Author: James Butler

A Treatise for The Separation of Church and State

Descent into Hell of Commingled Church and State

 "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, mi ritrovai per una selva oscura" 

In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood. 
- Opening line of Dante's Inferno

Today’s blog is a descent into Dante’s Inferno of commingling of Church and State. Dante began his work with the quote in the above block that set the stage for his allegorical journey into Hell and the sinners and consequences of sin he meets along the way. As Dante, guided by Virgil, passes the gates of Hell he observed the inscription on Hell’s gates, “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate, ” most frequently translated as “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

For those faith groups who seek to dismantle the separation of church and state in the United States, let these same words of warning apply to you. The MAGA Gospel has less relation to the teachings of Jesus Christ than to the tenants of the Spanish Inquisition, which merged a corrupt State Church with State Power and Wealth.

The MAGA Gospel has less relation to the teachings of Jesus Christ than to the tenants of the Spanish Inquisition, which merged a corrupt State Church with State Power and Wealth.

Demonizing This Little Light You Shine

A Tale of Two Faiths

Tucked away in the swampy New Caney, Texas, there lay a small mosque whose Imam awakened with a dream so clear he could almost physically touch the holy city that appeared above his bed. He saw not only a new mosque whose spires reached into the heavens but also a musalla with a floor of Iznik blue tile that could hold 10,000 on their Janamaz prayer rugs beneath a domed ceiling of Haft Rang tiles that appeared like a starry night sky. The prayer mats floated on a sea of azure blue tiles beneath the tiled starry sky. But the Mulla’s vision did not stop there. He saw a holy city built on the Five Pillars of Islam. He saw a daycare through doctoral level full-ride school system, funded by tithes of the halal faithful businesses. Halal breakfast and lunches were served without cost to the students. Along with mastery of English, the students learned to speak and write God’s own language, Arabic.

The City of the Hajj مدينة الحج went further and provided guaranteed housing for all residents in exchange for weekly volunteering 7 hours of community service. Along with the Hajj University, the Imam envisioned the House of Hagar Medical Center, providing free medical care and surgical services for all residents, including prenatal care. The hospital was funded by the Imam’s fatwa, “Abraham’s Sacrifice” ذبيحة إبراهيم , that half of all CEO’s earnings would be put back into the community as Zakat almsgiving ( زكاة ), one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The CEO’s could earn as much as they could, as long as the Zakat half was returned to community good.

The Imam’s dream didn’t end there. He saw the gates of the City of the Hajj that Karam (كرم) opened wide to those unbelievers who worked and served in city. These residents could attend the schools and be treated in the medical centers. These guests would also be given housing, considering they commit to the same community service and CEO half-alms commitment. Children of the unbelievers would receive the gift of fluent Arabic and English, along with a solid foundation of the Koran studies.

In the months that followed Imam Muhammad met with Texan Islamic leaders and architects, designed a 10 square mile Islamic faith-based community and filed its building permit and request for Islamic school tax vouchers with Montgomery County, Texas.

In nearby Conroe, Texas, oilman and County Commissioner Rex Smithson sat on a stool at his breakfast bar, one elbow on the counter, and poured his black coffee into a ceramic “Holy Grounds” mug trying to clear his blurred vision from a late night two-steppin’ at the Longhorn Saloon, with traces of burgundy and red lipstick peeking through his salt-n-pepper stubble. His fog lifted as he thumbed through the day’s agenda. Rex prided himself on the American dream – God, Guns, and Country, in no particular order. He considered himself an Easter Baptist. He always attends church on Easter, and Jesus forgives him of what happens at the Longhorn. Call it a me-and-God gentleman’s agreement.

Councilman Rex’s wife, Sarah, homeschools their 5 children with Bible based curriculum paid for by Texas school vouchers. Part of each school day is dedicated to prayers to Jesus, a recitation of the 10 Commandments, the 23rd Psalm and the Lord’s Prayer. Rex nearly spit out his coffee at the same time his wife ran screaming into the kitchen, long blonde hair still wet and dripping on the burnt orange cobblestoned saltillo tile, glistening like the pearls that formed on Rex’s longneck beers retrieved from the iced salt bathtub at the Longhorn last night. She echoed fists raised, shouting, “Did you see what the heathen Islam’s were planning outside of New Caney?!”

“We believe in freedom of religion!,” screamed Sarah. “That’s not a religion. That’s the devil! We can’t let the devil get Jesus’s tax dollars in Texas. You’ve got to do something, Rex!”

So, Rex muttered, “I got this, Bunnie!,” without making eye contact while he called Governor Jenkins who answered. “Jenkins, … Rex. How do you like your new desk and chair? Workin’ out for you? Good. I thought you’d like it. Hey, we’ve got a bunch of crazy religious nuts who want to build their own Saudi Kingdom outside of New Caney. What you gunna do about that?”

Following a gasp, Governor Jenkins breathed a silent Jesus speed prayer that might save him from Rex’s wrath, meaner than a stomped prairie rattler, and said, “Now Rex, you know the Founders of our Great Nation believed in Jesus, which is why the Baptists wrote the Constitution and now lead Texas. There is no room at the table for the unfaithful. We are a Christian nation and Christian oil money will go to God fearin’ Christian schools and churches. We can’t stop their worship on those rugs; we can pull the plug on all their permits, design approvals, and right-of-ways. There may be freedom of worship, but their religion can’t fight our city hall givin”em hell!”

Which of the men went home justified before God? The Imam or the Oilman? (See Jesus’s Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector in Luke 18:9-14.)

You may say, “Pastor Jim, why that’s just a fanciful story. You are telling tales.” Let me now introduce to you the reality of MAGA’s Grand Inquisitor of the State Church.

MAGA’S Grand Inquisitor of the State Church of DOGE

For a discussion of the breaking news decision at the U.S. Supreme Court’s regarding use of tax money for an Oklahoma religious charter school’s challenge of the 1st Amendment. See the video below:

The struggle to maintain religious freedom and separation of church and state continues to boil in the U.S. Supreme Court. This author does not presume to be a lawyer and defers to jurists following the U.S. Supreme Court. While funding religious organizations with public taxes sounds like a noble venture, the removal of the the wall between church and state would directly impact the consistency of education for children and youth in the United States. In the Tale of Two Faith’s above, reverse roles and make the Imam and Baptist preacher and the Oilman a Muslim.

The section below discusses the correlation between removal of separation of church and state and removal of civil rights protections. How could they be in tandem orbit?

What Civil Rights Have to Do With It?

Why would the MAGA administration couple elimination of civil rights protections with removal of separation of church and state? The CNN article below described “racial injustice toward people of color is out” and “separation of church and state is out.”

The Unholy Liturgy
MAGA Inquisitor: In favored Fortunes we love to rise,
People: As souls lament from all our lies.
All: Our Gold and Greed in assent we grin,
     In the name of Me, Myself, and Mine, We Win. AMAGA.

A Navigation Guide for Square Walled Communities

While traveling the Civil Rights Trail in the South a few months ago, I took this photo of the Green Book. The Green Book provided a list of restaurants and hotels where people of color could stay. Is this the America we want to return to? What’s next? “Green Book – Student Edition” to find welcoming and adequate school havens? The failure to provide a consistent public educational model, except to religious schools organized enough to secure funds, eliminates opportunities for children who are either not of that faith orientation or who are captive in a sect that is anti-learning and anti-science. In other words, welcome to an education as a student in Holy Square City described in the next section.

A Journey into Holy Square City

Let’s travel in our minds to a teenager, Jonathan, who lives in an obscure county in the dense oak hill country of Texas where he attends the Holy Square Temple, which teaches the earth is a square. The Holy Squared believe that their lives must be spent within eyesight of the Temple, for fear of falling off the edges of the Square. Outside the faith are the “rounders,” shunned as heretics and believing the “rounders” live hanging by their nails, lost on the edge of perdition. The Square Priests guard the four corners of the Holy Square City to protect the inhabitants from exiting the town and falling off the earth. The Priestesses write their own books and teach homesteading skills using government tax credits.

For the last 20 years the Holy Square City continued, until this day, a spirited wild-haired rounder with purple hair free climbed the Square City 25 foot high border wall. While taking a selfie to prove his conquest, purple hair blowing in the wind and gawking at the medieval world he captured on his iPhone, he slipped and clawed enough branches to break his fall, where he landed on the edge of the Holy Square Homestead School. A dozen boys and girls his age, wearing denim the color of fall leaves with no buttons or zippers, offered him a hand up while others set down their milk pails and studied the electric tablet and phone, unsure of what they were.

“Do you want to watch some TikTok? I’ve got a channel,” said Danny whose black eyes were barely visible through the purple bangs. The children mused at the hair, the chocolate glow of his face with the warm glitter of perspiration, and the neon green of his zippered skin tight synthetic climbing shirt. They grinned, whispered, and pointed at the colors, as though they viewed their Easter eggs freshly pulled from the earthenware bowl of rainbow color dip.

“Sure!,” said Jonathan in a stilted Afrikaner accent. “What’s a TikTok? Is it a bird? I have a pet crow, Maxim, who can count to 10 with pebbles.”

“No, TikTok is no bird, but I bet there are TikTok’s about parrots talking.” Danny stunned his new disciples as he found a video of someone who trained his cockatiel to swear for a treat. His blonde-haired bowl cut, blue-eyed audience was more amazed about a creature they had never scene from a world outside the Square than the cackling swear words which they didn’t understand.

For the next two hours, Danny played TikTok videos as one request built upon another to obtain the vision of what life was like beyond the square. A bell toned marking the end of their mushroom gathering prayer lunch, the youths said goodbye as Danny freeclimbed back over the border wall, at the place the tree canopy hid him from the guards. During the days that followed the children carved wooden images that they might not forget this fateful day. They carved a wooden cockatiel, a square tablet with faces on it, a smaller rectangular magic box they used to pretend to communicate in the forest. The children created a game that no one could hide from hearing words spoken into the magic box. They hid the newly whittled artwork inside of hollow trees. As the animals were born into Homestead School barn, they christened them with the names of the grand new world outside the walls — TikTok, Apple, Googly, Andy Roid, and others they could recall. From that day forward, though their world was still square … their edges were rounded.

Consistent education means rounding the rigid corners and ideologies that entrap our children and youth in a world where tomorrow is no different from today. Tomorrow is what the Holy Square elders say it is. Free education freeclimbs over those walls of willfully blind ignorance and prejudice.

Sacramental Statecraft of “Take Over The World Theology”

Considering the removal of separation of church and state with elimination of civil rights protections, who benefits? Behind protective ideology lies the doctrines of a group’s intent to take over or control its world. The author contends that commingling the gospel of Jesus Christ with earthly power and wealth mutates Jesus’s Great Commission to make disciples into a mandate to physically conquer nations, by force if necessary, starting with their own nation. An illustration of this Sacramental Statecraft is memorialized in the cartoon, Pinky and the Brain, in which Brain’s eternal quest is to take over the world:

The Texas Baptists’ reactions to gut the Muslim’s planned “Epic City” reveal that freedom of religion applies to my white, capitalist, wealth-based faith, and not for religion for the commoners. The problem with civil rights is that it reminds us of those U.S. religious people in our near past who forced people of color into economic, educational, and spiritual captivity. That is a history that the same religious people not only want to forget … but repeat.

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is a contemporary religious movement that emerged within Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. It’s characterized by the belief in a “new” or restored form of apostolic and prophetic leadership, as well as a vision of Christians actively shaping culture and society, often described as a “seven-mountain mandate” where Christians seek to influence seven key areas: business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family, and religion. 

We Emerge to See the Stars Again

 "E quindi uscimmo a revider le stelle."
"And thus we emerged to see the stars again."
- Final words in Dante's Inferno as Dante and Virgil exited Hell and saw the stars

To rephrase it, the New Apostolic movement commingles their brand of US. politics and State Church into the Sacramental State of Jesus. The wholesale removal or disenfranchising of those who don’t look or believe like them is the form of buffalo hunting tactic that the U.S. used against the Plains Native Tribes.

The problem with civil rights is that it reminds us of those U.S. religious people in our near past who forced people of color into economic, educational, and spiritual captivity. That is a history that the same religious people not only want to forget … but repeat.

The separation of church and state provides fair and equitable education and opportunities for peoples of all faiths, versus education for people of my faith. The same principle provides consistency of education. Using the above City of the Hajj example, children attending a state of the art daycare through college full-ride educational system would likely outpace a divorced religious single mom who homeschools her three children using YouTube television as teacher, their classroom a single-wide trailer in a noisy RV park off the Interstate, while she works 10 hours a days sewing tennis shoes in the new shoe mill next to the Amazon warehouse. At night she drinks away two bottles of school voucher money to dull her repetitive aches of the sewing sweatshop. The consistency of the U.S. education of its children is founded on separation of church and state, which provides for quality education for all regardless of geographical and economic, and religious lottery.

Then Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” 

- Matthew 16:6

Rounding Edges,

Pastor Jim

For Further Study

The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is a contemporary religious movement that emerged within Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. It’s characterized by the belief in a “new” or restored form of apostolic and prophetic leadership, as well as a vision of Christians actively shaping culture and society, often described as a “seven-mountain mandate” where Christians seek to influence seven key areas: business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family, and religion.

The Seven Mountain Mandate: This concept is central to NAR’s understanding of cultural transformation. 

• The Seven Mountain Mandate, a concept within the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), proposes that Christians should seek to influence and transform seven key societal spheres, often referred to as “mountains”: Family, Religion, Government, Business, Education, Arts and Entertainment, and Media. This movement believes that by taking dominion in these areas, Christians can advance God’s kingdom on earth and hasten the Second Coming of Jesus. 
• Origins and Key Figures: The Seven Mountain Mandate emerged in the 1970s, with figures like Bill Bright and Loren Cunningham considered pioneers. It’s closely associated with the NAR, a charismatic movement that emphasizes direct spiritual experiences and the role of apostles in shaping society. 

Extra Credit

How would MAGA’s concept of “freedom of religion” mesh with this proposed Islamic 400+ acre”Epic City” project outside of Josephine, Texas? https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/epic-city-development-collin-county-controversy-investigation/

• How would you feel if there were no other schools nearby than Epic City’s?
• If the best medical care, daycare, and preschool through college were offered for free by an Islamic community if you gave 7 hours of community service weekly and half your salary if you were a CEO, would you move to that city?
• If both Epic City and the divorced mother who works 10 hours daily in a new tennis shoes mill both receive tax vouchers for education, how is this fair if the Epic Children receive state-of-the-art education while the divorced mother leaves the television on as a “teacher” for her three kids as she drinks the school tax voucher money exhausted after shift work? How would public education balance this inequity? Describe how government funded public education provides for consistent education. Discuss what would be fair for both religious non-profit schools and public schools?

*The Trump White House posted this AI image of Trump as Pope.

Up Next Neobigotry: A Genteel Racism