information is just the half of the history, now, that I am covering the entire republican tradition.
CHURCH-STATE DEBATES/SECULARISM: The First Amendment, disestablishment, and religious liberty are central to the American republican tradition.
RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS AND REFORM: Abolitionism, temperance, civil rights, and other movements often blended religious and republican arguments.
PLURALISM: American republican tradition was not shaped by a single doctrinal worldview but by a mix of spiritual, philosophical, pagan revivalist and fraternal currents from dissenting Protestant sects to eclectic Freemasonry that prized civic virtue over dogmatic uniformity. This history is widely distorted, understudied, omitted or ignored because the fact is hated. The attitude is opposite of an informed republican-minded citizen. These legacies belong to every citizen and must inform them against its abusers and pretenders. The solutions and power are not to be solely in the hands of elites and celebrities, but in the minds and action of the people, and those who would emerge from a well-educated society, whether that education is provided or not by federal institutions, as our champions. It’s precisely the intellectual and spiritual diversity that allowed the founding era to resist literalism and authoritarianism, making space for a civic order grounded in reason, conscience, and voluntary association rather than enforced orthodoxy. This understanding has declined, and the expressions dominated by literalism and authoritarianism have gained ground once more. Atheism is not sufficient to challenge this force.
WHY FOCUS ON THE UNITED STATES
Being American, the affairs, potential and conditions of my own country as a citizen, and the American continents in general are of vital interest to me. I am motivated by the fact, that in our day, many sides, groups and political ideologies, including those taking advantage of religious conflicts and racial animosities, who are simply wrong though given and possess power over millions of citizens, have gained influence. To counter it, counter-expression and measures must be created. If no one will do it, someone must.
MOVING AMERICAN CULTURE
I want us to adopt the idea that we must cast away materialistic excesses and distractions (the “bread and circus”), to mold ourselves through spiritual exercise and action into the model civic voices, citizens, theologians, protectors, exemplars, scholars, literary writers and philosophers of our era and beyond. The idea is to not give rise to the creation of new religious and philosophical innovations that create more confusion and division, but to provide strength and clarity.
The creation of republican-minded, or civically informed citizens is a struggle of necessity and for the Truth, and a plea for Wisdom in governance based on a knowledge of its foundations. We are capable of producing a devastating counter to the various forces of Christian Nationalism and should be ready to do so. Those who discourage this or say that it is not possible to move an entire culture do not understand the philosophy underlying the republic, and this explains our sliding condition. It requires people of such humanist spirit and stamina in every age as its form of resistance to political corruption, ignorance and stupidity. You have been given the tools or weapons, and you are not helpless. Look back into history.
THE HIDDEN WEST
With reverting Protestant intolerances, irrelevance of shallow political mottos, deceitful platitudes of the Politician, and the advent of neo-traditionalists and sympathetic White ethno-nationalists, I want to show how an expansion or incorporation of complementary elements to the foundational political system in Republicanism can enhance American Identity, Knowledge and Culture in our day. Those that will represent this vision must help to divert the force of the people, rather than contribute to the racial obsessions and “culture wars” that define our age. Radically departing from these attitudes, we want to challenge a people who terribly labor under limited views about its Identity that try to center it in either a post-War superficial multiculturalism, Christian pluralism, Southern tradition or the “Lost Cause” Confederate tradition, or the heritage of the legacy “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.”
The articles on Religion in the United States requires studying the history of “The Hidden West.” In most recent periods, this goes through the Medieval Alchemists, Renaissance Platonists, Freemasons, German Rosicrucians, Templars and more (see Crusades to Late Renaissance Occultism to Enlightenment Timeline (1075-1680).
Therefore, I write about Religion partly to dissect and challenge the ill-informed and malicious tactics of dominant religious polemical frameworks in their exclusivist claims to truth over the “pagan world.” These claims and approaches have led to ever-gradual degeneration of religious thought and bloodshed since their clever constructions. Dismantling core notions and positions within the subject of Christian ecclesiasticism and heresiology — the religion, that has been the dominating influence in the U.S. and in Western Civilization for two millennia is actually key to the advancement in our understanding of religion, and the repute of religion, theology and the practice of analogeticism and esotericism. As long as this is ignored, there will be no true progress in these areas.
I am against the corrupting and degenerating effect of simplification, which also contributes to treating people like infants out of distrust in their capabilities, or belief in what the people lack or fear to understand, which breeds fear and ignorance. I encourage others to be eager to learn.
