[This is part 6 in a series on “False Dichotomies in Political Theology.” See part one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight, nine]

Leaving Egypt Ministries, Obadiah D. Morris

The false dichotomy that we will discuss here is the almost universally prevalent idea that “politics and religion” are two separate things or two distinct parts of a man, such that a man qua political-man has “civic duties” to the kingdoms of the world and a man qua religious-man just has “spiritual” duties, like praying, “going to church,” or just “believing in God.” Politics is not thought to be one’s religion, and religion is not thought to have anything to do with the politics of another Kingdom. “Politics and religion” are instead thought to be two separate, entirely distinct realms of thought or practice, neither which should be discussed in polite company. They are both thought to be two separate areas of a man’s personal opinions or beliefs that do not overlap at all: “politics” being a man’s beliefs about government, and “religion” being a man’s beliefs about God.

It is easy to see how damaging the false dichotomy of “politics and religion” has been once we realize how many professing Christians are entirely caught up in the statist politics of the world still, not realizing that their “religion” calls them out of the world and to organize their societies along different lines that the violent, authoritarian systems that mankind has known for millennia. In this artificial separation of politics as something distinct from religion, professing Christians are able to claim that participating in worldly politics is just their “politics,” while “believing in God” or “going to church” is the extent of their “religion.” They are able to think that the former does not contradict their claims to the latter, because the two “realms” supposedly do not cross.

On the other hand, self-professed “atheists” are likewise able to believe they can participate in the politics of the world without practicing the religion of socialism (i.e., the social means of providing for others through government violence), because they too believe “religion” to consist merely of one’s beliefs about God rather than having anything to do with one’s methods of serving others, whether through (1) the pure religion of voluntary charity as prescribed by the Lord, or (2) the statist practice of compulsion and government force which makes men into slaves to a system of socialist welfare.

Statism as a religion

What both the so-called “Christians” and so-called “atheists” fail to understand here is that politics and religion are not actually two separate things of two entirely distinct realms, which means that adopting (2) the statist method of serving others is actually to adopt the public religion of socialism. This is the case whether one believes they are an “atheist” or whether they take the Lord’s name in vain and call themselves a “Christian” while adopting a politics that, in effect, contradicts what they understand to just be their “religion.”

When it is seen that “religion” has much more to do with one’s mere beliefs about God but is actually a political theory of how society is to be organized so as to provide for others, we can then see the utter contradiction of the idea of a “Christian statist” or an “atheist statist.” The statist idea that society must be organized on the means of political violence and taxation in order to provide for others is much more than a mere political idea itself. It is a religious idea about how men should be served and through what means this should be carried out: whether freely, by men who love their neighbors and serve them through the works of voluntary charity, or coercively, by men who hate their neighbors, covet their property through systems of human government, and let their people go into bondage to these systems as their means of “serving” them through their taxes. These are not just two different political ideas, but two different religious ideas, both which are opposed to one another. The statist method of socialism is not just a “political” idea that exists apart from one’s “religion” but is to adopt another religion, and not merely in some rhetorical sense either where we use this to criticize the idolatry inherent to statism, but where statism is literally another theory and method of providing for the needs of society through force and socialism, rather than through private charity.

The contradiction of Christian statism

Once it is seen that “religion” has much more to do with the means of serving others, whether through the charitable practices of God’s Kingdom or the covetous practices of man’s socialist kingdoms, then it can be seen that those who adopt the statist means of providing for the needs of their society are not Christians, and neither are they “atheists” who have managed to avoid religion. Both have adopted a new religion—socialist provision of goods and services—that is contrary to Christianity, which is a religio-political idea of voluntary social organization along the lines of freewill offerings rather than the compulsory offerings of taxation. All statists are non-Christians and all true Christians are non-statists. This is because all statists are not non-religious, but have adopted another religion in statism itself, which places those who imagine themselves to be “Christians” in the same camp as those who imagine themselves to be “atheists.”

The problem for both of these people—the statists who take the Lord’s name in vain and those who do not claim it and imagine they are non-religious—should be obvious: the “atheists” do not realize that they have not actually avoided religion by adopting the statist method of serving others, as this method of seeking to take care of people (albeit a failed) one is only to adopt another religion than the pure religion of Christianity, where men are taken care of through freewill offerings rather than the compulsory means of taxation. The professing “Christians” who adopt the statist methods of supplying “public goods” fail to realize that they too have joined the “atheist” statists in practicing the public religion of socialism by choosing to adopt the statist means of supply defense, law, justice, policing, or “public welfare” otherwise. 

Though neither the fake Christians who support a State or the “atheists” who imagine themselves to be non-religious would like to hear this, both of them actually share a god in the State and have actually chosen another religion than Christianity — the professing Christians against their professed desire to be Christians, and the professing atheists against their professed desire to be non-religious. Those conservative-style “Christian statists” (contradiction) who, like the atheists who are more willing to admit to their socialism, imagine they have not embraced another religion by supporting a State. Yet both of them must be solidly placed together as people who buy into the public religion of socialism, i.e., the idea that the compulsory offerings of taxation should be the method of providing for others in society, whether their food, shelter, clothing, defense, law, or justice. This is because “state” is really just another word for socialism, which is really just another word for public religion, i.e., the worldly-political method of providing for the people of a given society.

Notwithstanding the attempt by conservative-style statists to act as if they are anti-socialists all while advocating the tax-funded existence of various government operations, all statists are socialists who are adopting another religion than the pure religion of Jesus Christ. All statists adopt the religion of socialism, whether they call themselves “atheists” and believe they have avoided religion altogether, or whether they call themselves “Christians” and believe that they have not betrayed the Lord in doing so. We are not simply choosing between a socialism that is “Christian” or “atheist,” which is no different from the false dichotomy of the “Christian State” versus a “secular state.” This is because all statism is the socialist religion of providing for society via the force of taxation.

The real political-religious choice before men is much narrower than the many options that men have invented in their effort to maintain their statist idolatry while either calling themselves “Christians” or “atheists.” You’re either a statist, in which case you support the public religion of socialism, or you’re an anarchist, in which case you support the private religion of voluntary charity. But never can there be such a thing as a “Christian statist” or an “atheist statist,” for to be a Christian necessarily means to support the pure religion of private and voluntary charity, which is always negated when one supports the public religion of statist compulsion.

The statist means of providing for society are always the socialist methods of public religion, which cannot be mixed with the Christian methods of pure religion. We are never dealing with a system of human civil government that is either “atheist” or “Christian,” since the statist method of organizing society is always contradictory to both the idea of non-religion or the pure religion of Jesus Christ, which does not operate on the authoritarian means of lording power over other people (Mark 10:42-45). In reality, both the “Christian statist” or the “atheist statist” are mythological creatures. All those men who adopt the statist path, whether they are professing atheists or Christians, are buying into another religion. Socialism is its own religion, and all human government is socialist, which means that anyone seeking to “Christianize” it is also a socialist. 

Religion rightly understood

Much of the problems that we have here stem from the failure to understand what religion means, in a world where it has been confined to an almost meaningless term of one’s private or personal beliefs about God or maybe the rituals they take place in on Sunday morning in a so-called “church” building. Under this diluted idea of religion, “Christians” have found it possible to support human government (the religion of socialism) without believing it contradicts their profession of Christianity, which has much more to do with another way of organizing society by providing for men freely and voluntarily because you love your neighbors, than it does with one’s mere beliefs about God or the song-singing or sermon-listening that often passes for “worship” or “worship service” today. On the other hand, the “atheist” supporters of human government have been able to believe they are non-religious, when adopting the politics of statism is, in fact, to adopt another religion, i.e., one’s idea of how the needs of the people of a given society should be met, whether through private charity (anarchism) or public charity (socialism).

As we have seen with other false dichotomies in this article series, there are always many other underlying problems that lead to the false choices that men come to believe they are presented with. When men cannot see outside of the narrow statist box, they come to think that their only choices are either making it “Christian” or “secular.” In the case of the “politics and religion” dichotomy, men falsely believe they can be statists while remaining Christians or “atheists” largely because “religion” is not understood to be anything more than one’s “beliefs about God” or a “system of faith” or something like that, such that they can adopt any politics they like, which is seen as something apart from their “religion” on the other hand. So long as men profess to “believe in God” or say they don’t believe in God, they think they can count themselves as Christians or atheists, respectively. Whatever else they do in their lives, like whore themselves out to the kingdoms of man, is thought to have no bearing on the “religious part” of their lives.

Religion, however, is not just merely “one’s beliefs about God,” although it has come to be diluted to this much (or little) under shifting definitions overtime. It has much more to do with one’s method of serving and providing for others: whether through the anarchist methods of God’s Kingdom, which is based on voluntary charity and mutual service to others, or the socialist methods of man’s kingdoms, which are based on taxation and force. As one article explains,

“Religion was defined 200 years ago as ‘real piety in practice, consisting in the performance of all known duties to God and our fellow men.’ Religion for centuries consisted of the manner and method by which a people took care of their needy within a society or community.”

As we see, it is the method one believes in for the means of providing for others—whether through the anarchist methods of God’s voluntaristic government or socialist methods of man’s violent governments—that really defines one’s religion. Moreover, we see that this is necessarily a political position. A man’s “religion” is his politics and vice versa, because religion is, more specifically, one’s beliefs about which way the needy of society should be provided for.

For men to have thought that they are truly religious and “worshiping” God by attending the “church services” of these institutions that have formed precisely to shut up the Kingdom of God in the faces of those who might seek it just goes to show how far men have come from understanding religion as an actual practice and not just a belief system or collection of theological ideas. The obligation of a Christian is much more than praying to God or attending some vain rituals in a so-called church building, the latter of which men must repent of even doing. True Christians are seek another political society altogether than the kingdoms of the world, which is the very means of pure religion in practice. As my dear Christian Abolitionist brother, Michael Plaisted, writes,

“The Weightier Matters of God’s Law, as recalled by Christ, do not offer room for truancy for any individual, nor deferred responsibility unto civil or faux-ecclesiastical institutions. Plainly, it is the duty of every person that takes Christ’s name to repent of taking it in vain and actively seek His literal Kingdom in starting or joining an abolitionist society, to be adhocratically yoked together with other true believers in an organized, global network that practices a daily ministration of freewill offerings, seeks justice, loves mercy, and corrects oppression within its ever-growing civil Kingdom.”

It is not good enough to merely conceive of Christianity as a “religion,” understood to mean one’s private or personal beliefs about God, entirely detached from any idea of another civil Kingdom where men practice their religion by serving each other in ways different from the kingdoms of the world, which all practice the public religion of socialism. As Plaisted goes on to say,

“The first greatest commandment, that every individual is obligated to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind” is inherently a political one, declaring that God alone should be your God, preventing you from serving more than one master by raising up other gods, or civil rulers who call themselves Benefactors, but exercise authority by maintaining their socialist providence towards society through bureaucratic force and taxation. The Israelites were once expected to perform this obligation by learning to reject Pharaoh’s political administration over their provision, protection, and essentially their whole adoptive Egyptian society, and to turn back to God to fulfill that position for them exclusively.”

Abolishing the church

Moreover, once it is seen that pure religion has everything to do with actually providing for one another in a Kingdom network through voluntary charity, we see how there is not only no reason to “go to church,” but that such a dead faith as sitting in pews on Sunday morning is precisely one of the main ways that men forsake pure religion and substitute rituals for the real work of serving others. Of course, those invested in churchianity would not like to hear this accusation and would even say that you’re one who is “accusing the brethren,” because it indicts them as the very slothful people who have allowed the kingdoms of the world to advance under their mistaken belief that religion does not encompass the provisions of social welfare and protection, which they have outsourced to the State in their sin.

Nevertheless, the implications of pure religion as being far more than one’s “theological beliefs” not only refutes Christian involvement with the State, but also their pew-sitting as part of the same general sins, where the weightier matters we are called to uphold are outsourced to human civil government under the slothful belief that religion is nothing more than what a man does in his “spiritual life.” If men were actually practicing pure religion, ie., providing for the needs of others freely and voluntarily, then the pews of the so-called “churches” would be empty, and men would be busying themselves about seeking the Kingdom of God.

Again, churchians will of course attempt to maintain that these things are not mutually exclusive and that both pew-sitting (one’s religion) and Kingdom-seeking (one’s politics) could be practiced at the same time. They will reply, “Why not both? Why can’t I go to church on Sunday and worship God and seek His Kingdom at the same time?” The truth is that churchian rituals have nothing to do with seeking the Kingdom of God at all and practicing the pure religion of the Bible, and have always been the means by which men forsake their calling to actually serve one another and work to keep their brothers and sisters free from the bondage of the world, which they become ensnared in when they aren’t being provided for in a Kingdom-network that is formed for the explicit cause of keeping their people as free souls under God.

The true organization of the people of God is to live as a Kingdom people who understand that the essence of the Christian message is a political one that calls for people to repent from the statist systems of the world and seek the Kingdom of God that is not of it. The real practice of the Christian religion is to seek to be your brothers’ keeper in a congregation and a network of congregations that are formed specifically to assure that repentant people who are also seeking another Kingdom are provided for and kept free from turning to the welfare tables of Caesars for their daily bread, which brings them into bondage to the world.

The necessity of political theology 

Most Christians today are wholly unaware of an imperative to have a politics (i.e., a political theory) as a Christian. Or rather, they are unaware that scripture is a civics textbook on anarchist political science and that to call yourself a Christian is to adopt a certain political position: the anarchistic politics of God’s Kingdom, as distinct from the ungodly statist politics of man’s worldly kingdoms. To most people, believers and non-believers alike, to be a Christian just means to assent to some collection of “religious” doctrines, theological creeds or confessions, or simply just to say that you “believe in God.” That the Lord himself says that those who know Him will keep His commandments, which entail actually feeding and caring for your people in a free society, is usually of little importance to the average professing Christian, who sees little need to repent from the statist politics of the world and seek the literal Kingdom of God as a distinct political community from these man-made governments of the world. 

Again, the mixture of Christianity with statism, which are two separate religio-political methods of social organization in themselves, is only possible in a modern Christianity that has stripped the political message from all its major concepts, from the idea of salvation to the idea of the gospel. “The Gospel,” as it has been reduced to being called, is not merely some “religious” idea of being “saved into heaven” when we die when we “believe in Jesus.” It is, in the fullness of the term, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, which is a political concept of seeking God’s Kingdom at the exclusion of all others and being liberated into another political jurisdiction, where we are no longer ruled by false gods and living under their enslaving systems of public religion that we became entrapped in when we coveted our neighbors’ property for the benefits being handed out by the benefactors of the world, because we have repented and are practicing the private religion of Christianity, which is not based on coveting our neighbor’s property, as the kingdoms of the world are.

As we see, Christianity is not just a religion that provides no instruction about how a man should live in his “political life,” which is thought to be something a man does wholly apart from his beliefs about God, who assumed to be not much more than a spiritual being who laid down some theological rules He wanted men to believe in. It is, rather, an inherently political theory about another way to practice religion, as distinct from the authoritarian plunder systems of the world that operate on violence and force. Christianity is not just a “religion” that gives man free reign to decide what politics he wishes to adopt qua political man, but is inherently a religio-political ethic about the certain politics that a man must adopt if he wants to count himself as a Christian, since to adopt the statist-socialist means of the world is indeed to adopt another religion. Though the idolaters of the world will naturally fight against this charge in order to cling to their false gods and false religion, all which has been enabled by the false dichotomy between politics and religion, the truth of the matter is that Christians must be anarchists who reject worldly kingdoms. To be a statist is believe in another religious method of providing for others and serving them: through the violent political means of the world, as opposed to the voluntary means of the Kingdom of God.

There is no real separation of politics and religion, such that Christianity is merely some spiritual/religious matter that leaves men free to believe whatever they want as far as “politics” goes. Rather, to be a Christian is a political position: the Lord is our King and Lawgiver, and only He saves us (Isa 33:22). When men raise up other men as their kings, lawgivers, and providers, they are turning to false gods as their providers, and have forsaken the pure religion of Jesus Christ to practice the public religion of goods and services distributed by civil fathers instead.  

The artificial distinction between politics and religion

This dilution of the understanding of religion to mean nothing more than one’s private beliefs about God has made it to where “politics and religion” are two entirely separate things in the minds of most people, which then leaves open the possibility of two distinctly different realms that do not conflict with one another. One can “believe in Jesus” on the “religious” hand, while supporting, say, the “Republican Party,” on the “political” hand. This is how we get the absolutely contradictory idea that “Jesus is my savior and Trump is my president.” It is not seen that one’s politics is bound up with their religion, such that all statism is to adopt another religion and that to call yourself a Christian is to adopt the anarchist politics of God’s Kingdom. Thus we get some artificial distinction where “the church” is for “spiritual matters” like “saving souls,” while “the state” is for law, justice, order, or even welfare.

None of these false distinctions could have been made among the early Christians, who had their own literal Kingdom in the heart of the Roman empire, i.e., their own social method of providing for their own people that was distinct from the statist methods of the world. Their idea of “religion” was not merely some churchian rituals, as worship and liturgy are understood today, but to provide for each other in a literal network of voluntary charity that works to serve the needs of their people to keep them from turning to the politics of the world. They had a daily ministration as their practice of pure religion, where the ministers of God’s Kingdom order would take the charity from the families in order to fulfill all the needs of the people seeking to live under another political order that was not based on the authoritarian systems of the world, where benefactors who exercise authority over their subjects practice the public religion of taxation and distribution of goods and services by the State, which brings everyone who is willing to take their benefits, all which come from the willingness to live at the expense of their neighbor, into bondage to the kingdoms of the world. 

The two Kingdom models here, either the private and pure religion of Christianity or the public religion of statism and socialism, men must choose between. Whichever they choose is whichever religio-political order they buy into. There can be no such thing as supporting the statist methods of providing goods and services while claiming to be a Christian, or stated conversely, supporting the Christian method while clinging to one’s statism. To accept one is to abandon the other. These are two different religions, i.e., the socio-political practices men adopt for the organization of their societies and the means by which others are served and provided for.

If religion is not understood to mean the politics of another Kingdom, and the Scriptures are not thought to supply this politics or point to another way of organizing society than the political violence of the world, then naturally men will believe they can get their politics from the world and practice the worldly methods of political violence without contradiction their religion, which they think of as nothing more than being the “spiritual” questions of a man’s life. As one article explains, 

“When the people turn religion into a superstition of mysterious doctrines rather than the daily practice of a pious duty to God and their fellowman through the practice of love and faith through charity and hope, they will soon institute the rule of force to obtain their daily bread.”

The false religion of the false “church“

This is what all statists who profess to be Christians do today when they confine “religion” to the “spiritual realm” of their personal beliefs about God: they go to the world for their politics, not realizing the Gospel of God’s Kingdom is already a political message about another political jurisdiction, where they are to live apart from the statist kingdoms of the world and practice another method of organizing their people than its authoritarian methods. This is one way indeed that the false institutional “churches” of the world have worked to further the kingdoms of man by omission. In their failure not only to preach the true Gospel of the Kingdom of God that liberates men from the kingdoms of the world, but also in their failure to actually organize their people this way and gather for the express purpose of serving each other as a Kingdom people who are not of this world, men have reduced “religion” to nothing more than the dead faith of “going to church,” which people think of as nothing more than their “religious” duties to sit in pews, sing songs, and listen to sermons, as opposed to actually gather to feed, shelter, clothe, and protect each other, as the Apostle James defines religion (James 1:25). As the above article goes on to say, explaining how the diluted understanding of religion today has helped to further the statist political systems of the world, 

“This movement of the idea of religion away from being a duty, to instead meaning someone who merely thinks a particular opinion or identifies with a line of thinking or ideology, has removed most religions away from pure religion into covetous practices of public religion, civil religion, and false religions.”

If “religion” is nothing more than churchian rituals, and such a “church” and its Sunday rituals are substituted for the true ecclesia that functions as the body politic of God’s Kingdom, then men naturally turn to the politics of the world in the absence of any political understanding of what they reduce to “the Christian religion.” If it isn’t seen that the religion of Christianity is a politics that proposes to do things differently than the socialist benefactors of the world who rule over their people in their practice of public religion, then naturally men will find no conflict in this inherently contradictory method of providing for the needs of their people with the ways that Jesus Christ proposes, who they think of as nothing more than a heavenly savior who didn’t really come to speak about another way of living on earth which stood squarely opposed to the statist practices of the world (i.e., of Romes, Egypts, Babylons, Englands, or Americas). Hence why the majority of professing Christians today are statists (i.e., socialists) who see no problem with turning to the political methods of the world for their law, justice, housing, welfare, education, health care, or a plethora of other things: they have not understood (pure) religion to mean the means by which one provides for others, which places the statist political methods as completely antagonistic to the Christian Kingdom-method which, if truly practiced, would abolish the public religion of socialism that is inherent to all statist systems, whether they are “limited” to socialist law and socialist justice, or whether they embark upon any other number of welfare schemes.

All human civil government is based on the theft of taxation and is inherently socialist. It is not possible to be a statist without being a socialist, since all human government is funded through coveting the property of other men, without which it could not even exist. Put in these terms, it should hopefully make it more clear to all those conservative-style statists who imagine themselves to be anti-socialists, that it is not possible to be a Christian while remaining a statist at all. To be a statist is to adopt the socialist religion of tax-funded “public goods” as one’s means of organizing a society.

Christian politics and the religion of statism

When it is seen that religion, in theory and practice, has much more to do with the social method a people adopt for providing for others, whether through the charitable practices described in the Bible or the covetous practices of socialism, it becomes impossible to think that one could be a Christian and a statist. To be a Christian means to reject the latter, public religion of socialism, i.e., of legal charity funded through taxation, and to choose the private or pure religion of serving one another directly out of personal responsibility and love for neighbors. Moreover, it becomes possible to see that the statist practice of public religion, which is the case with any statist system, is not only just incompatible with the religio-political ethic of Christianity, but that it is precisely the area of life that men have deviated from God’s prescribed social order. When we see that “religion” is much more than one’s theological beliefs about God, it becomes evident just how much statist politics contradicts Christianity. As one article says,

“Understanding that religion practiced is a duty to provide welfare for your fellow man divides public religion and private religion into welfare by the exercise of authority by the state and the charitable practices of the people through voluntarism.”

Men are either statist non-Christians or Christian non-statists, but they can never be Christian statists or non-religious statists, as these ideas are both contradictory to each other, being that Christianity is the politics of a Kingdom not of this world and statism is the religion of a kingdom that is of it. All statism is socialism and all socialism is the ungodly practice of public religion, which is inherently opposed to the pure religion of Christianity. It is not possible to be a “Christian statist” whatsoever, which is not merely some ideologically-charged accusation by Christian Anarchists meant to rhetorically bash statists who we think are idolaters, but is true simply for the fact that statism is another religious method of organizing society that is simply not compatible with the Christian religious method of organizing society. Christians are people whose politics must necessarily be opposed to the inherently socialist politics of the kingdoms of the world.

This also means that it is not possible to be an “atheist statist,” either. All statists are necessarily engaged in public religion, i.e., in providing for the needs of men through the covetous practices of extorting their neighbors to fund various goods and services that they arbitrarily decided to be “necessary public goods.” This shows that all so-called “Christians” who believe in human government are effectively no different from the progressive socialists they criticize. For though the statists who profess the Lord’s name in vain may oppose society-wide socialist welfare operations or have some minor differences as to the extent in which public religion should encroach upon society, they nevertheless remain in support of socialist law, justice, and protection, which furthermore is to adopt a different theory of salvation than the gospel of the Kingdom of God, which promises that those who seek the Lord’s Kingdom will have all these things provided for them providentially and privately, without the need for a State.

There is no such thing as “Christian socialism,” whether the socialism is state provision of welfare, law, justice, protection, or some other good that supposedly requires public religion. All these things are ungodly. They are all based on robbing your neighbors instead of loving and serving them based on pure religion, which can only be practiced in an anarchist society where authoritarian human rulers are absent from the social order. 

Conclusion

When religion is finally understood as the method by which men choose to care for the needy of society, whether through private charity or legal charity, it can then be seen that there are really only two religions: the pure religion of Christ, where men serve each other freely and voluntarily out of love for their neighbors, or the public religion of socialism, where men are made into tax-slaves in order to fund a welfare system that is based on compulsory offerings, force, and violence. Moreover, it can then be seen that one’s idea of how to provide for the needy of society, i.e., their religion of either voluntary charity or socialism, is definitive of their politics. All people who believe in the statist method of serving others are socialists, and therefore, non-Christians. All those who believe in the methods of pure religion, and seek to organize the Kingdom of God to provide for their neighbors, are non-socialists. 

In short, the ideas of Christian statism, Christian socialism, apolitical religion, and atheistic statism are all myths. The statist methods of social organization contradict the pure religion of Christianity, and adopting them is to embrace socialism as one’s religion.